I bet it's not that hard to replace. There are opportunities for interactions outside of school. Sports teams are a common example.

There are many after school clubs that children can join to be exposed to other children.

If you only have one child I could see them having limited contact with children during their school day but often siblings provide lots of opportunities to learn how to get along with others.

Am I naive in thinking that the aggressive social dynamics of public school adds no value whatsoever to a child's or teenager's development?

Like, _why_ would anyone want to put their children through that? Is it _really_ integral to a person's social development to understand how to interact with bullies (worst case)?

I admit that I am rather nihilistic about public schooling, but I'm open to changing my mind.

I agree. Public school is not a great place for socialization, and it's not hard to create something better. Nothing socializes kids like sitting next to each other motionless in silence for several hours lol

My mom switched me from public to private school in elementary school. Without a doubt the quality of the private schools' facilities, teachers, staff, and education were much better then the public school. I ended being held back in the 3rd grade simply because I was so far behind my other classmates in terms of knowledge that was not stressed at the public school. Yes, private school can be expensive, but if you have the resources and can find a good school with a track record of success, I highly recommend enrolling your kids in a private school.

This. Whenever people ask about "socialization" WRT home-schooling, I always tell people that you never any social situation like you do in school -- where:

1) Everyone is exactly the same age 2) Nobody chose to be there 3) People have little chance to change their situation 4) There are very few consequences for poor behavior.

At your work, if someone is being a bully, then either management will fire them, or you can look for another job. At school, you have to almost murder somebody to actually be expelled, and most kids have very limited ability to change schools or classes if they're unhappy.

This is a very important point. Private schools can simple expell troublesome students. At the public school one of my kids goes to, there's a 10 year old who sometimes gets very agressive and lunges at teachers, punching and kicking. The teachers are female, and not much bigger than him. The school is the only one in this district (small town), they can't send him to another town unless transportation is provided for. If it was a private school, he would have been expelled on the first or second episode.

Maybe this is a shortcoming of our modern world outside of school, rather than a shortcoming of schools. I rather think it's a point in public school's favor that students attend the same classes, do the same work, and are judged according to the same standards as their peers regardless if their parents are well-off, middle-class, or poor. (That's the ideal, anyways. There are always exceptions.)

Having exposure to a wide swath of humanity at a young age is, I think, quite valuable. It's easier to hate people you've never met.

For what it's worth I've learned the opposite. Outside of a mass-incarceration type environment, people are mostly pretty OK. It took me way too long to work that out after I left school.

absolutely, agreed.

> saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty

I'll be honest: if you didn't grow up in a school like this, you don't understand how disruptive it is for a student to burst into the classroom in the middle of the teacher explaining something and go around high-fiving everyone in the classroom with the teacher powerless to stop them. This was not an infrequent occurrence.

By what criteria does it not work?

> Which non academic portions of high school? And what they're mentioning is not anecdots, it's how extra curricular activites works in other countries. You don't go to them through high school, they're independant associations focused on a sport, an instrument or something. Where you can also get your social interactions.

Other countries are setup differently than the USA. They have infrastructure for transporting children for example, infrastructure we do not necessarily have.

> You can have good social skills and not enjoy the company of other high schoolers. In that case forcing you to spend time with other high schoolers makes no sense at all. You're also free to walk away from most bad encounters later in your life, while you can't really walk away from bullying.

This is not true. You can be bullied at work. You could argue that you can switch jobs, but you can also switch schools. You can argue you can tell your manager, but you can also tell your teacher. In the end it's the same thing.

I don't think this is true. Take those same kids with poor social skills and home school them instead. They almost certainly wont have any better social skills. Meanwhile plenty of kids who did learn strong social skills by being around others in school would have worse social skills if you home schooled them.

I'm not saying regular schools get a 100 out of 100 on this. I'm saying they do a significantly better job at this than homeschooling does EVEN WHEN you add in measures like sports, group activities, ect that op mentioned doing.

Where I grew up there was a gang fight at the public school where one student stabbed another.

From your family/friend/neighborhood groups? Are you saying schools are where you go to meet people of similar interests? How can that be when schools are for everyone?

> Humans are social creatures

Humans are social creatures with in-group bias. Especially young kids. Schools are an unnatural system for humans. It's why kids universally don't like school. It's why you have to force, trick and brainwash them into liking school.

You might want to read up on the history of modern education system. They certainly weren't created to meet people with similar interests.

You have a point there. In regular school you are forced to be 'social' or risk punishment. I put 'social' in quotes because I think what is considered social is subjective and mostly made up. But watching how people are treating one another in this world I'm not sure if that social component is really working out good. Homeschooled kids are definitely not as slavishly as the 'socially' drilled kids from regular school.

Definitely not the case, and I wish this tired cliche would go away already.

My homeschooled sister is far more social than I am (I did the normal school thing), although we're both fine at it. Homeschoolers probably have a lot more realistic socialization opportunities, as it's all based around common interests and skill levels, just like the real world, rather than being packed together with a bunch of people whose only trait in common with you is their age.

You can't really make global assumptions like that. I know for a fact I would have preferred to play games and code in high school rather than go out to socialize, and hanging out with friends I made at school was the majority of my socialization until I was forced to keep in touch with them in college.

Not every kid is a social butterfly waiting to be let free.

The socialization from school is 100% not artificial. I can look back at many stupid things I did in middle and high school that taught me valuable life lessions and have concretely shaped how I think about things.

There are also private and magnet schools. You can end up spending most of your time in classes where the majority of students have a shot at Ivies.

The rebuttal to your point is so simple and obvious it's really hard to take you seriously. Socializing is a skill that can be practiced. If you have fewer opportunities to practice, you're less likely to get better. The children that are bad at socializing despite going to public school do not show that public school doesn't teach socializing, it means they didn't learn as much from their practice. For all you know, poorly-socialized public school children would have otherwise ended up living in their parents' basements until 45 or turned into serial killers if they were homeschooled. Public schooling doesn't need to guarantee good outcomes to be the more desirable choice.

This is not true, at least in our school. They interacted quite a lot. It is not like they would had 7 hours straight of learning and nothing else, there was quite a lot of literally dedicated playtime where teachers done only general supervision.