Rod Dreher

GM foods might be dangerous after all

Those poor unsocialized homeschoolers

By Rod Dreher • January 10, 2012, 3:09 PM

I’ve been out all day doing some journalism, and just got home. “I have news for you,” said my wife. “Our son got a job.”

Matthew, who is 12, landed an unpaid job as a volunteer at a place in town. He told us a couple of weeks ago he’d be interested in volunteering there. Well, said his mother, go talk to the folks who run it and see if they’ll have you. He did, was hired today, and is working there now. He did this all on his own, of his own initiative, with no help from his parents.

The other day, Julie was shopping in a store around town. When they found out that she was Matthew’s mom, the clerks told her how polite he is when he comes in the store — how he looks the adults in the eye when he talks to them, and engages them in actual conversation. Of course parents love to hear that sort of thing about their children. We told Matt how proud we were of him for his good manners and maturity.

I’m bringing this up here not to brag on my kid, but to point out an example of how the whole “they won’t be socialized” argument against homeschooling is such a canard, at least in our experience.

63 Responses to Those poor unsocialized homeschoolers

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Tom S says:

January 11, 2012 at 11:15 am

Doesn’t it come down to the quality and fitness of homeschool parents to teach their children, as well as their reasons for doing so?

Well-educated and involved parents who know their children, and believe that they will not benefit–or have not benefitted–from their local schools, will most likely do a good job of educating their kids.

Poorly-educated parents, who keep their kids out of local schools for fear that they will be exposed to people not of their own kind, “socialism,” or “authoritarianism” according to something they read or were told, most likely will not do well by their children.
Peter B. Nelson says:

January 11, 2012 at 11:31 am

Ken, I’d like to correlate your two separate comments…

Earlier you gave an anectdote, “My wife’s a teacher. She tells me that when homeschooled kids transition into the public school system, they (and their parents) believe that they have superior education — but the tests don’t usually bear that out.”

Later you posited a theorem, “The parents that screw up the homeschooling usually realize it by middle school and put the kids back into school.”

I think your theorem neatly explains your anectdote: if most of the home schooled kids your wife sees are the ones whose parents admit failure, then naturally she experiences home schooled kids as something of a failure.

Now for my own two cents: Home schooling parents almost always have the option to send their kids to Government schools, but Government schooling parents usually don’t have any alternative (lacking credentials or finances or disposition). In other words, only a minority of parents who send their children to Government schools can honestly claim they evaluated the academic and social possibilities and chose accordingly – the majority of them simply had no choice. When evaluating the opinions of a minority who chose “X” versus a majority who had no choice, the choosers can seem enthusiastic but defensive, and the settlers can seem triumphalist or complacent but defensive. Not a recipe for detente. In this I see a fine similarity to the old Public versus Parochial debate; and those two camps have been feuding for a century.

On a personal note, how can all this not be especially painful for teachers who are mothers? On the one hand, they’re obviously qualified to home school their own kids, and like most mothers a part of them hates even imagining sending their kids off to be raised by strangers. On the other hand, they’re unable or unwilling to forego their income, while a natural loyalty to their profession demands skepticism of rivals. Personally and professionally they are profoundly vested in this conflicted issue – cue strong emotions. Good luck, my friend.
David J. White says:

January 11, 2012 at 12:27 pm

But for some reason, I could never communicate with my peers like I could with adults.

I had the same problem, and I wasn’t home-schooled (I went to Catholic elementary and high school, and then a public university). Part of the problem in my case was being introverted, but part of it was that I was never very interested in sports. The social pecking order in school always seemed to be dominated by sports, so I was pretty much left out from the get-go. I was also picked on because I wasn’t good at sports, and for the usual reasons (chubby, glasses, teachers liked me, etc.). I thus chose to focus on areas where I excelled (academics, particularly) rather than try to compete with the kids who were giving me a hard time, on their turf (sports). I did a lot more socializing outside of school with groups of friends and with the Boy Scouts, and in activities such as drama, than I did with the kids with whom I happened to go to school.

