The Myth of Socialization (Home-Schooling Alert)

Steel On Steel ^ | September 13, 2002 | John Loeffler

[petuniasevan]

Excellent article. Bookmarked.

[Support Free Republic]

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg		Freepers/Avg		Monthlies
46	Delaware	50.00	1	50.00	23	2.17

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

[handk]

Dittos.

[Lyford]

bump

[randog]

Bump for later read.

[Codeflier]

bump

[Paleo Conservative]

The stratification of students into age-related peer groups has choked off the ability of teens to model from and communicate with those older than one's self, which is how maturational development is supposed to occur.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Bump!

[Jemian]

Perhaps it is an excellent article. I need to continue reading, but when analogies or descriptions employed to illustrate points are not factual, I become disgusted. For example, it was written...

check to see if I have acquired dengue fever without knowing it.

Dengue fever is not at all communicable directly from patient to patient and requires a specific type of mosquito to pass it.

I hope the author has his facts about home schooling straight. I'll force myself to continue reading.

[longtermmemmory]

Stupidity as a virture?

Ignorance is Strength. (1984)


The socialization myth is rampant in the divorce courts when the judges us it to justify a child spending time in aftercare instead of a father's home after school or justifying the expense of daycare.

Sadly only those with the resources to hire and expert witness to debunk the socialization myth are able to fight back.

It is a leftist mantra that a left leaning governement sancitioned curriculum will provide socialization. Remember the TV show about the brilliant but socially inept homeschoolers?The JCPenny T-Shirt that said "home Skooled"?Have you heard the NEA or Teacher'Federation PSA radio commercials pushing socialization to expose "diversity"?

The who concept of socialization is the continued effort to eliminate self reliance and individuality as a characteristic in children.The left lives with the concept of an elite need to lord over the proletariate, to tell them how and when to live. (in reall life judges really live that because you have people whining every day in front of them.)

[k omalley]

Our kids weren't home schooled but attended public and Catholic schools. We quickly learned, especially with the public schools that "socialization" means to sink to the lowest common denominator.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP - Passing this on to my homeschooling friends.

BTW - I am excited about teaching a Homeschool Enrichment Highschool class this semester. They are eager to learn, rarely a discipline problem, and very challenging - keeps me on my toes.

[Tax-chick]

A book I was reading last night mentioned that Aaron Burr - famous for shooting Alexander Hamilton, and who can blame him? - started Princeton College at age 13! To enter, he had to have been a fluent reader and translator of Latin, Greek, and French; steeped in the literary classics in those languages; familiar with math at least through solid geometry; exposed to the natural sciences ... it's amazing what an education our children DON'T have!

[handk]

Loeffler has really hit the nail on the head with his article. Very few teenagers I've "run into" while out and about are able to carry on the most basic social interaction. It's like "Invastion of the Body Snatchers" for real.

If they're working at a fast-food place, and you say the "right" words, i.e., what's on the script running in their head, then they're "OK". But if you deviate from the script, you can actually see, from the expression on their face, that their mind is short-circuiting. If it were a cartoon, there'd be little sparks shooting out their ears, with smoke.

To be fair, however, I've also met teenagers who are the exact opposite. Thinking, rationale, cognitive,... human.

[Jemian]

A basically good article. I would have liked to see more empirical evidence supporting his contentions. The author uses "most" when speaking of government school results. I am not disputing the numbers of home schooling SATs vs. public school SATs. My kids scored off the percentiles themselves. It would have made a stronger article if he had similar data to support his socialization charge. We have a long road ahead of us. We need facts and figures to support what we know is correct.

[handk]

I know. I've got a copy of Joseph Story's "Commentaries on the U.S. Constitution", and it's amazing. I believe he wrote it in his "late" twenties.

[litany_of_lies]

Great post. This article is a "saver."

Ok, so what about socialization? It doesn't really happen in public high schools because those are abnormal environments. Nowhere in life -- not even the military -- will one be associating strictly with people of one's own age or be subjected to massive amounts of mind-numbing, conformity-inducing peer pressure totally preoccupied with image and having nothing to do with real life.

It is also the source of the "normal" teen rebellion, which isn't normal at all. It's one thing to teach youth to be independent and self-sustaining but that doesn't require rebellion. Teen rebellion is the product of communication cutoff between teens and parents because they spend the majority of their days apart and in the case of teens in an artificial environment called public education.

I've been saying these two things for years but have never seen these arguments in print (which of course makes the author brilliant :->).

These arguments against the current school structure are valid EVEN IF the schools do a good job of teaching and even if teachers and administrators aren't focused on brainwashing.

The moment teens leave high school, the majority of the so-called socialization in an artificial environment is found to be worthless. No one cares about their, feelings, socialization or image. “What can you do?” and “what do you know?” are the real questions. Once public schoolers emerge from high school, they discover that all the socialization skills they learned in dealing with peer pressure don't apply in the real world.

......unless they take a public-sector job.

And while we're at it, will someone please explain to me why we're wasting our time and untold billions sending kids to live in four or more years of similar artificiality at colleges (be it dorm or frat)/sorority)?

[Tax-chick]

He doesn't mention a major problem with homeschooled students - getting them to shut up about everything they know and THINK they know!

[litany_of_lies]

It would have made a stronger article if he had similar data to support his socialization charge.

Empricial evidence would be nice but isn't really necessary.

Intuitively, do you think home-schoolers are better off or worse off than their factory-school counterparts in these areas (to pick a few off the top of my head):
- drug use?
- promiscuity?
- pre-marital pregnancy?
- STDs?
- communication skills with all age groups?
- critical thinking skills?
- independence in thought?
- courage of convictions?
- freedom from hazing?

I'd say it's up to the factory schools to prove their kids are on average better off than the home-schoolers, not vice-versa. I don't think they can.