this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Raising your kids is ultimately about preparing them to be full productive adults that can seek fulfillment and provide a net good to the world once they're adults.
I don't see any way you could create a microcosm in your home (any home) and meet that goal or not severely hamper your kid from meeting that goal.
The gist here is that not all homeschooling is equal. Yes, you have homeschooling that's designed to facilitate raising your kid to be an idealogue and and ignoramus, but there's also homeschool intended to be a true alternative to public school sites. I ended up homeschooling my kids for a few years because they both had really bad ADHD and both were too young to be medicated. In my first's case, the school refused to assess for it (because it would cost money and resources (money) if she did have it) and just allowed her to flounder. Like, the teacher just got to the point of ignoring her in class. When we tried to talk about what to do, the teacher pulled her aside and said "okay, [child], I need you to focus in class from now on, can you do that?" Ah, yes, just focus. Quality education from our taxpayer funded institutions.
Anyway, homeschooling was hell for me, turns out I really don't like being a teacher, and it was tough on everyone, but I'm confident that my first at least learned more than she would have in public school over that same time period.
I can totally see homeschooling as an alternative to the failings of the US school system, but I don't think you can recreate the variety in a public school setting where everybody from the community is there. It's not a want to thing it's a can't thing -- I'm not sure you can have the scope of awareness yourself to expose your kid to everything to properly prepare them.
I have ADHD too and was only diagnosed in my 30s, so I feel for you and your kids -- Make sure they know it can be part of their superpower too ;)
Homeschool isn't only at home, though. My kids, and all of the other homeschooled kids I know are out at some activity, museum or educational "thing" at least twice a week. Depending on their age, they can also volunteer or work somewhere that interests them. For example, my oldest loves reading, so she volunteers at the library once a week, where she gets to meet people of all ages.
Also, it's much easier to travel when you're homeschooling. You can go pretty much anywhere anytime as you don't have to be back home before school starts. As an example, we recently came back from a year on our sailboat traveling up and down the US East coast and the Bahamas. My kids spoke a different language (we're not anglophone), tasted different foods, met people from all the places we saw, but also from all over the world (you tend to meet a lot of other travelers when you travel), saw incredibly diverse fauna and flora, made friends incredibly quickly, etc. How's that for a microcosm?
Homeschooling's biggest misconception is that it's at home, when in reality, it's wherever you are. It's like remote work for kids.
But Museums aren't what school prepares kids for once they're adults. It's the conflict with lots of other kinds of people and learning how to navigate that in my opinion.
You're not wrong but you picked "museum" and ignored "volunteering at library" where they meet many kinds of people, learn to help them with their problems, learn to navigate an office environment, etc.
Sounds great until they get to university and have the culture shock realizing not everybody else grew up on a sailboat traveling the coast.
Why would they expect that? I've not seen any culture shock at college from homeschoolers, except perhaps being surprised at the amount of shenanigans that are gotten up to.
Kind of a poor take. "Don't have an amazing first part of your life because the rest won't be equally amazing."
A year long vacatipn on a sailboat? That sounds like a great microcosm for the 1%. So if those are the circles your kids will be running in as adults rather than the average working person's circles it probably is a great microcosm.
It's cheaper than you think. My sailboat is an old thing from the 80s that was cheaper than most RVs, I was working remotely (so not an actual vacation) and anchoring is free.
Yeah, you do need to have some money, but it's not only for millionaires. Look up Uma on Youtube, they got started by buying a boat with the money they were going to use for a couch. They're rolling in that Patreon dough right now, but when they started they didn't have much.
Why not? There's plenty of activities for homeschoolers(at least near here) with group co-op for one day a week, plus several clubs and group activities like sports, PE, and robotics.
I suppose if the kids in a community being homeschooled are representative of the rest of the kids, sure, but I doubt that's happening, though I don't know.
I am glad I went to public school after starting at private school because of all of the exposure to 'the real world' and all the kinds of people in it.
All the homeschoolers I've met (I've met a lot) have had a homeschool group. Some have been more active than others, but co-op one day a week is usually the bare minimum.
But I guess if there were homeschoolers locked at home 24-7, I probably wouldn't meet them.