But I as a young child, I always got along much better with my parents and their friends, than with other kids my age. I took more of an interest in things that interested adults than in things that interested my peers. I enjoyed the company of adults much more than the company of kids my own age. My musical tastes, for example, were formed much more by my parents than by my peers. I often joke that I didn’t rebel against my parents, but against my peer group.

I think that in my case, my experience of being in school — and, to a great extent, being accepted by teachers and other adults more than by my peer group — is actually what led me to avoid socializing with my peers any more than I had to.

To this day, I find that I relate much better to people markedly older or younger than I am (e.g., people of my parents’ generation, or my students) than to people within a few years of my own age. I simply don’t have that much in common with them, other than the mere fact of age.

So, sending kids to school is no guarantee that they will learn to socialize with their peers, or want to.
Todd Flowerday says:

January 11, 2012 at 12:41 pm

Depends on the parents, certainly.

We have close friends who homeschool and their kids were surprised at getting to know my daughter, who is not. Their assessment was that she was “nice” and “normal.” My assessment of these kids is that they interact well with me, and with other adults I see.

As an only child, I observe my daughter is comfortable around adults. There are occasional awkward moments with peers.

You ask me if it’s important for a kid to fit in with adolescent cliques, and given my own memories of high school, I’d probably say, “Heck, no.”

On the other hand, I think when people expect to be criticized in any way, it usually happens. So maybe its the HS parents who have more of an issue with socialization than their kids.
Erin Manning says:

January 11, 2012 at 12:44 pm

The thing is, Mike, there are plenty of homeschooling moms who were popular and loved school, too–but I bet they don’t make up a huge part of this blog’s audience, some of them because they do the ‘mommy blog’ thing, others because they don’t read blogs at all (no time, not dislike of blogs or anything) and so on. Among my circle of relatives, friends and acquaintances who homeschool I know homeschooling moms who loved school. The only differences I can see are twofold: one, they work harder to create a “school at home” environment, complete with decorated classroom and lots of structured craft/music/etc. time along with the ordinary academic subjects, and two, they love to get their kids involved in tons of outside activities, including things that mimic student government or ‘prom’ or other things we usually associate only with regular school.

What I like about homeschooling is that there’s no one right way to do it (though, yes, there are wrong ways, including the ways that end up with kids who can’t read at 12 or something). Parent A may have her kids in three different organized sports because she loves athletics and her children have learned to love them too, while Parent B may incorporate the President’s Fitness Challenge into the curriculum and make sure the kids have plenty of unstructured outdoor play time–and whichever works best for each family is the best; there’s no pressure either way. Then, when a child in family A says, “I really don’t want to play soccer and basketball anymore–is it okay if I just do baseball?” and a child in family B says, “I love just playing outside, but can I sign up for baseball?” the two children will meet and learn that even as homeschoolers their families are different in positive ways.

The bottom line for me is that schools don’t have the ability to be this flexible for each child, because you can’t have an institutional approach that can allow for such custom tailoring. So the child who excels in sports gets one tiny window of each day to enjoy them, and the child who dreads P.E. has to live through an hour of volleyball even though she’s the shortest kid in the class and will–will–be smashed in the face with the ball at least once each class period, and there’s just no way to adjust for these sorts of things.
Dave D. says:

January 11, 2012 at 1:00 pm

It’s not socializing to expect a kid to be a perfect little adult. How many friends his own age does he have? And I mean friends, not carefully selected play dates. Is he alone a lot when not doing parent-driven activities or work? Does he do things normal kids do, like listen to music, watch movies that are current? Does he relax around people that aren’t adult?

