Everytime I see these kinds of arguments, it sounds like someone desperately trying to argue that a park playground is almost as entertaining for kids as an amusement park. Your example of 5 kids socializing with each other is definitely better than 1 kid at home. It’s also definitely worse than learning to socialize in a school of 500 kids each day. This is undeniable unless you have an argument of how a pool of 500 kids would somehow have less diversity of personality, thought, languages, physical features, intelligence, etc.

I used to work at a YMCA, and the local homeschool group asked us to do a PE class, which I taught.

I had the kids doing swimming, rock climbing, and all kinds of traditional PE games.

I worked with "normal" kids most of the time, and I will say the homeschool kids stuck out. They're more awkward around kids their age, but far less awkward around adults. They know how to speak and act, in large part. And they were disproportionately ahead of their peers academically--though I think that's probably a selection bias for the parents seeking out homeschool PE classes.

This was in the early 2000s, before Facebook. I'm sure the avenues to connect have only grown with social media.

15+ years ago, that might have been the case. Now, you might find some friends in the 3-8 year old range, but then the kids just...don't do things anymore. In both suburban neighborhoods I've lived in the past 10 years, there are basically zero middle school or high school kids doing anything except playing video games and messing around on their phones from the comfort of home. School is quite literally the only social interaction most of these kids get aside from their parents, and if they didn't go to school, they'd just spend more time playing video games or on their phones.

Outside of the coasts or university towns, there aren't any "mathematicians" with kids just waiting around to form homeschooling groups with you.

It's going to depend greatly on your geo location and socioeconomic circumstances, but a homeschooled kid who interacts a lot in the neighbourhood (big "if", IME; those kids all have a lot of school friends) is still going to miss out on broader social, cultural, racial and financial exposure. Example: my white, middle-class kids have a lot of people exactly like them in community groups and sports clubs, but lots of eastern european & asian immigrants in their school classes. This is super-important in elementary school when they're far less aware and insular about interacting with people who are "different" IMO

You don't need a degree in math to teach children age-appropriate math topics. Teachers don't become teachers just because they have a degree in that subject, they have been taught the methods on how to teach. Having prior knowledge of the subject is almost irrelevant. Teaching is really just applying solid methods on how to build knowledge from the most basic concepts as well as having the patience in dealing with humans who are not fully formed in their emotions.

There is no such thing as “the neighborhood kids” anymore. Having any kind of social circle for your children is going to require your facilitation and effort… a lot of it. It’ll be extra hard without the common bond of shared activity.

Not knocking what sounds like your choice to homeschool, just sharing something that has changed from my youth.

John Jane Mary set up is incredibly idealized. In a big city I have not been able to find anyone willing to commit to anything except one off play dates in a museum which has nothing to do with actual education.

“Good socializaron experience” is the exact opposite of “religious groups”. Said as someone who went to a private Christian school for 7 years.

Having a degree in philosophy or mathematics or whatever does not automatically make someone a good teacher. Teaching - particularly with young children - is a skill that is almost orthogonal to subject knowledge.

It sounds like school with extra steps.

Part of "socializing" is observing that one's parents aren't the absolute authority in the world. Parents sometimes butt heads with teachers, coaches etc. No home schooling scenario can provide this experience. I think it leads to enhanced levels of narcissism in both students and parents.

I hear this a lot, and it may be true, but I am very skeptical that it matters. The statistics about home-schooled children don't support the idea that they have horribly inaccurate models of the world guided mostly by religious thinking. Or if they do it doesn't seem to affect life achievement in any important way. Instead home-schooled children are typically more advanced at graduation and have higher lifetime achievement metrics than their public school counterparts.

As an athiest, and a bayesian, it's difficult for me to worry about other peoples religious beliefs that don't seem to negatively affect them or me. Especially when there is propaganda taught in the public schools that does warp the students' world views in ways that harms them and me.

That has been the case for a long time, and I guess something about the current generation of parents has gotten them to act more on it. My dad came from a very religious family and they all did private religious schools for their early grade school years. Then they went to public for high school years.

