Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

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if you haven't actually gone to school then how can you judge the benefits of the socialization it provides?

some of us prefer to socialize outside of school with kids that actually share our interests rather than being forced to interact with kids that we have nothing in common with.

school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed.

i count myself lucky that i only experienced mild bullying and being an outsider completely eliminated any issues of peer pressure for me as i simply had no need or desire to fit in.

there are plenty of other alternatives where you can socialize. be it boy/girl scouts, music classes, some sports or other activities.

of course, if you didn't get to participate in those either, then you really did miss out. i am sorry for that. your parents failed you at that point. however, if you think that school would have helped you, i would not be so sure about that.

To argue against your point that public school wouldn't have helped requires me to share really personal experiences. It's frustrating to be forced to share them over and over with people who probably won't take the time to actually learn from them.

I picked up social skills extremely quickly when I started college, but the first two years were absolutely abysmal to such a degree that I genuinely believed for a period that I had undiagnosed autism. I ended up turning out pretty gregarious and I'm probably average to above-average at making connections and coming off as normal by now, but an enormous amount of suffering could have been avoided. The social situations I was afforded as a child didn't provide nearly enough opportunity to learn and fail.

I had a glimpse of what the alternative would have been like because I got to take drivers' ed at a public school. You might think putting your kid in cub scouts or homeschool co-op is a substitute but it really isn't. If your kid only hangs out with homeschool kids they only get to see how the weird kids act. And if they're in cub scouts they're automatically at a disadvantage because a lot of the other kids are going to already know each other from school.

A lot of people like you come into the conversation asking to hear about the experiences of grown homeschooled children, but once they say something you don't like you suddenly turn into an expert on the subject because their lived experiences aren't representative of whatever you imagine homeschooling is like.

i don't think anyone's experience is representative of anything because everyone's experience is different. they are all anecdotes.

if we compare your and my story then apparently your homeschool experience matches my public school experience. how does that fit together?

i am not claiming that homeschooling would have been better for me, but only that it would not have been any worse.

it really depends on the individual character. maybe public school would have been better for you because it appears you are a social person, and all you lacked was an opportunity to learn those skills. i wasn't social to begin with, and what i needed was a group of equal peers. so yes, hanging out with other wierd kids would have been exactly what i needed, because i would have allowed me to make friends with someone. i could not get that from public school, because i was the only wierd kid there.

> school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed.

So does real life. People need experience dealing with these situations. IMO, it would be better to deal with them at school where you have parents & teachers to fall back on, rather than than waiting until you are an adult without nearly as much support.

> So does real life.

As an adult, you usually have the option of walking away.

> People need experience dealing with these situations.

I think kids need to be taught the kind of self-respect such that they know when it is appropriate to deploy a healthy "go fuck yourself". Not clear that state schooling does a great job of this - indeed, if it's teaching them anything, it seems to be you are going to get bullied and you have no choice butto put up with it.

parents are often helpless to deal with bullying in school because it depends on the teachers to actually do something about it.

all i learned about bullying in school is to distance myself from those idiots and subconsciously i probably also learned to avoid making friends. i don't see how that was helpful. i didn't experience real socialization until i entered university where i found actually like-minded individuals with common interest. and it's not true that there is less support when you are an adult. on the contrary. the friends i made in university were my support. i didn't have that before.

i am not complaining, my school experience wasn't that bad. but i seriously doubt that any form of home schooling would have been worse.

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