- Question
- Should children be homeschooled?
- Argument1 of 4›
Homeschooled children miss out on valuable socializing opportunities
Children who are in their own home will not have the same opportunities to make friends as others.
The argument
A huge advantage of the public school system is the opportunity it provides for young people to socialize with their peers, and that advantage is the strongest reason to prefer it to homeschooling. Socializing is not an extra that sits alongside the academic work; on this argument it is much of what school actually teaches. Children in public school spend their days negotiating with people they did not choose — sharing space with them, disagreeing with them, working alongside them, forming and losing friendships. Out of that daily practice come communication skills they will one day use in college, in jobs, and in the world beyond the education they are receiving. The entirety of public schooling, in this sense, is socializing, and it happens whether or not a particular child sets out to seek it. Homeschooling removes that automatic quality. When children are homeschooled, the biggest chances they receive for socializing come through social media and organized sports, and most of the time it falls to them to reach out and communicate with their peers. They are left to their own devices to make friends. Some children will manage this well, and the outcome can turn out perfectly fine — but it now depends on initiative, on parental effort, and on what happens to be available locally, where in a public school it depends on nothing at all. The odds of a child developing strong socializing skills are simply much higher when the opportunity is built into every day. A second loss follows from the same structure. Homeschooled children also lack exposure to a variety of world views. A classroom brings a child into contact with families, assumptions and beliefs unlike their own; a home does not. If all a child sees is their parents' beliefs, how are they to explore and arrive at their own?
Premises
Counter-arguments
Homeschooling can be a social thing. In fact, it can be even more so. Parents can take their children out to different locations, having them interact with various people around their city. Store clerks, cashiers, the lady with the cute dog - homeschooled children have the ability to get real-world experience.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] Homeschooling provides even more opportunities for children to socialize in real-world situations.