I don't know, but I imagine that it would be easier to explicitly expose your kids to other cultures as a homeschooler - you can take a day off to visit some particular community center that has outreach programs without worrying about state attendance records.
But your point is well made - I don't know if that's the sort of thing most homeschooling parents work on.
Homeschool communities have all sorts of extra curriculars, the parents I know that homeschool have better socialized kids than the ones that do public school, anecdotally
I find it hard to imagine how a single family can offer the diversity of experiences present in a public school
Which is why my children meet children from many other families, and ADULTS from many other families, in their community activities. What they do in the outside world spans a much wider territory than the attendance area of our friendly local public schools, and exposes them to a lot of people who are of different ages besides just their own age plus or minus one year. (This is a general response that is true of most homeschooling families. More specifically about my own family, we have lived in two different countries since our oldest son was born, and he was all over the United States and even overseas for summer academic programs before he finished his secondary education.)
My only worry about that is that, while your kid may be interacting with a wider age group than at school, they may not be interacting with a wide demographic group. You won't be interacting with kids from tougher backgrounds, who don't have parents who are as involved as a homeschooled kid's parents would be. While I can imagine that might seem like a good thing, I think it is important for a kid to get a glimpse outside their own 'bubble', to have a better understanding of your broader community. When you are done with school, you ARE going to have to interact with people who weren't raised by very involved, homeschooling parents.
I don't think so. My wife was 'homeschooled'. Her mother didn't like some of her classes in public school so pulled her out of them, such that she wasn't spending the required amount of time in the public school. Thus, my mother registered her as a homeschooler, so my wife didn't need to be in the classroom.
Of course, the public schools here have to take your child if you drop them off.
My wife is well-socialized, extremely well-educated, and way better off than her peers, so it worked.
Unless the homeschooling parents went out of their way to isolate their child, it seems like the amount of interaction with people of various ethnicities, social strata, etc. is going to depend more on the community than whether a child is homeschooled. There are plenty of public schools with very little diversity.
It seems like it's easier (or more efficient) to outsource education than socialization. Summer is a great time for additional education beyond the classroom.
Then again, research suggests that homeschooling doesn't have an adverse socialization impact [1]...
I'm not a parent, but I did know of some homeschooled kids growing up. Honest question; where do these kids get to socialize without their parents present for long lengths of time now?
While I'd err on the side of caution toward the benefits of homeschooling, I can also see how homeschooling might have some downsides. Perhaps a big difference for me is that my homeschooling was of the Third Culture Kid (TCK) variety, where quite likely the negatives of homeschooling were balanced out by (often) rather extreme interaction with wildly different people and cultures.
That said, you've been all over this thread arguing this point. And it seems reasonable in a common-sense sort of way. However, the counter-points also make sense to me (and are closer to my personal experience).
Could you point me to research, or better explain why you seem to feel so strongly about this point? It seems to be more than a hunch or a common-sense thing for you from the way you're arguing the point, and I'd really like to know what the basis is for that.
EDIT: Let me add that I have no strong opinion about this particular argument. I consider the damage done by public schooling to vastly outweigh the negatives, social or otherwise, so even if the negatives are significant, I'd probably homeschool my kids if I had to choose.
I think in coming decades, homeschool might be the more sought after education for families that are able to afford it (which will be sad for public schools). It makes sense to allow kids more leeway in what they study and apply, especially with how available knowledge is on the internet (eg. Khan Academy and Wikipedia). Literally just playing Wikipedia races to get from one topic to another is probably more productive than some history or science classes.
I do wonder though how you managed to get enough socialization time with other people. Scheduling that seems like a massive pain unless there are also a lot of other families homeschooling nearby and in the same age group.
We'd consider private if we could afford it, but it's fuggin expensive, and with two kids it's out of the question.
Interestingly, as home schoolers we're allowed to purchase tickets to local educational events (plays etc.) at the same price as local schools. So if there's a special showing of a play at noon for school kids, we can buy the discounted tickets and go to it. For sports etc., I believe that technically our local schools are obligated to allow our children to join their extracurricular groups, such as sports. As for field trips, that would be nice to be able to go with the private school, but frankly that's the least of my worries. If there's one thing homeschooling (at least how we do it) does better than any other model, it's field trips! :)
I am tempted to homeschool my kid for a number of reasons, but I also really want him to socialize with other kids in school. Does anyone have experience with being homeschooled for half-days, or something along those lines?