If I had to guess, its maybe something about the demise of church life that has gotten religious parents to just pull back entirely. It wasn't that uncommon for public schools to make nods toward Christian ideals/lifestyles before like the 90s, but now that stuff just doesn't happen anymore.

I won't pretend to know where you live or what those people's desires are but I definitely started homeschooling after the last US administration took moral volatility to new standards. The principles taught in schools just did not align anymore with what was common sense when I was in school and what I believe in. Now before you judge, I'm not looking for a fight. My wife and I have both master-degree educations in CS and law and our four kids have been to public school in the US and abroad, they've been to an evangelical christian school, and now that we've decided to homeschool for two years, we're not likely to take them back. The traditional school aspects take up 2-3h per day at most, then comes the school of life: raising and caring for animals and plants, fixing the truck or other engineersy activities and of course plenty of fun activities outside of the too-busy-to-be-fun times. My kids have learned of historic events such as Jamestown, Gettysburg or Mount St. Helens at the actual site of the event, they've been to most of the national parks and the fear of being socially-disconnected is not more than a fear before you start. Heck, thanks to Starlink they can even talk to their friends while we're driving through a desert.

Now let me also say that preparing the curriculum, ordering the materials etc. takes a lot of effort and discipline. It's definitely almost a full time job and I'm blessed with an amazing wife that's gifted in all that but the reward is more than worth it. Also, if you're thinking about it, many states have home school support programs and put you in touch with other home schoolers in the area.

That is exactly what I've seen, to keep kids in their brainwashing bubble.

Daycare quality is a spectrum, the same way as babysitting at home. My smaller one just started daycare, and we settled for one that actually does stuff with the kids (forest school style). But I can tell you, we've visited lots of places that are basically just making sure the kids are not dead by the time you pick them up. Same for babysitting with grandparents; there's the hyper-social grandpa style that's always doing something, and the couchpotato with +10k hours on Cocomelon.

In my opinion, grandparents are the worst. They completely spoil them.

The world is messy for all sorts of reasons, that may not be the way anyone would like it to be but it's the way it is, and imo it's best to learn it when the stakes are low rather than when they're later voting against other classes because they were never exposed to people from them early on, or they're being taken advantage of at work or in an adult relationship.

I wouldn't fault someone for wanting to situate their kids among peers and adults that help them grow at a similar level rather than hinder it, but I think it's also best to be a guiding hand rather than a applicant tracking system when it comes to the non-academic side

I was horribly bullied in high school. It was really bad.

The worst part was being ostracized. The school had anti-bullying policies, but they don’t force anyone to be your friend.

Strangely, I was elected to lots of student government office, and held leadership in lots of clubs.

Maybe my memory is just off, but I don’t think so.

I think I was really good connecting with the grownups who ran the school, so they made sure I got leadership positions.

I was always much better at being the kid in class the teacher liked - same with principals, etc.

Probably one of the reasons the other kids didn’t like me - but that went over my head.

I think it’s really easy to overestimate how important the socialization in public schools is. We go to so many movies where the plot is based on the dynamics of public high school, we assume it’s normal.

We see so much of terrible stuff downplaid like it doesn’t matter. Just rewatched Back to the Future which laughingly brushes off every kind of violence as long as it’s done at the prom.

> The value that the socialization the public school offers is underestimated.

The basically only social skill that school teaches is hating other people (other students, teachers) so much that from the deepest of your heart you wish them to be dead.

Clearly a valuable skill, but not the kind that most parents would desire their children to get.

And I've always felt that most of my social anxiety came from public school. Maybe we were both just prone to it.

(I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)

As someone else who was homeschooled except the last three grades, I also agree. Additionally, the effect is multiplied if the kid in question lives in a rural or semi-rural area rather than a suburb or city.

For the majority of my adult life I’ve been playing catchup. Even now, barreling towards 40, there’s aspects of social capabilities where I come up quite short relative to my peers.

If I’m ever to be a parent, I won’t homeschool. Depending the circumstances I might not send my kids to public school, but their schooling situation will at minimum involve social exposure comparable to that of public school.

