Starrfall on 21/4/2009 at 14:00
When people talk about school as socialization don't they usually just mean in the sense that it exposes kids to lots of other kids their own age? It probably doesn't HAVE to happen in a classroom. Seems like the big problem with homeschooled kids being weirdos is that a lot of them never see anyone but their parents and siblings (and it seems like that's usually because the parents are religious freaks who don't want their children coming into contact with the secular population).
Or maybe I'm just basing this on the poor kids who lived next to us when I was in high school! At halloween the family would put up a sign on their door that said halloween was the devils holiday so they weren't participating.
You're still going to let your kids play with other kids and celebrate halloween, right?
Muzman on 21/4/2009 at 14:28
I've seen too many organisations and institutions where the adage "High School never ends" is thoroughly correct. Finding places where it's not the case is the real challenge. Highschool was blessing in the sense that it was more intense but less critical to your survival and the structure much more obvious.
I'm not pleased about this but I guess I'm saying, if high school social dynamics are fucked up, avoiding it isn't neccesarily going to help. From my angle anyway.
SD on 21/4/2009 at 15:07
(
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/17/columbine-massacre-gun-crime-us) Interesting article on this the other day. There's a book out which cuts away a lot of the bullshit surrounding the case.
Quote:
Harris and Klebold, we were told, were members of a campus group of losers and Marilyn Manson-worshipping goths called the Trenchcoat Mafia, who had few friends and attracted only derision from the cool kids. They not only hated jocks, they were racists who picked 20 April for the attack because it was Hitler's birthday. Supposedly, they also had a grudge against evangelical Christians. A story soon spread that one of the murder victims in the library, Cassie Bernall, had been asked at gunpoint if she believed in God. When she answered yes, Harris laughed and pulled the trigger. The story inspired dozens of sermons, spawned a best-selling book co-authored by Bernall's mother, and elevated Bernall to martyr status far beyond Columbine.
Those of us who covered the shootings repeated at least some of these stories. We had no reason not to. They were confirmed, if not amplified, by the Jefferson County officials who gave news briefings several times a day. How were we to know that John Stone, the county sheriff, was winging it, telling us, for example, that the boys had fully automatic weapons and at least one accomplice, when these were no more than his own wrongheaded assumptions?
Much of what we reported, though, was simply wrong, as attested by tens of thousands of official documents and other evidence that has at last seen the light of day after years of suppression by the local authorities. As the Colorado-based journalist Dave Cullen tells in his gripping and authoritative new book Columbine, Harris and Klebold had plenty of friends, did pretty well in school, were not members of the Trenchcoat Mafia, did not listen to Manson, were not bullied, harboured no specific grudges against any one group, and did not "snap" because of some last-straw traumatic event. All those stories were the product of hysteria, ignorance and flailing guesswork in the first few hours and days.
The truth was more sinister. Their ambition, harboured for about a year and a half and chronicled meticulously on Harris's website and in the boys' private journals, recovered after their deaths, was to blow up the entire school. Not to get at anyone in particular, but because they hated the world and intended to have fun annihilating as much of it as they could.
Kolya on 21/4/2009 at 16:00
Quote Posted by fett
Everyone's big objection is that they won't have any socialization. I can't think of a more unrealistic social setting than a school classroom though.
The thing is rather that they will have a different socialization to everyone else. Even if no latter social gathering resembles high school (uni? corporate meetings?), all the high school kids will have common memories, friends and a sense of how to assert your own rights in a group.
I don't think home schooling is bad, but it very much depends on the parents, and as Starrfall said, it's usually the wrong kind of parents who think they can make up for high school life with their own education.
fett on 21/4/2009 at 16:19
True 'dat. Thing is, you should see our kids ( 4 & 7) around elderly people and middle-age folks. They're completely comfortable and able to interact with them because we've purposely put them in those situations, instead of trying to sequester them with kids their own age constantly. The goal here is to take them out of the static public school setting and expose them to a wider variety of social environments. I think my kids will be better socialized by spending some time in retirement homes, soup kitchens, and playing sports out of our cozy little neighborhood so they have relationships with kids who are from either side of our little tax bracket. Plus there's a killer co-op down the road that utilizes real teachers and college profs, along with private instructors to teach everything from physics to fencing in mixed age groups a few times a week. Seems like a win-win to me.
@Starrfall - we've discussed this before. Halloween only glorifies our great enemy Satan and I won't sacrifice my children upon his bloody altar with your sordid pagan masquerade.
Starrfall on 21/4/2009 at 16:23
but how can candy be evil :(
Ulukai on 21/4/2009 at 16:25
Quote Posted by fett
True 'dat. Thing is, you should see our kids ( 4 & 7) around elderly people and middle-age folks. They're completely comfortable
Just wait until Grandpa Joe comes out with his How's-Your-Father recollections involving Mrs Moggins
fett on 21/4/2009 at 16:47
Uh?
Ulukai on 21/4/2009 at 18:51
Hrm, that was probably slightly too obtuse, eh?
I was referring to the formula:
Kid + Adult over 21 + Sex Joke in Conversation = Acute Embarrassment
june gloom on 21/4/2009 at 20:01
Quote Posted by fett
True 'dat. Thing is, you should see our kids ( 4 & 7) around elderly people and middle-age folks. They're completely comfortable and able to interact with them because we've purposely put them in those situations, instead of trying to sequester them with kids their own age constantly. The goal here is to take them out of the static public school setting and expose them to a wider variety of social environments. I think my kids will be better socialized by spending some time in retirement homes, soup kitchens, and playing sports out of our cozy little neighborhood so they have relationships with kids who are from either side of our little tax bracket. Plus there's a killer co-op down the road that utilizes real teachers and college profs, along with private instructors to teach everything from physics to fencing in mixed age groups a few times a week. Seems like a win-win to me.
All this means is that they'll be more comfortable with people older than them and they'll still lack the ability to interact with people their own age.
My main argument against home-schooling is basically Conservapedia. That is what happens when you homeschool kids. Most homeschooled kids I know have lost all ability to socialize with people who don't think like they do. I think your kids need to have
some interaction with their peers precisely because it's the only way they'll know how to function in the twisted social structure we have weaved.
