Dawn of the Geeks

In Part 1 I brought up what a “licensed” teacher is actually taught and why it has little relevance to a parent who homeschool’s their child. Unless you’re the type of parent who likes to ignore their child you’re going to be learning how to teach them long before they’re school age. What a professional teacher learns is largely how to deal with other people’s children in large amounts. A parent just needs to know how to teach their own child which comes from experience and maybe a few books from the library should you feel so inclined.

This distinction also applies to the child. In a public school the child has to learn how to deal with other people’s children in large amounts while at home they only have to learn how to deal with carefully picked friends or their siblings.

Public school advocates always bring up the social retardation of the homeschooled child when trying to convince parents they should subject their child to other people’s little monsters.

It has been known for a long time that students perform better when they are not under a lot of non-school related stress. If a child doesn’t have to worry about being picked on or beat up they’ll perform much better. Only when the school life is better than home life will the school be a better learning environment. Most of the time it’s not. And when the homelife isn’t good the parents aren’t going to be available to homeschool so public school is the only option anyway.

So homeschool avoids one of the biggest disrupters to a child’s eduction: bullies.

The main social interaction in public school occurs during lunch when the students sit with their friends, during class when working in groups and when playing sports in PE.

The homeschooled child may miss out on an hour of social time during lunch but they can play with friends after school just like public school kids. Group work doesn’t tend to exist in the public school sense when being homeschooled. However group work in public schools serves the purpose of having students help each other since the teacher is unable to provide that service effectively to all students. When homeschooled, the student gets one on one “group work” all the time with the parent. It’s a learning tool, not a socializing tool. The classroom is typically not a time for socializing. Most class periods go by without two students talking to each other.

So in some ways the social experience is limited in the learning environment for the homeschooled student. However most of the social experience comes outside the classroom. It comes from team sports and other extra curricular activities. Things that the homeschooled student has every right to participate in. A homeschooled student also has time to join sports programs outside of public school such as karate or dance. Public school kids have to take additional time out of their day to do such things while a homeschooled student can make it part of their schooling time.

The homeschooled student can be socialized just as much as a public school child but without having to deal so much with the obnoxious kids.

One of the mistakes that people make is thinking that you need to learn how to deal with bullies. Having a backbone doesn’t come from dealing with bullies. It comes from self confidence. And that comes from being well educated and sure of your capabilities. Once you get out of grade school and into high school, bullies tend to go away. By college they’re virtually non-existant. In the real world bullies get fired. So why subject your kid to them when they aren’t part of the real world experience?

By the time your child gets to college there’s little difference socially between homeschooled kids and public school kids.