What happens to asshole kids? Do they become regular adults or asshole adults? Do they become soldiers or prisonners never to be seen again by normies? Do they even reach adulthood? Are they even a stable group or were we all asshole kids to some other kids?

All over this discussion, the big negative has nothing to do with missing out on stellar education, skill development, or expert teachers. Instead, it’s the perpetual handwringing that homeschooled kids won’t be Properly Socialized, i.e., be exposed to and have to endure mistreatment, disruption, and sometimes assault from other maladjusted, cruel, or even mentally ill peers — because that’s “the real world.”

This is not the W for the government schools that proponents seem to think it is.

You're forgetting that public school also exposes you to more adult assholes, including ones with direct power over you that can screw you over for no reason.

It's important to know how and when to advocate for yourself and others, when to escalate through proper channels and when to escalate outside of proper channels, and when to back down and let them be an asshole because they're frankly not worth your time.

Perhaps unlike in some ways, but some aspects of school life persist in so-called adult life, e.g., jocks, nerds, freaks, party animals, slackers, and teacher’s pets are all still around — now with zeros on the end.

>The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman.

How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.

Too many CO2 emissions for that to be practical for the billions of people who don't have public transit access to another nation.

What leads you to believe the reason parents are willing to dedicate huge amounts of their time and money to homeschool their children is racism?

Maybe it's:

  - the terrible educational state of the school system?

  - the fact that device and social media addiction is a prevalent and growing problem that they don't want their kids brains rotted by?

  - they want to provide their kids an education based on experiential and project based learning rather than filling out worksheets? 

  - they don't want their kids to be forced to wait for the slowest / least interested kids in class to catch up before moving on to more challenging material?

Childhood and youth are anything but “low‐stakes.” The social experiences I faced in public school were far worse than even the worst parts of my adult life. The direction I was headed was one of dark cynicism and misanthropy thanks to the bullying I faced and the lack of care from the adults in the system. When I switched to homeschooling, I began interacting with rational adults (my parents’ friends) and in turn learned what functioning human relationships look like. My ability to weather the difficult storms of adulthood in a healthy way came from the social growth I gained through homeschooling, not the regressive “socialization” that public school inflicted on me.

I can not conceive of a worse way to teach a kid how to behave in Adult social settings than to throw them into a group of other kids who have just as little experience as they do and then expect the group to "figure it out". This is not to say that there aren't some homeschooling parents who practice a form of extreme isolation which produces what I would regard as an equally bad outcome as public school. But by the numbers from people who have studied this the evidence indicates homeschooling produces the best outcomes for social adjustment in Adulthood.

Probably because well run homeschooling groups tend to have high parental involvement which means the child learns how to socialize not from other children but from watching how the adults they are around handle interactions.

[Edited for clarity in some sentences]

Counterpoint from my own experience having been previously homeschooled all the way to college: My parents went the extra mile to ensure I was constantly immersed in large group settings with other homeschoolers. Field trips, co-op classes, sports, and general high-quality social time. There were of course bad eggs as in any group setting, but with an important difference: if it ever got bad, it was possible to leave, and we did on occasion. In my mind, that's far more in keeping with the "real world" than the seeming entrapment of public schooling that offers little recourse for when social experiences sour. In the real world, you have the freedom to leave a toxic job or social group far more so than public school.

In addition to peer socialization and mobility, the flexibility in scheduling allowed me to work a day job through my high school years, exposing me to yet more real-world experience. The constant interaction with adults and folks from other walks of life was a huge boon that allowed me to function as a well-adjusted adult right out of the gate. The high-school drama that people suffer and then bring with them into adulthood is very disappointing and seemingly unnecessary.

It absolutely is. If you are well equipped to navigate the adult world, you place yourself in hand-picked groups of people. I do not work with, socialize with, or live near a random sample of the population, and I highly doubt most people reading this thread do either!

"..a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it?"

School isn't their only exposure to life. You will get exposure to other people and non-healthy people outside of school.

"Kids in public school are exposed to society at large, in both good and bad ways. My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in th"

When I was a kid, I was exposed to kids that should have been in prison..and many of them ended up there. My life probably would have been better if they weren't there.

