Beats me. I work with a lot of nerds who are fully grown adults, are still socially awkward, and don't work well with others. When your skills/knowledge are what is needed, people will put up with all of your quirks and bullshit to get what they need. All I know is that I'm pretty glad the only kids I have are the ones that bark and piss and shit on the grass (most of the time, anyway).
The chick who started Letters from Home was home schooled. I've known her and her family since she was a child. She also owns her own production company. Home schooling gave her folks more time to put her in activities other than sitting in a classroom. As I recall she had more exposure to outside knowledge than her peers.
What if the social interactions they encountered were overwhelmingly negative and that contributed to their "weirdness"? Think back to your earliest school days and recall the "weird kids" and how you treated them. They probably didn't benefit from the experience.
We've homeschooled for about 4 years now, 3 kids currently 10, 8, and 6. I was against it at first, for a number of reasons but have since changed my mind. Here's my very experienced and educated opinion on things. Full disclosure, we (both children and parents) have lots of homeschool friends, lots of public school friends, and lots of private school friends. 1. If your kid is going to be a screw up, they are going to be a screw up if they are home, public, or private. At home you get the most 'control' of the situation. 2. There are people who home school for bad reasons, there a people who do it for good reasons. There are people who do it well, there are people who do it not so well. Just like parents of public/private school kids...they either provide support or they don't. 3. The social aspect of homeschool is the weakest argument against it. It's much like the protein argument against vegetarianism. If you do it right, it's not an issue. Homeschoolers typically relate to a larger audience of kids/adults vs. just being stuck with their grade level all day. 4. It's a METRIC SHIT TON OF WORK. Some days my wife loves it, some days she calls crying. 5. We don't shelter, hide, lie, or try to spin anything of 'normal' life from our kids. We do however, control the manner in which the kid is exposed to topics like drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. If you're thinking of doing it, find a network to tap into....it's F-ing hard work so being able to talk to people who've done it before you, and then support the people coming behind you is an amazing thing. I love it for our family now, it makes sense. That may change in the future, we take it year by year. Oh yeah...my oldest is dyslexic. We found it about 3 years before anyone in a public school would have because of the one-on-one nature of homeschool. We got her in tutoring and she's more than grade level for reading. So, we got that going for us.
And that is why it's working for you in large part too. On the sex/drugs/rock-n-roll sheltering, may as well give it up. I learned a lot before I was even in school just in the local hood and that was without the internet
At the end....you try to make the best decisions you can. I am a social butterfly, even though I hate social settings. Me at home all day would not have been fun. I loved going to school, having friends to look forward to go and meet and play and interact sort of in a routine was great. I think the hardest part of homeschooling is dealing with the those childhood romances. Because that is an awkard thing, and not saying school is any better, but at least you get to experience it in some fashion. Time filters out what's good bad. Shelter all the time is not good either.
Observations from my six years teaching university composition and literature: - Of the students I had who were homeschooled, more than half were completely unprepared for the social interaction aspect of being in a college classroom. I'm not talking about awkwardly talking to the opposite sex and/or other ethnicities; I'm talking about an absolute inability to develop and support an opinion in a social discussion. - As a whole, the homeschooled students didn't perform markedly better or worse than the public or private school students in any facet of the classes. -One of the biggest insights into the failures of homeschooling is that a huge majority of the parents are unqualified, both in an educational/intellectual sense and emotionally, to teach their own children. Too much of (good) education is managing personalities and emotional responses to the learning process. At a certain level, it requires a dispassionate point of view, and most parents simply can't be that objective with the product of their own genitals. In a bizarre example, I have two degrees that qualify me as a white-plate educator, and there are times I can't teach my dog anything because I can't get over how fucking awesome he is. - One of my favorite students was homeschooled; dude was a stellar student and even better person. I hung out with his folks when he graduated; they were awesome people. It can be done, but it takes an inhuman effort by amazing people and (by their own admission) a ton of luck to produce that student.
Everytime I thought I could do something complicated better than a qualified professional, be it plumbing, mechanics, construction, colo-rectal surgery, etc, I failed miserably. No reason I would do better than a qualified teacher. Of course there are crappy teachers, but most of them know their stuff and even if I did go to school for a long time, I would not pretend to be any better than them.
If you're doing homeschool 'right,' by the time you reach the limits of the parent's teaching ability you've already setup what becomes a self-directed private school with co-ops, classes and curriculum.
Here's one thing that doesn't happen in home schooling.... Bullying. What is your take on that. Not only bullying in school... I mean as an adult. EDIT... and when I a chance to type more I will.
