Recently a friend of mine objected to my child being homeschooled on the grounds that it would hamper my son's social skills, especially in middle and high school.
My response to her objections was simply to challenge her to name a local high school, public or Catholic, where sexual activity, drug use, alcohol use, teen pregnancy, and gang activity were low to non-existent. I'll gladly send my son to that school when he reaches that grade level. Of course, my friend wasn't able to provide the name of a single school - Catholic or public. *
Why do public and Catholic schools have these problems? There are numerous reasons, but instead of focusing on the administration and faculty, let me focus on the students.
The student population at most schools consists of a diverse mix of people from all walks of life, and this is part of the problem - many come from broken, troubled, and quite frankly, morally lost families.
This means the pool of a teen's potential friends at these schools include people whose values may be drastically different than those of a teen's parents.
Just consider the impact of peers on premarital sexual decisions. According to research by Douglas Kirby, a well respected researcher, the following factors are negative influences on teens:
Peers' Alcohol, use, drug use, deviant behavior
Permissive values about sex
Sexually Active peers
In fact, in Emerging Answers 2007, release just yesterday (Wednesday), Kirby states that
"Sexual behavior is one of the many areas in which teens are influenced by their best friends and peers."
Parents can't really choose their child's friends and influences, but they can choose the pool from which they come from. Homeschooling provides parents with the advantage of controlling the pool from which lifelong friendships and influences are made.
And despite the fears of many, homeschoolers don't grow up to be 10 headed monsters that lack social skills.
One of the misconceptions about homeschooling is that the children don't socialize and that they grow up lacking social skills. Yet local home school cooperatives and support groups provide a community of like minded parents and children, and provides ample opportunity for socialization.
Here, in this group of children with similar upbringing and values, exists a healthy pool of potential friends and peers.
That's not to say all of the children in these groups are angels or that they don't have problems of their own, or even that their values are exactly the same across the board. But overall, I believe that this pool of friends is better for my son than what is found in public or Catholic schools.
I'd rather that my son be surrounded with peers who do not have permissive values regarding sex, who are not sexually active, who do not use drugs, and whose behavior is not deviant, than with a peers who do. While homeschooling doesn't guarantee he won't choose peers that are of a negative influence, it tremendously reduces that likelihood.
This isn't sheltering my son from the influences of the world; it's merely providing him with peers who can support him when he has to face these influences. Instead of having a group of friends who would laugh if he hasn't had sex by age 20, he will probably have a group of friends who will encourage him to wait until he is married.
In closing, homeschooling not only provides for socialization, it also provides positive socialization as well as a healthy pool of peers and friends - more than can be said for most Catholic and public schools.
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* Please note that this is not some kind of anti-catholic diatribe - the author of this post is Catholic...
Right on. Socialization is a reason _for_ homeschooling.
I went to schools (public and Lutheran) for my whole education, and I did not develop social skills. I was and still am very shy (recently I started to turn this around). I know there are plenty of other people like me. You don't hear about them because... they don't talk. Attending a school with lots of people does not guarantee socialization. It is very easy to hide in a crowd.
Political Eye Responds to Comment Below..
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Not all minority kids are poor, and not all poor minorities have bad values. I'm a minority myself, and came from a good middle class family. Like many other teens, the influence of my peers on my behavior and values grew over time in middle and high school, to the point I was living the opposite of what my parents taught me.
But my post isn't about diversity in ethnicity, race, or financial background. The point is that the average student population has diverse *values*...
Crimson Wife Comments:
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A negative peer culture isn't just a problem in schools serving a diverse population. I grew up in an affluent suburb that was extremely homogeneous. I could count the number of minority kids in my grade on one hand. About half of the kids were nominally Catholic. Most came from traditional nuclear families with a mom who either stayed-at-home or worked very part-time.
Despite all these advantages, the social scene in my high school revolved around partying. Binge drinking, doing drugs, and promiscuous sex was the norm for the "in" crowd. Fortunately I never got caught up in all that but I felt very alienated from most of my classmates as a result.