"My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there."

This can still be done with home schooling.

"The sad reality of parenting is that you're never going to be able to hand-pick your child's experience all the way through life. Sooner or later they're going to be exposed to the "hostile flowers" you describe."

I disagree. If someone is hostile and aggressive all the time, I wouldn't be around them as an adult. I hand pick my friends, and you probably do too. I also still get exposed to the assholes of the world.

"Personally I think learning to be around those people and still thrive is a part of childhood that prepares you well for adulthood. It may be more valuable than some of the academic work kids do."

If you are at work and someone is sexually harassing all of the women there or generally causing issues for everyone around them (preventing most other people from getting their work done). Do you think they should stay, so everyone can learn to be around them?

You seem to think everyone is a reasonable person that might just have a few issues. This is far from the truth and many times, public schools will just keep these kids there, preventing everyone around them from learning.

It's also a burden to the teachers and staff.

> ...a healthy community hand-picked by parents is not "the real world" though, is it?

It very much is. No where else in life are people forced to mixed with the general unfiltered public. "The real world" is highly filtered social circles and freedom of association. The idea that it's somehow an automatic good to force healthy kids to mix with everyone who happens to show up, regardless of whether they have severe behavioral or social issues, is pretty questionable.

> My kids are in class with others of different cultures and lived experience and I believe that enriches their lives. Despite, yes, there being some problematic kids in there.

You can expose your kids to different cultures without leaving them wide open to everything else. It's not a binary. The point is that home schooling lets you pick and choose.

I think your reading is very black and white. Add some leeway to what I say. Hand-picked obviously doesn't mean all friends go through a psych screening on a daily basis, or that you have to helicopter-parent and tell your kids who to be friends with...

> Ahh, this chestnut. A short jump to "teachers are training preschoolers to be furries and LGBT" and litterboxes in the classroom/bathroom.

Exactly. Notice how, when people complain about the "deranged ideologies" that teachers are teaching their kids, they either 1. stop short of actually naming those ideologies or 2. spout fever dreams that are statistically vanishingly rare.

Public school doesn't really represent "the real world" for everyone anyway

If you go to university and into a professional career you end up in a different bubble of people than say going into trades

Define "real world".

> song

Yea, the guy later made a video clarifying he never meant to throw the baby out, just the bathwater.

I don't agree with all of Piotr's writings, but here's an extensive list of famous educators, maybe yours is among them.

John Locke, John Holt, Peter Green, and:

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/The_Greatest_Minds_in_History_Op...

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Tom_Durrie

This is exactly right. I had a kid in Seattle schools during this time and this is exactly how I saw it happen and and Seattle schools were a major reason I left Seattle.

I feel this pain. I grew up in what I thought were great public schools and am a big believer that public school is a fundamental institution that should raise the floor for society. Now I'm raising kids in Seattle and it's a constant struggle to get the kinds of educational programs and opportunities for my kids that I took for granted when I was in public school and just assumed would still be around when I was an adult. For lack of a better way to phrase it, I feel like I am exactly the kind of parent SPS should want to keep in its system - a strong believer in public education with the means to support the schools, yet sometimes I feel like they are actively driving families like mine out of school system with their decisions.

This is why I didn't move back to Seattle, but stayed in the nearby communities.

  Education is expensive and underfunded.

San Francisco's school district has an annual operating budget that equates to $28k per student.

I've heard people in San Francisco say that schools here are underfunded. When I ask them how much we spend per student per year, their guess is usually less than half of the actual amount.

> Education is expensive and underfunded.

Always makes me think of The West Wing scene:

> Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Video (sorry for the burned in subs, should be queued up): https://youtu.be/IzV09gESyh0?t=39

Education should be well funded but in many school districts the problem is waste and inefficiency rather than lack of funding. Huge amounts are paid to administrators and consultants who do nothing to improve student outcomes, or even make them worse. Generally there is little correlation between funding per student and results.

Remote learning. You didn't see homeschooling, which is a very different thing, you saw remote learning.