I used to be a kid that related well to adults too, and believe me socialization is a lot more vital than you think. Otherwise you’ve just made a kid who is totally cut off from his generation, and when he rebels against his parent’s value system, he will be utterly adrift.
Alan Jacobs says:

January 11, 2012 at 2:14 pm

I’m sort of puzzled by Ken’s remark that “caring parents” mess up the numbers. Well, exactly: that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? That “caring parents” educate their children thoroughly and responsibly, thus enabling them to do better academically, as every available study shows. I think that in trying to disagree with my point you just ended up confirming it!

And if you’ve seen about twenty homeschooled kids “up close,” I’ve seen several hundred considerably closer. If I let you talk to a hundred of my students, fifty of whom were homeschooled, and asked you to guess which ones were and which ones weren’t, do you think you’d be able to? I doubt you could beat “random.” I know I couldn’t. I know it because I’ve been around so many of them for so long, and how much they resemble other students — just a little better academically prepared.

The variation in individual kids’ personalities is way, way greater than the variation based on the single factor of whether a kid was homeschooled or not. There’s no need to get so hung up on that one factor.

It’s always so strange to me to read these comments that assume that homeschooled kids are like Martians or something — that they have no friends, that they know nothing about popular culture, and so on. These assumptions are completely disconnected from the reality, as anyone who has spent a lot of time around homeschooled kids will know.

What a weird hot-button issue for people!
MIke says:

January 11, 2012 at 3:05 pm

Erin, what’s striking about your comment is how much seems to be about mom and the parents, not the kids. It’s what mom wants and what mom needs and what mom likes, not what the children need, want, or like.

My comment about socially awkward people deciding to homeschool underscores my sense there is a bit of projection. I felt awkward as a kid–who didn’t–and therefore my child must feel awkward and therefore I will protect my child from the system that I didn’t like. It’s a lot of projection. It’s interesting how much homeschoolers talk about their own experiences (I was awkward, I got along with adults not peers, I was picked on) to explain their decision to homeschool children, who all appear to be perfectly normal and well-adjusted children.

Even your own comments about other moms seems to reflect a certain peer anger and resentment, talking about the “popular” moms and how they set up school and read their mommie blogs. It’s just interesting.
David J. White says:

January 11, 2012 at 3:20 pm

I used to be a kid that related well to adults too, and believe me socialization is a lot more vital than you think. Otherwise you’ve just made a kid who is totally cut off from his generation, and when he rebels against his parent’s value system, he will be utterly adrift.

Dave, it sounds like you and I were a lot alike as kids. I guess the difference is that I never really rebelled against my parents’ value system; rather, I essentially rebelled against my peer group. I looked at them and I looked at my parents, and I chose my parents. If that makes me weird, so be it. I never listened to music that was current (in my defense, the music that was current when I was in high school was disco; so, blech) or saw that many current movies (other than Star Wars). I do feel “cut off from my generation” in many ways — but I’ve never particularly cared, because I’ve never found much in particular to like or admire or interest me about my generation. And, since I’ve been out of school, it hasn’t really mattered. As I mentioned in my previous post, I still don’t have much in common with people who are in my age cohort, other than age, but I really don’t care.

Going through life grouped in yearly “age-cohorts” is one of the most artificial things about school, anyway. After about the age of 25, one stops thinking like that — categorizing people in “grades” based on chronological age — and other adults are just other adults, regardless of their actual ages. I like classical music and swing, not the music that was “current” when I was in school — and I talk about it with other fans of that music, regardless of their age. I love old movies, not necessarily movies that were “current” when I was in school — and, again, I talk about them with other fans of old movies, regardless of their age.

I have always preferred to associate with people with whom I have common interests and values, regardless of their age, than with people who happen to be my age but with whom age is the only thing we have in common. I don’t feel like I’ve ever really missed out on anything important.
David J. White says:

January 11, 2012 at 3:22 pm

PS — If I had been home schooled, I might well have reached a point where I rebelled against my parents and wondered what I was missing by not socializing with my peers. I think that, in my case, it was, paradoxically, the daily enforced exposure to my peers in school that made me reject them and choose my parents.
Joanna says:

January 11, 2012 at 3:50 pm

@ Tom S.

my Father was a high school drop out, had a learning disability, and would likely have been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome if born in the more recent times.

