Home Schooling Creating Social Problems?

There is this family down the street from my parents, very religious. they have maybe 6 children who are home schooled and always in their yard together. for some reason they will never really say hi back to you, and seem too shy (Iknow other kids are too) to really talk to anyone outside of their family.


Do you think home schooling cuts kids off from important interactions with other kids and people in general? i know many of the experiences can be detrimental during school, but it just struck me that maybe these people are creating a family of recluses.

 

That's the bad thing about home schooling...if you don't balance it out with some kind of social settings, your kids grow up to be adults who can't handle confrontation in ANY form or make big decisions. Most people I know at least let their kids have playdates or go to the park or something. It's also not a bad idea to make field trips to the outside world part of the home schooling experience.....you know like taking them out to meet some of the people and workers they learn about, go to a police/fire station and let them talk to others, maybe for a book report or something so that they HAVE to talk to them.

Anyway, I'm babbling too much rigt now.....I gotta go wash my face and finish waking up before I can make any sense.

 

That makes perfect sense.


What strikes me about these people is that there are so many brothers and sisters around that it doesn't seem like they know anyone else, there are never any non-family members around them.......I can understand where people are coming from with home schooling, I would just like to see some stats or reports on how they grow up.........

Its strange, so many christian and catholic schools around, but they aren't religious enough for them i guess.

 

what a friend of our family did was homeschool the kidds till 6th grade than put them in public highschool.

 

How did they react when they started at the public school?


i think that would freak these particular kids out.

 

i haven't seen any statistics on the subject, but i know these types of people... over-protective parents who keep their kiddies inside.


it seems like common sense that home-schooling would deprive children of important social interaction, if they did not get it someplace else. the whole notion of home-schooling undermines trust in other people... "strangers", "outsiders"...

i went to private christian schools right up until high school. and that limited experience left me ill-prepared for the real world. some kid who has never been in a classroom with other kids... how will they ever hope to do well in college, or in the professional world?

education is a co-operative process. it has to involve other people with different perspectives. understanding of diversity is the only way that anything new gets learned.

of course, the parent-child bond is very important, and all the basic education should happen there. but socialization and an acceptance of different people happen at school, with other human beings. home schooling is deficient in one major aspect... experience. you can learn about anything you want at home, but getting out there and doing it will make it real education.

 

From home-schooling to public high school sounds like a social nightmare.

Way back when I was teaching in the public schools we had a mother take 3 of her kids out of the public district and home school them because our new World History text books used the terms CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era) instead of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, "In the Year of the Lord"). The daughter she pulled from my class spent most of her time in special ed, but when she was mainstreamed into my class she was an obnoxious, loud-mouthed, fat-ass; I was glad to get rid of her. Class size was around 30, with a district mandate of 25, so our motto was - "home school all the little fuckers." Like Clover said, socialization seems as important as the curriculum in collective education; I think that the home school kids miss the opportunity to learn how to interact in a diverse population.

 

well put, it seems they are going to be shocked at some point in their lives when they are finally outside of the bubble their parents keep them in....whether they will rebel once they catch a glimpse of the everyday world, or whether they will hide away in their houses I don't know.



I agree, how can you prepare kids for an independant life when they depend on you for everything and are exposed to little else?


Halloweens example shows how some petty little problem the parents might have can cause them to drasticly change their kids lives.

 

i know a lot of kids who have been home schooled. i've never noticed any social difficulties on their part. in fact, they've always seemed much more self-possessed and secure. me, i think throwing my child to the wolves when she's only 5 sounds like a worse idea than giving her some more of my time and attention. but i'm not saying that there aren't some kids that are so completely shut off from the world that they won't have difficulty in social situations, but, fuck, so do i! i coulda used a bit more time with my mother when i was sent to kindergarten. years and years of being abused and maligned by other students doesn't make for a more socially prepared child.

 

I was pretty blind regarding the prevelance of home schooling in American Society. Once I found myself in middle-america and applachia, it truly set in for me. Having employed numerous people who had been or still were home schooled, I found that many of them actually were more socially adept and mature than those from the public school systems. Then again, the public school systems were the most awful in the country, so not really a point of comparison.

I think it can work out just fine, if the parents promote a rounded lifestyle. The ones that live a life that exists only of home schooling, church and bi-weekly trips to Walmart are the ones that turn into the Jeffrey Dalmers of the world.