The homeschooling crowd has developed methods over the years to compensate. The COVID remote learning cohort did not, and suffered for it.

What happened to students who were in schools that closed was terrible. But it wasn't anything close to homeschooling.

COVID forced remote learning to be adopted very broadly, without the usual self-selection effect of families that choose to homeschool when they have a choice. So the observations from COVID don't really support any stronger claim than saying that homeschooling can be done badly.

Of these, most are easily handled. I am in a midsized city and there are plenty of groups that offer music, robotics & engineering, speech & drama, etc. focused towards homeschooled students. That, plus the rise in homeschool "pods"/co-ops means socialization and activities are very available to students & parents who want them.

Sports might be the challenge. Many US states have athletic associations that handle most K-12 sports, and they require enrollment in an accredited member school. I am aware of several homeschool specific athletic associations in my area, but all are targeted towards religious homeschoolers. Not certain what secular alternatives would exist, but soccer is very popular & there are plenty of competitive academies that operate outside the school ecosystem.

My kids do Taekwondo and church youth groups. My eldest did not want to do robotics but he does run the Dungeons and Dragons group at our library. We do music as a family. My daughter does choir. My son has done drama but declined to participate this year. They have been homeschooled their entire lives. All three of them received something I did not, the ability to converse with adults from a young age. This is of course anecdotal so YMMV but I would love to see a study on the conversational skills of homeschooled students.

Homeschoolers form co-ops. A local one here does ballroom dance, tennis, basketball. There is often a youth symphony option in mid- to large-sized cities.

For STEM-type stuff, see if there's a nearby Civil Air Patrol squadron. That alone has tons of extracurricular stuff: search and rescue, help with earning a pilot license, robotics, drill and ceremony.

Homeschooling is not for everybody, but if you go down that route there's a lot of support.

To me, this question highlights the whole problem: This is not what schools are for.

Yes, it's great if they provide these things, but it's a distant secondary concern. I'd rather my kid get a great education and miss out on these things, than get a poor education but have access to all these.

But of course, as others have pointed out, it's a false dichotomy. You can have both.

Depending on where you live there are many options. In my school district home school kids can join any club or team offered by the public school system where you reside. Additionally there are numerous non-school related clubs and activities all over the place. My kids could play music with the local school district, with a musical education non-profit that is prolific in our area, or ( where they do play music ) with private lessons that have group classes, bands, and performance opportunities.

There are tons of clubs for such things. My kids are in a homeschool music program (and learning piano and, until recently, bagpipes); half of my kids are playing competitive sports via homeschool programs that compete with other high schools; one is getting his certification as a welder (as part of a State program that pays for it if one is still in high school). Because class times and locations are more flexible this opens up far more possibilities for extra curricular activities.

Often, yes. Where I live, home-schooled kids can participate in extracurriculars offered by the public schools.

i'm sure many others will reply as well but there's lots of extracurricular options for homeschoolers as well as social engagements. It's kind of like a shadow school system, there's associations and groups and other organizations built around home schooled children. My wife and I considered it but we have managed to navigate our public school situation well enough without me, or my wife, having to quit working.

Of that list my kids' top-rated K-8 public school only offers music. Everything else is done privately.

I went to public schools but still did that sort of thing through the YMCA and our church. At the middle school level and lower, most of those types of activities are community based rather than centered around the school, though that varies by area.

This argument has not kept up with the reality of the public school system. The homeschooled cohort my children are associated with have problems associating with public school children of the same age... but the problem doesn't lie on the homeschooler's side, it lies 100% on the publicly-schooled children's side! The public school attendees are noticeably less mature for the same age and less able to deal with anything other than the highly-specific and unrealistic environment of public schools rather than the rest of the world. The homeschoolers have trouble stepping down their social expectations to levels the public school attendees can meet.

We have a few reasons unrelated to socialization [1] to do home schooling but one of the reasons I don't want to send them back is precisely the regression in "socialization" I would expect.

30 years ago, this probably was a decent argument, but the bar of "at least as socialized as a public school attendee" has gone way down in the meantime.

