Socializing. I
know, right? You always think of
home schooling as being not socializing.
I don’t really think that anymore now that I’ve been sleuthing around
(call me the Nancy Drew of the outsiders… Whhhhat???… Just thought of a
terrific mash-up… Do you remember The Outsiders? What if the Greasers had to team up with preppy Nancy with
her convertible, chubby friend, and lawyer dad to bust open some sort of shenanigan with the
Socs?… She's so much more than Cherry and the other Soc girls... there is a whole lot of good to explore there… another time…).
While there are skills learned at school that maybe aren’t
as honed in home schooling (standing in line, not taking freaking seventeen
minutes to answer a question, raising your hand, etc.), I no longer believe
that school is the great equalizer.
If it were we wouldn’t have so many weirdos (statistically and
scientifically speaking we have way more weirdos walking around than graduates
of the home school system…). If
anything, I think traditional school allows students to slip into little
pockets and quietly exist without learning how to navigate in new
situations.
As a mom who home schools said to me, “Real life? How often in real life do you spend the
bulk of your day only with people your own age being told exactly what to
do?” Keep in mind that this family
is comprised of four home schooled kids – the oldest two getting into their top
choice colleges (MIT ain’t too shabby) where they have not struggled with the
structure, the workloads, or the social scene. And they haven’t gone wild either (another generalization
debunked – that home schooled kids are oppressed and go all slutty/crazy/psycho
when they get out from under the parents’ big fat thumbs). If anything, the mom reports, while the
other freshmen were off finding themselves her kids were like – ehh, do what
you need to do, but I’m cool. More
important than their academic success is that I love how they interact with
us. They are cheerful,
interesting, funny, and have excellent eye contact with both the adults and
little ones in our family.
Point being, there are many, many different skills to learn,
and I think that those required when you’re not being instructed all day with
the same group of kidlings will be useful to pick up. And if I’m wrong and school does have this magic power to
wipe out the weird, maybe I don’t want the wiping to be too comprehensive.
My fifth reason for home schooling is to unearth new social
skills (and to have an excuse to reread the Nancy Drew books… in which I’ll be
mentally implanting new plot lines dealing with kids from the wrong side
of the tracks…).
