My homeschooled daughter lacks socialization...or so they rant...

Machine = Ned Flanders

A college friend of mine was sheltered to a great deal, and had major problems with alcohol and drugs at the university. He attended public school. I think we need to distinguish between human interaction skills as compared to over sheltering.

Many of the home schooled kids I have worked with as a volunteer well exceed the socialization skills of their peers in the public schools. OTOH, some public school district's students are quite well versed as well. One observation I have made is that the public school students skill levels, both academic and interpersonal are very well tied to the amount of parental involvement. If the parents and pta groups etc are extremely involved, the students tend to be well educated irrespective of the schools financial situation. I think it comes down to accountability of the parents, teacher, administration, and school board.

Many well financed school districts may have parents juggling career issues, and as a result, do not have the time to spend at the school or its activities, any spare time is spent with their family (which is a good thing). They tend to rely on expensive facilities and staff with hopefully a positive educational experience. Unfortunately spending money on a problem often times covers it up rather than solving it.

Religious schools are often times running on shoestring budgets, but have a tremendous amount of parental involvement, thus they do well.

Private schools do well, as they have a vested interest and the accountability is very high.

Many underfunded school districts have to rely on parental involvement or volunteers to provide services the school district cannot fund. As a result accountability seems to increase, with the result that the students do well.

Now if you loose accountability which is the case in many schools, you have a problem.

amuron

The only home school kids I know are very lacking in social skills. They spend 7 days a week playing tennis, and have zero personality. Don't get me wrong, they are great kids, and will probably be professional tennis players, but the only kids they socialize with are the ones that play tennis but usually they are only with adults. Whether or not this is true for most home school kids I don't know, but I think kids need to be around other kids while they are growing up.

Machine,

I've been pondering this scenario for quite awhile now, even though I have no kids. I'm not even sure I want to bring any up in this day in age.

But anyway,

I always wondered if I would homeschool my children because I dont want them being in a public school picking up any bad habits. I know kids of minds of their own, but when you have too much negative influence they tend to conform to the negative.

Even though a child may be against it, there is such thing as a group think theory. Where people tend to go against their intuition, even though they were sure they were 100% right. Just so they can be part of the group.

Now with kids being in an environment that has a high percentage of deliquents, I would have to say I would home school my kids.

Even though you have the argument about getting proper socialization. I pondered the idea of homeschool to learn, and join soccer clubs or whatever sport they wanted to get involved in. As was the way I did it.

I went to catholic school, which is public, you dont have to pay for it.

I knew about sex when I was in kindergarden, I built up a wall of cardboard boxes and kissed my boyfriend behind them, he bought me rings out of those 25 cent machines.

Come grade 4 madonna was my idol, and my mom made me record over her music videos. Of course my curiosity grew more and I got more into it.

Didn't know about drugs until grade 11. Dabbled in it but got out of it.

Didn't know about guns, but that's because I grew up in the Niagara falls canada area where there are none.

Toronto, hamilton, montreal, and all other major cities where multiculturalism exists, tend to have more gun problems, drug problems, and behavioural misconduct issues.

I wouldn't mind sending my kids to a school in a less populated area. If I lived in the country or something and the school only had 100 kids or something.

There more populated the worse off your kids are??

I'm not sure but i'm going to say yes since i'm thinking about it.

I want my kids to grow up strong, with a good moral compass, that can say no to drugs, guns, violence, sexual misconduct, and whatever else.

I don't want my kid growing up wearing droopy drawers walking down the street with a joint in his mouth because it makes him feel like a badass.

I don't want a daughter wearing a thong that hangs out of her pants because it makes her feel sexy, and thinks that how she gets guys or attention.

Home school is best if you don't want your children's mind being polluted at an early age.

They say the first 5 years are the building blocks to your child's personality.

And I want a good strong character built within, so i'll have agree with you on that machine.


hope you enjoyed my post.

TL

Homeschooling is a bad thing!!!

I live in Utah. Every fourth kid is homeschooled. When their parents finally let them out in to the world, they don't know what to make of it. From what I've seen, the girls all become sluts. I don't mean your run-of-the-mill sluts either. I'm talkin' # anything with a cock sluts. The guys are usually head cases with black trench coats and a lot of pent up rage.

