Home Schooling and Socialization
23rd February 2011
Finally, if you have teenagers or preteens, or if you are a teenager, open yourself to a new possibility. People say that the reason teenagers are so hard to get along with is that that stage “is part of growing up.” But, then, why don’t teenagers have the same problems when they work at a summer job or a part-time job during the school year? They are exposed to lots of people, often within a wide age range, but they aren’t treated cruelly, and they don’t treat others cruelly, nearly as frequently. Could their better attitude be the result of three facts: they are free to quit that job; the other people at the job typically want to be there; and there’s not as much time for cruelty when you’re trying to be productive? Teenagers treating other teenagers cruelly is part of growing up?when compulsory schooling is part of growing up.
Considering the ‘socialization’ I observed in elementary school and high school, I think that most children would be better off without it. After all, the term ‘schoolyard bully’ exists for a reason.
Thomas at Politics and Prosperity apparently has similar memories.
They remind me, too much, of the public schools of my own youth. I would have given anything to have been placed in an environment where the emphasis was on learning, not on suffering through hours, days, months, and years of classes with packs of pre-adolescent and adolescent animals.