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I believe there is more than some truth in your observations. I don't agree with the socialization necessarily, since that is such an individual thing anyway. There are antisocial kids, shy kids, poor communicators in public schools too. I do think they tend to be very smart, because they are not distracted by the types of things that happen in the typical schools. However, I remain cautiously optimistic. Currently, I know several families with homeschooled children. I used to think it was the best way to go, and in some instances it may still be, but (and this is a big but), I am starting to see a trend in many of these kids.... they seem to be a bit odd. I can't put my finger on it though. Odd, eccentric, marching to the beat of their own drummer, call it what you will, but a lot of them are just plain weird. One family's daughter (and this is one of the younger examples) has a 6 year old who is extremely brilliant - she is reading on at least a 5th grade level, but she's actually arrogant. She thinks she's smarter than the adults and she acts condescending toward her grandmother, who is my friend.

Anyway, just my two cents.

"lot of them are just plain weird"

I remember going to public school and of course there was no one there that I would call just plain weird...

well...

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the stereotyping that goes on for homeschoolers is just incredible... we have non-christian, liberal, democrat homeschooling friends that our sons do activities with. in our group of 80-100 families, yes, i know some kids i'd call wierd, and arrogent, and... etc.

I think these kids would be odd no matter how they were educated. I have a son who likes to call himself a geek. It's a label he was so worried about, then seeing how much fun other geeks have started calling himself that. He would run up to kids on the playground and freak them out when he was little, because he would just run in and play. He didn't stand back to check out everything. He just ran in.

Then there is my daughter, Little Miss Social Butterfly. It's guaranteed that in any social situation she will make a friend within less than half an hour. When she was four she would con the other moms on the the playground into pushing her on a swing.

Different children just have different personalities.

I am starting to see a trend in many of these kids.... they seem to be a bit odd. I can't put my finger on it though. Odd, eccentric, marching to the beat of their own drummer, call it what you will, but a lot of them are just plain weird.

What is wrong with a kid marching to the beat of his own drummer? Kids are not all alike; they each have their own interests. If a teenager shows an aptitude and desire to learn auto mechanics, why should that kid have to suffer through four years of dead boring classes during which he could otherwise be engaged learning the skill for which he's best suited? I'm not saying that kids should not have some basic math, history and language arts, but not all kids plan to go to college, and are not college material, so why not gear some courses for those kids rather than make them sit in the classroom with kids who have a penchant for learning the 'liberal arts', and continue to feel like they are failures for not learning at the same rate.

Some may consider that kid wierd; I've come to think of kids like him as motivated to get out into the world and DO something, sooner, rather than later.

Some homeschooled kids get a bad rap for not joining groups or getting involved in things, so they're considered strange. Has it ever occurred to folks that some kids WANT to homeschool so that they won't be forced to deal with a whole classroom of kids their own age, with whom they have nothing in common, and cannot even hold a conversation because of it? Maybe they're not particularly shy, just not interested in what the other kids have to say. It's amazing that so many homeschooled kids, when they meet up with others, are astounded they they all have so much in common. They just didn't have those things in common with their 'schooled' peers.

You could call that eccentric, or wierd. I say vive le difference!

She thinks she's smarter than the adults and she acts condescending toward her grandmother, who is my friend.

I've seen that type of behavior also in some kids. Not just homeschooled kids, but also kids in the very gifted track.

My family was at a large birthday party yesterday and there was a girl about 12 or so (I have NO idea how she was schooled). There was something very disconcerting about how she would insert herself into adult conversations with an arrogant tone of how she could solve any given problem. At 12 or so, one does not have the life experiences to even offer an opinion on many subjects, yet she thought her opinion was wanted, needed and gave it many times. She actually shouted at my husband at one point who had been into a conversation with another adult and mentioned how the founder of Greenpeace recently endorsed the use of nuclear power in a WaPo article. She told my husband - a 48 year old man - that he was an idiot for stating this and then stomped off telling someone else how stupid people are. Supreme arrogance.

This is not the first time I've seen this type of behavior among young and middle teens and the only connection I have found is that they are either homeschooled or in the gifted program at school. So these kids may be smart beyond their years, but they are dumb as dirt in terms of respect and the ability to admit they might just be wrong.