It's not good at all. When they get out in to society they have no idea how to interact with people. They haven't gained the experience that public school provides. When they get out in to the world, it's like letting a 4 year old drive, it ain't gonna work.

Go ahead though. They're your kids. When they get out in to the world and, you daughter gets the "clap" or something worse, I'll be here to say, "I told you so!"

Girls are sluts in public school too...

Those girls that are homeschooled obviously watch way too much tv.

I would not let my child watch that mind numbing garbage for one. For two, those parents haven't done their job, obviously by the sounds of them.

I know a few people in the niagara region that have gotten home schooled, and they are smarter, sensible, ethical, and still know how to have fun and be a kid.

But the difference is they care about themselves.


They really are great kids. Their parent's did a wonderful job.

Once they tried high school they went back home because they saw a bunch of zombie kids who do what they think they should do for acceptance.

At that age, that's what they want, acceptance and belonging. When you don't have any ethics to stand on you tend to fall down in the mud pit with the rest of them.

They are now in college and doing great.

I don't think it's bad.

goto www.doingfreedom.com its got alot of stuff about homescooling

Hey Mac, don't take this personally but I think you're a little up tight. You should want your daught to experience public school to get her ready for life. You will not always be there to shelter her from the vile rap music and the other children at school. Just be sure you are there for her when she needs you to be and even when she does not.

This is just my opinion.

Excuse spelling, i'm on the Spell check generation
__________________________________________________
I'm A 17 Year old attending Public school in Australia, your religious, thats peer pressure, or unintelligence. It amazes me how fearful parents are to let their children attend school. Fantastic if there intelligent and home schooled, I Attend school and I consider myself quite bright, Some of the kids arnt, but Ignorance is bliss, AND YOU CANT KNOCK THAT IF YOUR A CHRISTIAN, because you yourself are ignorant. If you parents spent time with your children after school, talked to them as adults, took intrest in their studies, THEY WOULD GET THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS, except now they lose their childhood, These are the best years, or so i've been told, just as your children will be told, and they'll wonder(because their so smart from home school) Did my parents rob me off this?

I've recently changed schools, and the new one is a much more control enviroment, HOLY CRAP! WHAT IS HE SAYING!? You heard me! I took myself out of a Class(Cisco CCNA) and enrolled myself in another(Philosophy Units 1&2). WITH OUT MY PARENTS PERMISSION......You Home schooling parents must be Furious!!! how dare i take control over my own life?!?! But its that kind of freedom That allows me to be the Happy Informed individual I am today....

Your kids will be clones, clones you can have all the control you like over.....you make me sick

Have you ever known of a 17 year old to have questioned Religion......ON HIS OWN MERITS?!?! I Was NOT introduced to it as a child! And that is what MUST be done for EVERY Child, forcing religion on ANYONE IS WRONG.

Teach your children to be Caring of others, you set the example, not some fictional tale of a man spreading the word.....perposturous.

excuse grammer and spelling, its late and i'm tired

Machine, I'm not sure where you live but if you have that type of stuff going on in your area you might want to move. The first key to your kids having a good public education is location. Just like the real world though they will be exposed to some adult things. It will happen sooner or later. At least when they are young you can give them impacting guidance so they have a better understanding of the world.

One of the things the public school defenders in this thread are using in their defense, is that children who are homeschooled won't know how to defend themselves in the real world. Although I've never had a child myself, let alone tried to educate one, I fail to see how a parent would not be able to teach their child about all the nasties that exist in the real world and how to deal with them. In fact, to me it seems like a child who is homeschooled would be more capable of resisting and staying away from the nasties of the real world.

We can think of our world as a spectrum of bad and good for our children. On the left side we have the real world with all it's proverbial sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, and on the right side we have all that is good and pure, in Machine's example that means homeschooling and a belief in God.

Now, where do we want to place our children on this spectrum? The argument of these public school defenders seems to be that since bad things exist, we should place our children towards that end of the spectrum so that they can experience it first hand and learn how to cope with it. What an unfortunate way of thinking! Shouldn't we strive in everything we do for our children to place them as far towards the good end of the spectrum as possible?

