“Socialization” needs to be broken down a bit more, I suspect.
The trouble is that school-related socialization is very different from adult socialization. When you’re locked in a box with other people for eight hours a day, you get to know them and make friends for geographic reasons.
Adults don’t have that opportunity, though, and do have many other opportunities. Approaching someone because the teacher assigned you to do a group project together is different from approaching an attractive person at a bar.
It seems to me that homeschooling is better at teaching adult-style socialization (finding places where friends are likely, and then making friends there), which is way more useful than school-style socialization. But homeschooling typically doesn’t include the sheer amount of socialization that school does, instead filling it with things are educational or fun. Which… seems like an acceptable tradeoff, to me.
I wish I could find some science on the subject, but all I can find with some cursory googling is one study with a 30-child sample size, and a bunch of angry homeschooling parents defending themselves against the accusation. I will simply say that, in my experience, I have not observed your predictions to be accurate.
There’s a LOT of low-level socialization stuff that you mostly pick up by peer immersion (even near-neurological stuff like reading facial expressions). And then there’s the confidence factor. It’s easier to go into adulthood talking to people your own age if you’ve been talking to dozens or hundreds of people your own age every day your whole life. If you haven’t, you’re missing numerous social cues, and a good deal of confidence.
I mean, I came out relatively normal, minus some initial awkwardness—but what you hear, frequently, is ’Oh, you’re homeschooled? And you talk?” Which is not a particularly good sign.
So, a big part of the trouble with science on this subject is the selection effects. Parents have to choose to homeschool their kids, or put their kids in Montessori schools, or so on.
Another issue is that, well, social troubles are everywhere. I know lots of people whose social lives collapsed after college, because they don’t know how to maneuver socially as an adult.
So there are two cores that I’m confident in, with no commentary on how successfully they’re approached in the real world:
Prussian-style schools socialize students in the way they were designed- to be soldiers who form bonds with people they need to form bonds with and to respect authority.
Deliberate socialization of modern adults should reflect the lives of modern adults- which include frequent moves to new locations, access to the Internet, and specialization of taste. Social skills should be treated as skills, which take instruction and practice just like other skills like math.
“Socialization” needs to be broken down a bit more, I suspect.
The trouble is that school-related socialization is very different from adult socialization. When you’re locked in a box with other people for eight hours a day, you get to know them and make friends for geographic reasons.
Adults don’t have that opportunity, though, and do have many other opportunities. Approaching someone because the teacher assigned you to do a group project together is different from approaching an attractive person at a bar.
It seems to me that homeschooling is better at teaching adult-style socialization (finding places where friends are likely, and then making friends there), which is way more useful than school-style socialization. But homeschooling typically doesn’t include the sheer amount of socialization that school does, instead filling it with things are educational or fun. Which… seems like an acceptable tradeoff, to me.
I wish I could find some science on the subject, but all I can find with some cursory googling is one study with a 30-child sample size, and a bunch of angry homeschooling parents defending themselves against the accusation. I will simply say that, in my experience, I have not observed your predictions to be accurate.
There’s a LOT of low-level socialization stuff that you mostly pick up by peer immersion (even near-neurological stuff like reading facial expressions). And then there’s the confidence factor. It’s easier to go into adulthood talking to people your own age if you’ve been talking to dozens or hundreds of people your own age every day your whole life. If you haven’t, you’re missing numerous social cues, and a good deal of confidence.
I mean, I came out relatively normal, minus some initial awkwardness—but what you hear, frequently, is ’Oh, you’re homeschooled? And you talk?” Which is not a particularly good sign.
So, a big part of the trouble with science on this subject is the selection effects. Parents have to choose to homeschool their kids, or put their kids in Montessori schools, or so on.
Another issue is that, well, social troubles are everywhere. I know lots of people whose social lives collapsed after college, because they don’t know how to maneuver socially as an adult.
So there are two cores that I’m confident in, with no commentary on how successfully they’re approached in the real world:
Prussian-style schools socialize students in the way they were designed- to be soldiers who form bonds with people they need to form bonds with and to respect authority.
Deliberate socialization of modern adults should reflect the lives of modern adults- which include frequent moves to new locations, access to the Internet, and specialization of taste. Social skills should be treated as skills, which take instruction and practice just like other skills like math.