 

i am dismayed by the ignorance and bigoted sterotyping i find in this thread. i homeschool my son, and healthier socialization is one of the reasons why i homeschool, among others. i am not fundamentalist christian (or fundamentalist anything, for that matter) nor do i believe in a sheltering lifestyle. i do not believe that the clique-based, materialistic, age-, gender- and often class- and race- segregated, predatory and highly conformist social environment that prevails in most public schools is either normal, natural, or healthy. my son socializes with children and adults of all ages at the playground, the local children's museum, the unitarian church, pagan groups and events, local events and festivals, the co-op, the farm through which we have a share in CSA, with children in the building and neighborhood, with his grandfather's neighbors' children, and of course, other local homeschoolers. he has other social opportunites as well, but i think you get the general idea. this is the case with the other homeschooling families i have met as well, even the fundamentalist christian ones. the stereotype that homeschoolers are all anti-evolution fanatics that want to keep their children isolated from anything that is remotely different is quite simply a blatant lie.


perhaps those children were too shy to say hello because you come across as judgemental, self-righteous, or unfriendly. or maybe they have been cautioned not to talk to strangers - just like most public school kids are. or perhaps they were just distracted by their play. to assume that they have social problems and that all homeschoolers must be unsocialized and sheltered based on this one experience is ludicrious, and really says more about your social outlook than theirs.

 

Quote: am dismayed by the ignorance and bigoted sterotyping i find in this thread. i homeschool my son, and healthier socialization is one of the reasons why i homeschool, among others

i can see you have a giant chip on your shoulder. i find it hilarious.

i wasn't attacking the choice of home schooling a child, i was merely asking a question about possible negative effects from it and was discussing one family that I see who does it, one family that happens to be religious. I see that you took even questioning the practice as an insult...thats your deal.

Quote: perhaps those children were too shy to say hello because you come across as judgemental, self-righteous, or unfriendly.


If someone who they see quite frequently says hello when they ride a bike by is percieved by them to be unfriendly, then i would say they DO have a problem!]

What have i said that makes me self-righteous?!

 

well, it did seem to come across a little harsh, man, beginning the way you did with a wierdo religous family. but, anyway, there are many home-schooled children in the usa who do VERY well. as i said, i know quite a few home schooled children who went on to either public high school or universities. some kids would do well in public schools, some would do better at home. personally, i feel my little brother would have been wa ybetter off being home schooled. the amount of abuse and neglect dalzell has suffered in the GGUSD both by other children and the faculty is enough to make you cry. i don't want my daughter suffering that. dalzell's was the worst, but my little sister, my niece, and myself, did not have a good experience in public schools. school children can be so much more harsh than even adults.

 

Quote: well, it did seem to come across a little harsh, man, beginning the way you did with a wierdo religous family.

Well thats the only family I've ever known who home school, thus the only people i have to discuss! i said that i know many aspects of school socialization are negative, believe me I went through it as bad as anyone! I didn't say they were wrong to do this, only that THESE PARTICULAR kids seem isolated!

Its not that i can't see that it could be done better, as some people have commented, i merely wanted to know how some of these people turn out, some of the problems they might have.

Never realized this was such a touchy subject....

 

I'm not saying that all or even most homeschooled children grow up with social problems, i'm just saying that IF parents don't work out ways to include their children in some sort of social environment, it CAN sometimes work out that way. I've seen it happen.

However, I think public schools are a lot more dangerous for children psychologically than home schooling is.

 

Homeschool parents have to react by calling others ignorant and/or bigoted because they know in the back of their hearts that they are isolating their kids in an unreal world that only exists in their twisted minds. This whole thing about the evil public/private schools is a bunch of bullshit that these people spew to justify their obsessive behavior. Instead of allowing children to enter society and judge it for themselves, these control freaks are so mentally ill that they have to manipulate the child's social environment so they can force their morality on the child (whether it's Mormonism, or orthodox Christianity or paganism). To me, it's a form of brainwashing. Sheltering a kid from the diversity of the real world won't make it go away; and if you don't like the educational culture in your school district, hiding from it won't change anything either. The Taliban in Afghanistan knew the best way to oppress women and keep them subjugated and isolated - don't let them go to school.

 

public schools are a form of brainwashing, too. look how much you freaked out when your precious public schooling was attacked. don't worry, i used to feel the same.


i can see where it would be a very touchy subject. parents who choose to homeschool their children are probably constantly under attack from the public school advocates. tell me one thing, though. how did people EVER get around to being healthy and active in society before our modern public schools? i mean, for heaven's sake, they must've all been knuckle dragging troglodytes, eh? at any rate, humanity has done very well without overstuffed, underfunded, understaffed public schools. a few kids pulled out for a few hours each day will surely survive just fine.

 

halloweenriot, you are correct. benjamin franklin, albert einstein, abraham lincoln, and whoopi goldberg were all sheltered, brainwashed, obsessive & mentally ill.

 

yeah, my husband's grandmother and her mother were both home schooled. great grandma arrive here in a covered wagon. she still has a mind like a steel trap and she's one bad ass woman. home schooling in itself hurts no one. but freaks home schooling can. but what the hell, freaks with kids in public schools fuck up their kids, too.

 

im being homeschooled right now, bitches



i need to get some fucking work done....but i dont remember what i was doing.
ill stay on here until my guilty conscience keeps telling me that im going to fail and not go to california next year.




edit: i did not mean 'bitches' in a sexually offensive way