[1]: I guess before anyone asks, one of my children is deaf-blind and while the people in the system did their best and I have not much criticism of the people, the reality is still that I was able to more precisely accommodate that child than the system was able to. This ends up being a pretty big stopper for a return to the public school system for that child.

Having put 2 kids (10th and 8th grade now) through a couple school options…the socialization in schools is pretty bad.

Kids from home schooling families we know are as polite or substantially more polite than those in the school system.

Homeschooled does not mean "completely isolated." My kids are in bands, sports teams, and numerous extracurricular activities both with other home schoolers as well as with public schoolers. Also, homeschooled kids are far less reliant on their same-aged peer group for socialization; my kids talk with people in public regardless of their age (something which surprises some adults).

Homeschooling doesn't mean the kid stays at home all the time. We homeschool and my kid has classes and different activities all week, interacts with friends and teams. It has worked very well for us given our lifestyle. I would understand it's not for everyone.

Who’s to say that they wouldn’t be more socialized, not less?

It used to be folk wisdom that beating your kids built character, teachers would even slap kids with a ruler back in the 1950s. Could you say the same about bullies, cliques, popularity contests, and all the other performative nonsense that goes on in public schools?

Maybe it’s all bullshit and giving kids a safe environment to learn at their own pace without all these distractions makes them better equipped for the modern world?

My kids get more socialization than me. Our parish homeschool group has daily activities. Monday is two hour playgroup. Tuesday is extracurricular classes at the parish. Wednesday is catechesis and play time. Thursday is free. Friday she does a day long camp with an outdoor education program (not parish based). All added up, she spends more time with kids than I did and doing more interesting things

We homeschooled. When we wanted to socialize our kids, we shoved them into the restroom and beat them up for their lunch money.

I kid, but there's a real point: So much of the socialization is bad.

More: Kids aren't going to be kids forever. Does socialization with a bunch of other kids prepare them for the adult society that they're going to go into?

I think we could teach them as well as the school does. And more importantly, we can provide a better environment for them to mature socially.

I was homeschooled and I got a fairly strong education.

What matters is your parents and how you nurture your kids and provide opportunities for them. It’s easy for homeschooling to be bad… if you don’t give a shit about your kids.

For socializing, the key part is making sure kids are involved in a lot of social activities. I never went to public school, but found my groove socially pretty quickly in college, because I had a lot of opportunities for strong friendships. I was working part time in high school too, so got some exposure to pop culture.

> I was homeschooled and it affected me terribly. Please don’t do it.

Any idea how many were affected terribly in school? I'm in touch with my high school classmates. Almost half of them blame the school experience to lifelong problems.

How so?

What works for one might not work for another one. Can't generalize.

Grade retention ('holding kids back') has additionally dropped significantly since the average HNer has gone to school. I remember going to school where one of my peers went to sixth grade with his brother two years older than him. But now, we give out social promotions.

That might've worked if we funded schools & gave students who fell behind significant interventions & 1x1 attention, but that's not what happened. One of my friends has a very bright and talented fifth grader in a class with multiple students who can barely read or write. Guess who gets the most attention from educators? Which group the teachers structure the class for?

That's also 4 entirely different curriculums which need to be taught. I volunteer taught CS for about 10 years, and the first year I taught a new class- and this was a single class for high school kids- I always found I was much better at it the second and third time around. I taught about 4 different courses, of varying difficulty- intro to programming with SNAP, "CS Principles" which had a little bit of everything from (very) basic networking to html and a bit of javascript, Javascript/Python, and then the final boss... AP CS in Java, which is a very difficult class.

I find it difficult to wrap my head around you can make it work teaching the entire curriculum for 4 different grades encompassing reading/writing, math, history, science, art, music, etc... I guess its potentially compensated for by the fact that they are all getting very individualized attention, but thats spreading a parent very thin.

Especially when we are talking about high school levels, where you can even potentially go into AP courses- no way a single parent can teach college level calculus, History, CS, etc... effectively.

For all the flaws of our public education system, I don't see how this can work better.

