Doc Searls writes a little about his thoughts on home schooling. Personally, I have most often found home schooled kids to pretty much all be smarter. I’ve also found home schooled kids to pretty much all be a bit mal-adjusted socially or psychologically. That doesn’t mean that other, non-home schooled kids don’t also have similar issues and aren’t also smart. I just haven’t noticed the same (rather all-encompassing) trend as I wander through my own perceptions.
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I was homeschooled and don’t consider myself to be socially mal-adjusted at all! Psychologically, well, I attribute that to different causes.
I’ve also met some very well adjusted homeschooled students that function fantastically well in society. The bigger question is…who decides what is “socially and psychologically adjusted”? Maybe the kids that are in public/private schools are the ones that are ill-adjusted?
That’s great Dave. Are you being defensive, trying to understand a viewpoint, or trying to explain your viewpoint?
I don’t think that we are the best judges of our own social adjustment, nor psychological well-being. My experience and perceptions have been very consistent across the US and even when I studied in Mexico. Kids that are home schooled have additional adjustments that they need make in order to go through to move through society like most other people do. I have chosen to label that as socially mal-adjusted.
I think a social sphere (society) is determined more by the masses than it is by smaller segments. We all need stereotypes and biases and prejudices to survive. We do. We couldn’t effectively communicate without various bases of information. We’ll always be able to find cases on various sides of any topic.
This discussion will continue along, and will have various points that go in different directions. That’s not changing my perception yet, or changing what I have experienced. Maybe it will. But, I think home schooling will have to become *way* more popular than it is now in order to change those perceptions. It would probably have to become the norm for some of those perceptions to change. That’s quite a ways off, if ever.
Maybe everyone else is ill-adjusted. I have almost never experienced life in a way that yields “everyone else should change” as a healthy perspective. I’ll also stand on my own if I feel convicted. That makes this conversation more fun!