Homeschooling and Socialization
31st December 2010
Of course, anecdotes do not prove that a healthy socialization is not possible in a public school, and there are many success stories that establish the possibility. But the horror stories do seem to blunt the blanket criticisms of homeschooling. The real question that should be asked is not whether a child will be socialized but how the child will be socialized.
I have seen firsthand the sort of ‘socialization’ that goes on in American grade and high schools. Short of sending them to live with the Taliban, I can’t think of anything worse we could do to them. I am prepared to argue that our children are better off without it.
But maybe that’s just me.
It is, to be sure, efficient to divide children into age cohorts and to educate them as a group. Doing otherwise is virtually unimaginable and would require a return to something like the one room school house where children of various ages were educated together. When education is conducted on a large scale such an arrangement would be simply untenable. Yet, it seems almost unavoidable that educating children according to age cohort invariably socializes them to think of themselves as part of a certain group designated by age. That is, at best, a limited preparation for an adult world where one ought to be capable of dealing with people of a variety of ages.
Indeed. Welcome to the Industrial Age Factory School. You, child, are part of batch 1997-C. Wear it with pride; it will help if we need to do a recall later.