Why couldn't you travel and take your family with you?
Edit: I was homeschooled my whole life (grad 2005) and homeschooling via Khan Academy and other online education sites seems like it would be especially effective. Exposure to tons of cultures at a young age seems like it would be awesome.
Yes. A friend was homeschooling her kids in the US, and then her husband got an assignment in Germany for about a year. She took the kids and joined her husband in Germany for a few months. The rules were all different, and much stricter in Germany. I remember she was thinking of trying to continue to home school there, and keep her kids inside during school hours, and try to slide under the radar. I don't remember if she got away with it or not.
That's interesting to hear, as someone living in a different country I always assume that the reason to homeschool is so you could give your children better education.
Yep, don't read too much into the point I made; I think it is entirely consistent with this comment that the experiences are different.
I do know homeschooling families, of the secular socialization-friendly kind you did / are doing, and I think it's just empirically the case that it is not as easy for them to find things to do with other kids, during school days, as it is for the much larger number of kids I know who are in schools.
That doesn't mean it's bad (or that it's good) to have fewer opportunities to do things with other kids during school days, just that "most kids are in school during school days" is a real constraint on the ability to do things with other kids at those times.
But getting out of pure observation and into my own ... uncertainties, this is a significant reason I'm personally hesitant to homeschool, at least if I were to be the parent actively doing it.
Frankly, even with the school day and all the many structured activities with other kids that she's doing, the older my daughter gets (and she's only 6), the more I feel like she spends a lot of time with us boring old fogies, when she would be happier running around and playing make believe and stuff with other kids. I'm sure a big part of that is a personal problem, that we have boring un-kid-like personalities, and not nearly enough imagination and spark of creativity. But like, I am who I am! I like books and chess and computers and charts and numbers and stuff. I love being with my kids, but it would be a massive self-deception to think spending all day with me is going to be awesome for them.
So then, I start thinking about: What would we do? Where could we go, what adventures could we go on, who could we go on them with? And I just come up pretty blank. There are only so many museums and parks and stuff. Best case scenario seems to me that I would find a community of people trying to figure out the same thing, and we could do things together. Maybe I just don't know about them! But I spend a pretty sizable amount of time in all the public spaces in my area, often during school days (because kids are sick and have to stay home a lot), and my distinct impression is that there's nobody around.
Maybe they're all getting together, just in peoples' private homes. But I know the families with kids in my neighborhood and the ones surrounding it, and they're all in school, so if this is a thing, I don't think it's nearby.
Note that I'm saying these are all personal concerns, and they are about me, not about the kids. I don't think the standard school model is at all close to my idyll of what my kids would do with their days, but I think it's a bit closer to that than me trying to figure out stuff to do all day and driving all around trying to find engaging activities during the day, maybe with some other kids sometimes. I'm sure this looks totally different to other people with different personalities in different places.
Homeschooling is, to a first approximation, the most individualistic approach to a child's education possible.
If your goal is to instill values of mutual cooperation, a sense of obligation, etc. in a pluralistic society, I'd think that you'd want to send them to a public school in a large city. That's what the last ~200 years of American immigrants and children of immigrants have more or less done.
Ask most homeschooling American parents (which is becoming a big thing now) and they will not answer that. Many are since the school system is lacking (and fighting it takes as long as the child's education if not longer). Others are due to the child needing specialized care that the system does not/cannot provide, examples being that the student had ADD/ADHD, on the autism spectrum, is gifted and bored but the school has no advanced options. There are many online/mail schooling options that help parents with topics, but also open the parent to create their own lessons (going to museums, go to a hacker/maker group, travel etc) that might be more hands on. There are also many homeschool groups where parents rotate teaching and opens up for 'socialization' (for those that worry about that issue). I'm not disagreeing that there are groups that are extreme, there will always be, but assuming that the majority are extreme and want to 'indoctrinate' with 'weird' beliefs is rather uninformed.
Very often homeschool families collaborate to provide social activities. Or they put their kids in community sports programs or other group activities. Homeshooling doesn't mean the kids never leave the house.
But your point is well made - I don't know if that's the sort of thing most homeschooling parents work on.
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