But it doesn't surprise me that these people think that way, because alas, that's part of the real world.

[edit on 19-6-2004 by Mountain Man]

Everything I learned about public school was from Pink Floyd, and therefore I consider it one big machine that only puts another brick in the wall.

We dont need not thought control.....

But on a serious note, Ive had a couple friends who transitioned from homeschooling to public school around middle school and they did quite well. They did have the academic edge over most of the student body, and we were still at the age where culture shock wasnt that bad. I believe it might be positive to let your child suceed under homeschooling until about 6th grade. I myself wont try this out but I understand the motiviations of those do. Sure a good number of home school parents might be nutbags, but its their right as parents to raise their children as they see fit within the boundaries of the law.

Side Note: I wish I lived in UTAH, sounds like quite the party palace NTH.

Originally posted by Mountain Man
One of the things the public school defenders in this thread are using in their defense, is that children who are homeschooled won't know how to defend themselves in the real world

A Nail hit squarely on the head, MM

The issue of homeschooling illuminates another pet peeve of mine:
When I was entering school, I lived as so many did in older days,
� family living above the workshop/store/service station/whatever.
It was only a scant few years before this was made virtually illegal.
Stores here, shops there, service businesses on the left, offices somewhere else.
Residential restriction zone fairly well sums it up.
Urban growth was remolded by those 'oh so wise' zoning commissions.

I grew up going downstairs to watch grandpa and grandma sell auto parts.
There, I hung around the gas pump and learned that skin color doesn't rub off.
Downstairs I listened to what happens when someone brings back goods that don't fit or work.
Tales of far away places told by strangers all day long filled my afternoons
I learned that English wasn't the only language people used.
All that has been locked away for most families ever since.
Work is where mommy and daddy disappear to for 10 hours a day.
That residence is so far isolated from the real world is a crime against society.
In places like Malaysia, Indonesia and other less developed countries,
� the 'residence over retail/service outlet' is still popular.
The children, disadvantaged in other ways, still get to see the outside world on their doorstep.
American children see the magic of the mall or the sterility of a residential compound,
� and this has erased an unrecognized pillar of American education.
Without this scenario, the only prudent way to homeschool is to spend a lot of time
� cruising for appropriate settings to teach your child about "the world".

Having spent time teaching, I can recognize in a few minutes whether a
� child is a 'latchkey couch potato', a neighborhood socialite, or home-taught.
Note that home-taught is not necessarily home-schooled.
Having parents who take time to teach makes a big difference to the child.
Not all parents can aford time for this, and this is another American tragedy.
A society that demands both parents work full time has set a time bomb.
Since this has been coming for nearly three decades,
� I would guess that American society should deteriorate appreciably quite soon.
It appears to me that a bitter harvest is approaching...

Homeschooling is the absolutely the best option in my judgement,
� but proper homeschooling means a lot of time learning outside the home.
X

Public school is designed to encourage parents to have their children mind controlled with religion and isolation.

Isn't the whole point of raising a child to turn out good adults?

Whats wrong with children spending most of their time with adults? I certainly don't want my children growing up to act 9 year olds, so what do they have to learn from 9 year olds? how to play dodge ball?

Watch children around adults and bigger children. Children will almost always want to be in the company of older children and adults, and have only a mild curriosity about those of the same age. They want to learn about the world around them, and that is not something they can get from their peers, who want the same thing.

The compulsory school system started in Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted, by an estimated 80% of the population (sometimes with guns). Barnstable, on Cape Cod, didn't surrender it's children untill the 1880s. The area had to be seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

So, did thousands of years of children grow up illiterate? Or have parents only been incapable of teaching their offspringfor the last 200 years? Truth is that literacy rates of white americans were actually HIGHER 200 years ago. Blacks in our society read better and had a higher median income in the 1960s and 70s than today. Hard to swallow, but do the reaserch. Tech. level is not a measure of how well the people of a certain time understood the language of their society. Do you think Shakespeare was lost on the people of his time, or that most of the people of his time could not read his works?

