As much as I hate to admit it, I loved school. Elementary school, middle school, and high school that is. Everyday was a new activity and chance to talk to my friends during class, ignore lectures, have gym class, play on school teams, and work with my peers. I took full advantage of everything my school offered including playing and managing sports teams, being in clubs, and really trying to make friends while also focusing on my school work. My best friends come from the people I met one day during class and I couldn’t imagine it not being that way. About 2.2 million students are homeschooled across the United States according to the National Home Education Research Institute. So how on earth do people deal with homeschooling? Where do they make their friends and does it affect their ability to make friends later in life? Besides just not having friends, are there other affects of not experiencing these simple childhood things such as gym class?
In my life I have met one person who was homeschooled, and he was a tad awkward. Sometimes he wouldn’t know what to say or couldn’t work in a group well with others and I always wondered how that could be. We ended up becoming great friends, but only after four years of him being in a public high school. According to everydaylife.com, children who do not go to regular school and are homeschooled can have severe effects on their social skills because they do not interact on a daily basis with other people their age so they do not have the chance to form relationships. Also, they could just not know any basic communication skills because they spend the day with one single teacher which could be their parent (Blau). Furthermore without basic communication skills and knowledge on how to work in a group, how could one have success in a career? Most jobs look for people with ample skills in working with others and experience and those who are homeschooled do not have experience. When being put into a group for a project everyone must take on the responsibilities and tasks they are given and divide them up while at the same time working in tandem. The person who was homeschooled the person could either try to do everything themselves and not allow others or not do their part because they do not know how to just do one part of something. Similarly to group projects at work and at school, doing a sport works the same way with learning how to work with others as one rather than on one’s own; Homeschooling does not offer sports or extracurriculars. One last disadvantage to the social skills of a person who is homeschooled according to a website about how to successfully homeschool your children is that they do not receive the diversity they need in their lives just sitting at home. Everyone comes from somewhere different and everyone has a different story to contribute to the classroom and to the workplace (Successful Homeschooling). For example if someone has never worked with someone of a different ethnicity or economic background how are they supposed to properly integrate themselves and work as one with someone so different?
Although there are many social downsides to homeschooling, it does have profound effects and advantages as well. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, people who are home schooled score around 15 to 30 percentile points higher than students who are not homeschooled on standardized tests such as the SATs. The NHER also notes that students who are home schooled can perform well in life with socializing in the careers and also be involved in extra curricular activities, however, there is still a percent that does only remain in their house (Ray). Additionally according to timeforlearning.com, a website and tool for those who are homeschooling, there was a study conducted at then University of St. Thomas in which they noted that students who were homeschooled graduated college at a rate of 66.7% while those who were in public school graduated at a rate 10% less than that (Homeschool). The National Center for Education Statistics states that 91% of the parents who chose to homeschool their children said it was because of environmental concerns at public schools. Although some of these parents present a good point due to the fact that there could be drugs and such in public schools, they are not taking into account the fact that then the house is the only environment the student will be exposed to (NCES). What if the house is messy or the situation is not good at home? Those students will then have no escape and be trapped. Regardless, no matter how good things can be at home for someone, everyone needs time out of the house in a different environment to relax and escape just as someone needs their house to escape from their stresses and worries at school. These things may all be great with the higher test scores and graduation rates of home schooled students, however, they still cannot develop social skills at the same rate and levels that students in public schools can because there is no one to work with in groups or collaborate with on projects.
After reading these statistics and conducting my research about the positives and negatives of homeschooling and how it can affect the social skills of the student I myself have concluded that there is a negative affect on those who are homeschooled. They cannot possibly possess the social skills needed in life after being in their house all day with just one teacher one on one as they would get being in a classroom of 25 students with different teachers for every subject. Students need diversity and variety in their lives especially starting at a young age. Students are being homeschooled starting in kindergarten and that can affect their brains because that is when students experiment with friendships and make friendships. Can you imagine entering college or even high school knowing basically no one while everyone else knows each other? Can you imagine how used to different teachers they are while you are not? Can you imagine socializing with people during lunch after not socializing with anyone your whole life? Can you imagine being homeschooled?
Sources:
Ray, Brian. “Research Facts on Homeschooling.” Research Facts on Homeschooling. National Home Education Research Institute, 6 Jan. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html>.
“Homeschool, Afterschool, Summer Study – Time4Learning.”Time4Learning.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2015. <https://www.time4learning.com/homeschool/homeschoolstatistics.shtml>.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91
Blau, Liza. “Social Disadvantages of Home Schooling.” Everyday Life. Global Post, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/social-disadvantages-home-schooling-26526.html>.
“Homeschooling.” Homeschooling. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. <http://www.successful-homeschooling.com/>.
Homeschooling has many pros and cons and you illustrated the idea very well. I always stated how much I hated school, but when I was home sick for a long period of time, I would always become so bored and wished to go back to school to see my friends. It was an excellent point to make that students become more disadvantaged socially and cannot hold a conversation like most students can. Many social counteractions become very difficult for those who are homeschooled because they are only use to seeing the same people everyday and not learning from their peers like those at school. Although this seems many common, an interesting article was released about one student who actually improved her social skills being home schooled and working with others who weren’t her age around her community.
I will definitely do that and do a private school blog!
Emma, I actually can relate because just like you I do have a friend who was home schooled, and although he is extremely polite, he just could not hold a very good conversation. I agree with you and couldn’t imagine having to spend so much time in the house. As much as I said that I hated high school, looking back I could not have imagined school any where else. I enjoyed being able to socialize with my friends, to get time outside, and to learn in a new environment. For your next blog, maybe you can branch off of this one and see if there is a similar effect of students who attend private schools. That would be pretty interesting to see what research has to say about that. Great job!
While I think you make a good point about homeschooling possibly making assimilating into high school and college more difficult, you’re not accounting for the fact that each person adjusts differently. As well, there are TONS of homeschool organizations and support groups designed to help kids who are homeschool make friends their own age. This website, http://www.home-school.com/groups/, has a bunch of them listed for almost all of the 50 states and even other countries.
This is a topic I have had a strong opinion on the last few years. One of my best friends growing up went t the same school as me until 7th grade when his mom decided to home school him. After 7th and 8th grade he returned to normal schooling. Two years seems very minimal, but i noticed he was different. Socially, he was rather different than other kids in my grade. This was not a matter of being cool or popular, but instead, the lack of socialization with kids his age everyday caused him to suffer socially. School teaches kids so many life skills and being home schooled makes it extremely difficult for kids to acquire these traits.
That’s really funny, I also had a friend I met who was homeschooled and he was pretty awkward to talk to as well. He didn’t really understand social cues, for example, our other friend told us a bad joke, and so as not to make him feel badly I laughed out of pity. My homeschooled friend just stared at him and told him that his joke sucked. It was pretty hilarious I must say. I want to ask though, do you think the reason these homeschooled children score better is because they are smarter? Or do you think it is because the curriculum and study methods are more geared toward them, so to speak?
interesting blog, but like anything in life homeschooling has its pros and cons. I actually worked with a kid who was home schooled and he may have been a little shy but normal in everyway. it was funny being around him because he would ask me things about girls because he never really got to know one besides his mom. while he may lack some social skills his academic skills i believe are more developed than the average student.