Social aspects of home education

Social aspects of home education

http://home-ed.info/socialising.htm
Many people, can see that, academically, home education is likely to be an improvement on classroom teaching, if only because children have the chance to learn at their own rate, with one-to-one attention.    Research in the USA and elsewhere shows that home educated children tend to achieve academic goals easily, are welcome at university or vocational courses, and are easily able to think for themselves and learn anything they want to learn with confidence.

Do home educated students have trouble socialising?

But there are often reservations about socialising, or 'socialisation'.   Are home educated children isolated from other children? Are they able to make friends with a wide variety of people?   Will they be able to fit into society as adults if they haven't been through the ups and downs of school life?  Do they become too dependent on their parents, and reluctant to go out to meet new situations and people?  What do we mean by socialisation anyway?

People, on the whole, are social creatures.   Being sociable is part of our nature.  If we allow children to develop in their own way, they will begin to relate to other people when they are ready.  Clearly children do need to meet people in order to be sociable, but home educators don't tend to be isolated from the community!  A child is just as likely - if not more so - to be sociable with one or two people he meets at home than with a class of 30 children who just happen to be the same age as he is. Mor

What do we mean by social skills?

Social skills include culturally appropriate manners, knowing how to greet different people, and joining in conversations.  They are the ways we learn to relate to people in order to build relationships, and to be able to communicate and spend time enjoying company.  Our children will primarily learn their social skills and cultural expectations from their parents and those they see around them, so the most important thing you can do is to model the kind of behaviour you would like to see.

Children at schools may well develop other social skills which relate to school culture, but those are not a lot of use in the rest of the world. A recent spate of truanting and tragic suicides by British schoolchildren shows all too clearly what serious damage can be done to a sensitive child when the environment is not appropriate. And if you still think that social skills can only be learned at school, have a look at this newspaper article: admittedly it's about a school in a particularly poor area, but

For an expanded discussion of the above issues, see: 'The dreaded 'S' word part 1 and part 2

Further reading on other sites:
Socialisation - the hidden agenda - by Dr John Peacock. A little history of schooling and questions about what socialisation is.

Socialization issues - by Fred Worth. A lengthy article, with about every possible question on this topic.

The 'S' word - by Cafi Cohen.  Reporting that American teenagers had more friends when not in school.

Research articles - Encouraging findings from Paula Rothermel's survey amongst 36 UK home educating families.