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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Sure. We homeschooled our kids. When we worried about socialization, we grabbed them, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat them up for their lunch money.

I'm kidding, and I stole that, but I have a point. Much of "socialization" in school is horrible. It's not quite as bad as socialization into prison, but it's socialization into a society that's rather broken. Why do we assume that socializing into that is going to produce healthy adults?

Me, I wasn't homeschooled. I attended a private school until fifth grade, and then public school. I... um... wasn't all that well socialized by the process.

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I’d argue there’s a difference between socializing and being bullied - the former is just more general exposure to social interaction. I suspect the more you get of that the better, I also suspect you need it from peers too (adults are not the same).

There’s also some value in learning to stand up for friends and handle complex social dynamics which don’t go away when you become an adult.

Being removed from this entirely is probably not helpful, though obviously there are limits.

> handle complex social dynamics which don’t go away when you become an adult.

In my experience, most of the social dynamics of childhood completely disappear in adulthood. Adult generally don't spend most of their waking time with 30 or so other adults who were all born within 6 months of each other.

But most adults do spend most of their waking time with 30+ other adults (at a point in life when the differences between ages start to flatten out quite a bit). It looks quite analogous to me.

School is nothing at all like work. Not even close. Do you remember what school was like? The social dynamics are unrecognizably different.

The only place that was even remotely similar was when I worked retail during college.

I would not describe a world comprised of 20 somethings straight out of college, 30 somethings with kids, 40 somethings with teenagers, 50 somethings with college-age kids, and 60 somethings with grandkids, nor people at any of these ages without kids as possessing anywhere near the level of homogeneity as you see in a K through 12 classroom.

> I’d argue there’s a difference between socializing and being bullied

And if you could get the socialization without the bullying, that would be great. But I'm not sure there's a way to do that within the existing school structure, so your point seems to be a purely theoretical one.

> I'm kidding, and I stole that, but I have a point. Much of "socialization" in school is horrible. It's not quite as bad as socialization into prison, but it's socialization into a society that's rather broken. Why do we assume that socializing into that is going to produce healthy adults?

True. Unfortunately, a lot of the dysfunctional socialization in school actually gets carried into adulthood.

Right, children shouldn't be socializing mainly with children. That trains them to interact with children. Children grow up to be adults, who interact mainly with adults. Children need to be socializing with adults. That is what most children lack today, but is much easier to do with homeschooling.

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