My mom, dropped out of technical school when she married my father and has the most basic of mathematics skills.

After I completed the 8th grade curriculum, they handed me the box of books and supplies for my high school curriculum and told me “This is your responsibility don’t mess it up”. I graduated from high school at the age of 16 while running a small business. The only tutoring I got was from a 5 nations shaman on indexations cultures. My only regret was we didn’t have the inter net back then although it does seem to get clogged with LOLcats from time to time.

The academic qualifications of parents/ guardians/ friends does not matter though the stern looks probably did.
Erin Manning says:

January 11, 2012 at 5:40 pm

Mike, let me clarify: I didn’t choose to homeschool my kids to keep them from experiencing the negative things I experienced in school. I chose to homeschool my kids because having experienced both “regular” school and homeschooling, there was no question in my mind that for those who can do it (and for those kids who thrive in it) homeschooling is the better path. It is, if you will forgive my putting it this way, closer to being like the organic and natural way human beings teach their young than institutional schooling could ever be. Recall that even *after* formal schooling became accessible to the masses, we still had schools where very small and mixed age groups learned together, hours were comparatively short, and yet the academic standards were arguably higher than they are now. The segregated-by-age, professional institutional education system designed to produce happy factory (and now, corporate/”knowledge”) workers is a relatively recent innovation in human history, and I think the jury is still out as to whether it truly outpaces what it replaced.

If one of my three daughters had seriously, truly, hated being taught at home and done poorly academically and otherwise regardless of my efforts, I would have considered school for that daughter. But, in fact, they have all done well at home.

I find it interesting that you seem to be psychoanalyzing me! Really, my only point in commenting about the popular moms was to reject the idea that only the nerds and loners homeschool. Hey, my husband is a former cheerleader. (True!) In other words, to be absolutely clear: there are moms out there homeschooling who were Homecoming Queens and student government leaders–they’re just not as drawn to Rod’s blog as we nerds and loners are (kidding, Rod–kidding. Sort of).

And as to the education reflecting the needs/desires of the mom: well, duh (if you’ll forgive the momentary lapse into common parlance). Moms who send their kids to public school are also choosing public school for them. Moms who send their children to private school are choosing that for them. Moms who sign their kids up for every activity under the sun, etc. Sure, dads get involved, too, but I’d guess that the needs and desires of moms carry a lot of weight when we’re talking about educating kids–naturally, when you think about it.

I mean, if you met a child who told you, “I hate school and would really, really like to be homeschooled, but my mom would have to quit her job to do it and even though she doesn’t have to work, she doesn’t want to quit and teach me at home,” would your sympathies lie with the child’s needs and desires, or the mom’s?
Dave D, says:

January 11, 2012 at 8:53 pm

Alan, if a parent is willing to control a child’s education enough to withdraw them from their peer group and educate them at home for most of their young lives, it feels to me they’d be just as willing to control their cultural intake and the friends they encounter. A lot of the arguments here seem to make that one of the pluses of homeschooling, you can isolate kids from those public school barbarians and their influences.

David, no, there still are many differences. Even as adults our generational experiences define us to a surprising degree. There’s a big difference between someone who likes swing because they downloaded mp3s of it from torrents and dig the whole dead retro vibe, and someone who likes swing because they were part of the swing kids revival in the 90s, and grew up listening to big bad voodoo daddy, or squirrel nut zippers. And gathered together, and actually danced to it.

If we both never attended public school, we both would have turned out worse. You would not have rebelled against your parents, your isolation would just intensify, as mine would have. There’s a difference between disliking people because they beat you up in high school, and seeing other people your own age as this weird alien thing you don’t have the tools to relate to.