But Aren't You Worried About Socialization?

Um, no, not when the schools have lost their minds:

"Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying. ... That attitude is a blunt manifestation of a mind-set that has led adults to become ever more involved in children’s social lives in recent years. The days when children roamed the neighborhood and played with whomever they wanted to until the streetlights came on disappeared long ago, replaced by the scheduled play date. While in the past a social slight in backyard games rarely came to teachers’ attention the next day, today an upsetting text message from one middle school student to another is often forwarded to school administrators, who frequently feel compelled to intervene in the relationship."

From this article in the NY Times. Please read the whole thing.

Structured recess, stupid zero tolerance policies than involve zero common sense, and now control over kids' friendships! Am I worried about my homeschooled child's socialization? That would be a huge NO!

I cannot fathom how schools can ignore actual bullying (to the extent that some targeted kids are driven to commit suicide), but get all "proactive" about intervening in purely hypothetical cases because two kids may be too close for some administrator's taste and maybe, just maybe, someone might possibly feel left out at some time in the future.

This is the oft-praised socialization that only school can teach? We'll pass.

It's quite ironic that one of the most frequent digs directed against homeschoolers is that we are trying to protect our kids from negative social interactions that some people feel are necessary to positive character development and being able to get along in "the real world" later in life. In "the real world", has anyone ever told you you are not allowed to have a best friend? This latest trend just highlights the fact that "school culture" is a manufactured and artificial microcosm that bears little resemblance to reality.

Now the Nanny State is sheltering kids from the "hard knocks" we homeschoolers are so often told we are wrong-headedly depriving them of, in the absence of any actual harm. Why do people think government regulation of every aspect of our lives is preferable to individual responsibility? What are schools really teaching kids? That they are incompetent to make even the most basic decisions, about who to spend their time with? That they cannot possibly be trusted to think for themselves even to this extent? Talk about dumbing down! Now it isn't just academics that have to be dragged down to the least common denominator level? We need to do it to social skills too?

People are inordinately concerned over the "socialization" of a tiny percentage of school aged children who are homeschooled, yet turn a blind eye to how the fantastical machinations of government schooling affect the development of the vast majority of children. It is completely illogical to think that, in the absence of probable cause for a finding of illegal activity, they are entitled to know or control what happens in private homes, and yet, to simultaneously accept the statistically far more significant potential harm to multitudes of children under the rubric of "school as norm", rather than critically examining state action (in which, unlike my living room, they are actual stake holders since it is bought and paid for with all of our taxes, and government, at least in the USA, is supposed to be answerable to the people, not vice versa.)

Am I worried about socialization? Well, now that you mention it, yes, I am. I'm worried about what passes for socialization these days in the schools!