Are Homeschooler's
Anti-Social? –
Stories and Excerpts.
Socialization:
A family member asked
my wife, "Aren't you concerned about his (our son's) socialization with
other kids?". My wife gave this response:
"Go to your local middle school, junior high, or high school, walk down
the hallways, and tell me which behavior you see that you think our son should
emulate." Good answer....
In order for children
to become assimilated into society properly, it is important to have a variety
of experiences and be exposed to differing opinions and views. This enables
them to think for themselves and form their own opinions. This is exactly what
public education does not want; public education is for the lowest common
denominator and influencing all of the students to share the same views
("group-think") and thought-control through various means, including
peer-pressure.
Homeschooling allows parents the freedom to associate
with other interested parties, visit local businesses, museums, libraries, etc.
as part of school, and to interact with people of all ages in the community.
For example, my son goes on field trips with other homeschooling
families in our community. He recently was able to visit an audiologist, a
McDonald's restaurant (to see how they run their operation), and several other
similar activities. He gets to meet and talk to people of different ages doing
interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) occupations. He spends a lot of
his free time with kids older and younger than himself, and adults from twenty
to over ninety years old.
Meanwhile, in public
school, children are segregated by age, and have very little interaction with
other adults, except their teacher(s). This environment only promotes
alienation from different age groups, especially adults. This is beginning to
look like the real socialization problem.
- Manfred B. Zysk (Homeschooling Parent: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/zysk1.html)
But What About The Prom? (excerpt, http://www.homeschoolnewslink.com; Volume 4 Isuue 3.. much longer interesting, witty essay)
On more occasions than
I care to think about, adults in the audiences asked outright, for all to hear,
"But what about the prom?"...
The first time somebody asked about the prom, I was taken completely off guard. I reacted politely and stupidly. I mouthed something about how homeschoolers can organize a prom if that's what they want to do. I went away bemused. "Poor thing," I thought. "That woman's life peaked on a June night when she was 17, and it's been all downhill for her ever since." <br>
For high school freshman Brandon Quakkelaar, a click of the computer mouse brings almost any
class he might want to take.
He can order a yearbook, buy a class
ring and, sometime in the future, attend prom.
Next month, the
And yet all he knows of a school
classroom is what he has seen in the movies, or on the television news.
Quakkelaar, 15, has been home-schooled his entire
life.
But as the home-school movement has
grown in
Once isolated, home-schoolers have used their numbers and the Internet to form
coalitions, share information and improve the educational opportunities for
their children.
"I just miss the experience"
of going to a traditional school, Quakkelaar said.
"I don't miss anything in terms of my future and opportunities."
In Wisconsin, the number of registered
home-school students reached 19,808 during the 1998-'99 school year, up
dramatically from 2,821 only 12 years before.
Increasingly, home-school adherents
are incorporating activities that heretofore had been available only in public
and private schools.
Now, home-schooled students have bake
sales and field trips, sports teams, orchestras and even dances. Some
coalitions of home-schoolers elect local boards of
directors to guide group activities.
A national yearbook company even
started marketing yearbooks to home-schooling parents last year.
"There are so many more (parents)
that are home-schooling at the present, and there are so many more (parents)
that are concerned about opportunities for their kids as well as
socialization," said Dorinne Geldon,
a home-school mom in Merton who has helped set up sports teams for the
Physical education and arts programs,
in particular, are popular with home-schooled students. The YWCA of
The
Such activities as well as the number
of home-schoolers - which puts them collectively as
the fourth-largest school district in the state - help bust the old stereotype
that only religious extremists or hippies set up schools in the home.
"This is good - as far as
home-schooling - having a basketball team," said Ben Schultz, an
18-year-old senior from
The team, the only one of its kind in
the state, draws its members from throughout the
Next month, eight members of the team
will go to
The championships are outgrowths of a
competition started about a decade ago in conjunction with a national
home-school conference, said Kenny Collins, executive director for the athletic
association.
Now in its third year, the athletic
association's tournament expects to attract scouts from more than 20 colleges,
such as
By being able to involve their
children in high school sports and other traditional extracurricular
activities, many parents who home-school worry less about denying their children
opportunities available to other kids.
When Geldon's
oldest son, Ryan, was approaching high school two years ago, "we were
debating: Do we home school or do we not?" she said. "He loves
sports, and basketball is his real love. . . . We really needed to do something
in the area of sports."
But even as more home-schooled
students and parents embrace school-like activities, traditionalists among them
take a dim view of such efforts.
"A lot of home-schoolers are really looking for unique opportunities, and
customized opportunities and the one-size-fits-all doesn't really appeal to
them," said Pat Farenga, publisher of the
Boston-based Growing Without Schooling magazine.
"So proms and school rings and school yearbooks appeal to some. On the
other hand, I know a number of home-schoolers who
come up with anti-proms."
That may be true. But Brian Daum, who coaches the
"They're normal teenagers," Daum said of the home-schoolers.
"They have a lot of fun and they have a longing to belong, just like any
other teenagers."