A reader posted telling me that in her community homeschoolers are looked down on and that she might have homeschooled but did not want to have her children to lack socialization like those she has seen. I thought by now the myth of the unsocialized homeschooler was long gone. Sure there are a few, but there are a few in public school as well, the bully, the outcasts, what have you. No group is immune.
I can not help but wonder if perhaps the children she labeled as no social where in fact that way or if she was assuming them to be that way because her community thinks that is the case? I do not doubt there are some like that but being in this world neck deep and having lived in many states I can tell you I have yet to meet one sheltered and un-socialized homeschooler.
Homeschoolers do not wake up and sit at the kitchen table for hours with books and then spend the rest of the day alone. Far from it, they are out in the real world in real places exploring and enjoying and learning. We love museums and parks and adventures, specially when the crowed are all locked up in the same room they see every day, day in and day out. Who really is the unsocial ones?
Homeschoolers are one sports teams, choirs, girl scouts, cheer leading teams, 4-H and so much more. They are not stuck sitting at the kitchen table. That is called school at home. That is not what my family follows and not what most families follow in the home schooling world. Our children are out in the world being social with people of all ages, not just their own age. From the elderly to infants, learning how to interact with respect and manners and real interest.
Dr. Raymond Moore says,“The idea that children need to be around many other youngsters in order to be ‘socialized,'” he also says “is perhaps the most dangerous and extravagant myth in education and child rearing today.” Dr. Moore is a well known author and expert on socialization. I can’t help but agree with him. He like many others believe that parents not peers should be the biggest influence in a childs life. I agree with this as well, children should not be raising children. Peer pressure pushes into a child making them think they need to be just like everyone else and they risk never finding themselves.
It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” While we look left and right at the crime and school shootings we wonder how this can happen. Yet some of those same parents might look down on homeschoolers thinking them un-socialized? Schools do not teach morals, in fact many these days teach little more than Reading and Math, teaching to test. Parents often have little time to teach Morals at home between work, taking care of the home, meals, and bouncing from ballet to football practice. Homeschoolers though in my experience focus a lot on morals, I know I do.
So knowing all I know about homeschoolers I wonder who really is creating unsocial children?
There are studies showing why the idea of the unsocial homeschooler at least in todays world is a myth.