Horace Mann didn't start the compulsory school system to better teach children, but to "socialize" the mainly Catholic children of our immigrants, teaching them a secularized version of the protestant work ethic and to get rid of the Papist and proto-Bolshevik ideas they may have otherwise picked up at home.

Most of the above are the opinions of New York Teacher of the Year John Tayler Gatto (see dumbing us down), and not the ramblings of some new age hippie as someone suggested.

Don't send you children to the government mandated youth propeganda camps to learn the state sponsored religion of nature worship (enviornmentalism).

Originally posted by Machine
Greetings,

The silly season is upon us all, a time for joy, giving and love. A time to be shared with family and friends. For me however, it�s a time for combat of the interpersonal nature. My wife�s family just loves our public school system here in America and cannot understand why I chose to home school my daughter. Their favorite collective argument can be summed up in one sentence, �she will not be properly socialized at home, she needs to be in a public school.�

Drugs, sexual promiscuity, foul language, vile rap and rock music, undisciplined children, impotent teachers, chaotic learning environments, bullies, God free zones, and extreme violence.

You know, come to think of it, they are right, my daughter does indeed lack all of these social influences. I�ll go enroll her today!


Machine

[Edited on 2-12-2003 by Machine]

Damn! Were do you live? A village? Like somewhere in a small populated state in a small populated city? I go to school in Brooklyn, New York. BROOKLYN! Where all the famous mobsters, and mafias were born. My school is the most sfaest school i have EVER been to. No rap or rock (dont see anything wrong with rock though) no bullies, or violence. Im a not a fan of home school, and i think you should stop obssesing over protection over your daughter. Let her go to publice school where she can socialize normaly with children. If your going to try protect her from everything and hide whats going on today she'll be doing drugs by the time she is 15, and might get pregnant. She will want to try everything you've been keeping her from.

My school is the most sfaest school i have EVER been to.

The "most safest", huh?

Well, I certainly want my children to go to the same public schools you did.

May I ask a question? Is homeschooling from 4 years old to 12 or 4 years old to 18 years old? The first kind I don't have a real problem with. With the second kind I do have a problem. Not a moral problem, but an educational problem. I fail to see how parents or a single teacher can have enough education in the subjects you learn at school from 14 to 18. All my teachers have a university degree, some even have written their doctoral thesis, but they don't even know everything. I don't think parents or a single teacher can give the children the education needed for a good academic career.

It would be irresponsible of parents not to give their children the same educational chances (good) public education gives. This is why I have no problem with homeschooling from 4 to 12, given that the homeschooled children do sports and other things to meet other children (oh, Amantine, you crazy liberal), but I do have a problem with homeschooling from 12 to 18.

BTW, I have no experience of public schools being unsafe or being of a low educational or pedagogical quality. I have never felt unsafe on my school and the education is of a high level.

[edit on 29-6-2004 by amantine]

I'm new here; this subject caught my eye right away. I had to reply.

We made the decision to pull my 12 YO out of school after 2nd grade. My daughter, who is five, isn't in school and won't be anytime soon.

There were a lot of problems with this very "liberal" and popular school -- the advertising! The TV in the classroom! The consdescending attitude of the principal! The way my son was forced to learn things their way even if he already knew them HIS way! The there was the flap about the Pledge of Allegiance! Whole language vs phonics? Let's change it every year and confuse everyone, but especially the kids!! -- in my Big Ten college town. After a few years of it, we had all had enough. It wasn't liberal ENOUGH. There were never two sides to an issue, the kids weren't getting any history or literature with their math facts and reading groups, and the parents were treated like money donors, not people who knew their children and what was best for them.

