I don’t think homeschooling is good for a child’s development. All current or former homeschooled kids who I know reasonably well seem to have stunted social development and had trouble connecting with their peers. (And I know a lot of these people, relatively speaking.)
School isn’t just about learning your ABCs, it’s also about learning how to socialize with your peers through constant exposure and practice. You can try to put a homeschooled kid in sports or whatever, but they almost never spend the same amount of time with their peers as a normal kid would. And once that developmental window is over, it’s very hard to compensate for that loss. It’s like trying to learn Vietnamese as an adult. Sure you might be able to hold a conversation, but you’ll never get the subtly of the tones or accent entirely correct. The only path to true fluency is learning as a child.
I’ve also seen some homeschool kids struggle with holding down a job or going to university. Some parents might take issue with how schools operate, seeing them as overly disciplined and structured, because apparently that stamps the creativity out of a kid or something. And maybe there is some truth to these criticisms. But that’s not just a criticism of our school system, it’s a critique of society at large. If you’re going to have a super losy-goosey attitude towards deadlines and discipline when you homeschool your kid, then your kid is going to grow up never learning how to meet a deadline, never learning how to motivate themselves to do something when they don’t want to do it, and they will be unable to function in a workplace and a university. So some of these perceived downsides of schools (discipline, deadlines, test stress etc) are really just preparation for the world at large. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows out there. Your kid is going to have to learn how to handle these things eventually, and if they don’t learn young then the learning curve may be too steep for them to realistically handle.
That said, this issue about discipline doesn’t apply in every case of homeschooling. But the issue with socializing impacts 99.99% of homeschooled kids in my estimation, though. Even parents who think they are compensating for this with sports and things never are, in my experience (and Ive met a lot of these kids / families).
So please, for the love of god, DO NOT HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS.
Its possible that theres some of that. But it seems unlikely to me that thats the main thing going on. For two reasons.
One is that these kids tend to cluster in families. I can understand a family having one kid that doesn’t fit in, but for every kid in that family to not fit in? That seems a bit unusual.
The second reason is that people tend to start homeschooling young, like kindergarten (it is much more common for families to start it when the kid is very young then give it up as the kid gets older than the other way around). And I think at that age it would be really hard to tell if a kid fits in or not, so I don’t think that would be the primary reason why parents are deciding to not put their kids in school.
I don’t think homeschooling is good for a child’s development. All current or former homeschooled kids who I know reasonably well seem to have stunted social development and had trouble connecting with their peers. (And I know a lot of these people, relatively speaking.)
School isn’t just about learning your ABCs, it’s also about learning how to socialize with your peers through constant exposure and practice. You can try to put a homeschooled kid in sports or whatever, but they almost never spend the same amount of time with their peers as a normal kid would. And once that developmental window is over, it’s very hard to compensate for that loss. It’s like trying to learn Vietnamese as an adult. Sure you might be able to hold a conversation, but you’ll never get the subtly of the tones or accent entirely correct. The only path to true fluency is learning as a child.
I’ve also seen some homeschool kids struggle with holding down a job or going to university. Some parents might take issue with how schools operate, seeing them as overly disciplined and structured, because apparently that stamps the creativity out of a kid or something. And maybe there is some truth to these criticisms. But that’s not just a criticism of our school system, it’s a critique of society at large. If you’re going to have a super losy-goosey attitude towards deadlines and discipline when you homeschool your kid, then your kid is going to grow up never learning how to meet a deadline, never learning how to motivate themselves to do something when they don’t want to do it, and they will be unable to function in a workplace and a university. So some of these perceived downsides of schools (discipline, deadlines, test stress etc) are really just preparation for the world at large. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows out there. Your kid is going to have to learn how to handle these things eventually, and if they don’t learn young then the learning curve may be too steep for them to realistically handle.
That said, this issue about discipline doesn’t apply in every case of homeschooling. But the issue with socializing impacts 99.99% of homeschooled kids in my estimation, though. Even parents who think they are compensating for this with sports and things never are, in my experience (and Ive met a lot of these kids / families).
So please, for the love of god, DO NOT HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS.
There may be some selection bias going on here. What if kids who already don’t fit into society easily are the ones being homeschooled?
There’s enough data from COVID that shows pulling students out of school creates students with less social ability than those physically in school.
Its possible that theres some of that. But it seems unlikely to me that thats the main thing going on. For two reasons.
One is that these kids tend to cluster in families. I can understand a family having one kid that doesn’t fit in, but for every kid in that family to not fit in? That seems a bit unusual.
The second reason is that people tend to start homeschooling young, like kindergarten (it is much more common for families to start it when the kid is very young then give it up as the kid gets older than the other way around). And I think at that age it would be really hard to tell if a kid fits in or not, so I don’t think that would be the primary reason why parents are deciding to not put their kids in school.