Did you make a schedule of regularly switching off with other families of four? In other words, those parents teach your kids and you teach their kids? Otherwise I'm not sure how you'd tackle confirmation bias creeping up in all kinds of ways.

I used to think this way, but some experiences made me realize it's not so cut and dry.

When you have a class size over 20, teachers are forced to be a lot more systematic, which can improve the effectiveness of their teaching. Good teachers make heavy use of social proof. When I tried to teach my kid at home, it was a struggle. But when the kid is around his peers in a classroom, and they are going along with the teacher, he naturally falls in line with no cajoling, etc.

If there were only 5 students, the likelihood he'll just go along with things is much lower.

This is why it's useful to look up stats when we have them.

For example, homeschooled students do better on the ACT than public school kids.

https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info...

Obviously the schooling venue itself isn't the only factor here, but if you think homeschooling a kid is worth an analogy to fighting grizzlies, might be worth a reframe.

An acquaintance of mine fought (got mauled by) a grizzly bear a month ago. He went to the ICU (since released), but the bear got shot and died. It was a pyrric victory, but he did win the fight.

That’s not a great example though, is it?

I’ve seen many kids, including my own older ones, who have gone through the school system and others who haven’t.

Well, they tend to be right. Outcomes for homeschooled children are broadly significantly better than government schooled children.

Also, just FYI, to quote someone you prefix the text with ">".

I'll gladly stand up my 7 homeschooled kids next to any public school kids.

All tested above grade level on state mandatory testing throughout their schooling.

Two graduated early (some with college credits).

My adult children (4 sons, ages 19-25) have gainful employment, living on their own (2 own their own homes), and standing on their own. One is married (I got a grandkid!), all have friends, communities they're involved in, and are healthy (physically and mentally).

None take prescription meds nor struggle with anxiety or depression.

Poor public school kids... I hope they can find help for the damage they suffered. <grin>

I was homeschooled. I'm doing the same with my children.

The adults I know who are most against public school went to public schools themselves.

The adults I know most against college went to college themselves.

The adults I know most against private high schools went to private high schools themselves.

Being really negative about your own education is an American tradition!

Did you make a point to interrogate all the non–socially awkward people you met at university to determine if they were homeschooled or not? Yeah, thought not.

When I was in university, there were several instances where people who’d known me for weeks or months found out for the first time that I’d been homeschooled, and expressed their surprise. (Surprise that I was “normal,” I guess, and not a social basket case, as the prevailing stereotype of homeschoolers seems to be.) They simply never thought to ask.

In fact there were even a couple of friends who surprised me by turning out to be homeschooled—when I should have known better than to assume one’s schooling background. But when society spends your entire childhood hammering you with untrue stereotypes about what you are (I heard well‐meaning “But what about socialization?” countless times growing up), some of it is bound to stick.

> Parents side with their kids all the time in pass/fail battles; they're not objective.

I'm thinking this is fairly new. When I was in school, if I got bad grades or got in trouble at school, I got in trouble at home too. My parents were absolutely not calling the teachers complaining about grades. When I had trouble learning multiplication facts, they sat me down with flash cards every night until I had learned them, they didn't blame the teacher. This was in the 1970s/80s. This seemed pretty normal based on what I remember. When/why did it change?

One example is in high school I had an excellent literature class that also covered a lot of philosophy. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the various philosophies we studied were the philosophies that are often foundational for Marxism, atheism, and general left of center academia. Probably the best class I had in high school but I wish it had also covered things on both sides, or been more transparent that it was in fact biased.

From the Conservative part of my social group, the main one applicable here is pushing elementary school kids to identify as trans. Because young children are very impressionable, and it is forbidden for staff to push back on on it at all, despite the science saying "there is absolutely no such thing as trans before age 12, and much possibility of social trauma from attempting it".

Left-ish people tend to say "this doesn't happen in the real world, it's made up for internet arguments" - and I even said that for a while on this and a few other subjects - but that denial cannot survive extensive contact with the real world.

Lots of examples, gender identity and requiring ethnic studies (focusing on white male privilege, settler/colonial, putting groups into binary oppressor/oppressed). Also issues with requiring those classes vs not.