My children socialize every day with people of all ages. We spend a couple hours a day working on basics and the rest out of the house, whether it be on errands, at the community garden, etc. The 5 YO interns at a cafe (and she really works!) we frequent and the 12 YO delivers newspapers. He just bought himself an iBook G4 with his earnings. He likes music and clothes but has learned the art of garage saleing and thrifting so that he can get the things he REALLY wants. He still has friends from school but also has friends in our homeschooling group. He travels frequently with his father (another benefit of not being married to a school's schedule) and with us (finances permitting). He's also a passionate believer in voting rights for teenagers. The 5 YO reads like a 9th grader, has learned simple HTML, and writes lengthy stories. Am I saying they're special and better than your kid?? Far from it. They're regular kids who've been given the chance to explore their interests on their own time, who have screwed up and learned from the consequences, who are being raised in an environment that encourages self-sufficiency. The school system is not interested in a critically-thinking, self-sufficient kid, believe me. Critically-thinking, self-sufficient parents cause enough trouble.

You do not have to be financially well-off to home educate. Trust me. It's not easy on one smallish income, but it's possible.

You also don't have to be a college grad or even a high school grad to teach your children -- rather, to help them teach themselves. We're lucky to live in this college town where there's a plethora of college kids/grad students all too thrilled to work with the kids in art, physics, math, or whatever, but with the internet and the advent of correspondence courses -- not to mention community colleges and even regular four year colleges accepting homeschooled students for credited coursework (without full time enrollment) -- this part of the discussion is irrelevant, IMO. There are scholarships and grants to fund these adventures -- the colleges in my area welcome home-educated kids with open arms.

Oh, and my kids are encouraged to "get away from me" and hang with their friends every day if they want, as long as they hit their marks for the day and do the chores they've signed on to do. The parks are empty even after school. Where are all the kids?

Homeschooling, for us, isn't about "sheltering" or even academic excellence (which I often find to be more about the parents than the kids). It's about teaching the kids to navigate a psychically dead mainstream culture under the safe umbrella, should they desire it, of their very culturally-aware parents. YMMV, of course, and I know the way we experience our family life wouldn't work for everyone and isn't the way it works for other families on the same journey.

Recommended reading:

And the Skylark Sings With Me by David Albert
www.johntaylorgatto.com
Teach Your Own by John Holt

[edit on 5-7-2004 by Madame Insane]

Originally posted by greenkoolaid
I do wonder how much socialization the kids get when they are homeschooled. This is an important time where kids learn to interact.

But I think that homeschooling can offer a good education to the kids if the parents are dedicated. However, I don't think that most parents are qualified to educate ther kids. After all, the average American reads at about a sixth grade level.

I think that before a child is allowed to be homeschooled the parent should have to take a test to see if they have the necessary knowledge and skills to homeschool their child.

I don't personally know anyone that reads at sixth grade level. In fact, most people I know read quite well, at least college level. I think your assertions are based on falsified information. Someone, somewhere, manipulated the data.

I homeschool all 3 of my children. My youngest had severe dyslexia. I gave her the phonics program on four separate occassions, bought her tinted sunglasses in various colors (a new treatment for dyslexia - color therapy), and still she couldn't read or write above the skill of a 4 year old. Finally, I introduced her to an online video game that required she read and type words alot. She eventually became an avid writer and reader. Today, she writes her own stories and illustrates them, can read entire series of books without a hitch and has a finely developing vocabulary, frequently outshining her brothers who had no learning disabilities. She's articulate, demonstrative, happy, well read and talented. The public school system simply could not dedicate that amount of time and patience with a single child.

Also, along with the curriculum the homeschool program provides, I sent them all to Karate for physical education, self-discipline, and socialization. They also attend church regularly, the oldest of which is actually a head usher, a third degree black belt in Goju Ryu Okinawan Karate, and a Sensei. He regularly flies to Israel to support the Jewish people and the nation, their commerce and trade. I enrolled my daughter in the japanese club at a local high school, and she occassionally attends anime conventions.

All 3 children supported me and took care of me at home when I was recovering from breast cancer. They assisted me in caring for my elderly mother who had advanced alzheimers and lived with us. She was bed-ridden, incontinent and had to have her diapers changed, bathed, the whole enchilada. They learned more at home about the important things in life than they ever could in a public school, which seems to focus on vacuous topics like fashion trends, fashionable drugs, and fashionable sex. Although those things might be a part of life, in the long run, they are about as important as toejam.

[edit on 5-7-2004 by Undomiel]