Comments on: Socialized how

By: katharine

katharine — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 02:24:58 +0000

I’m a professional woman, but decided to homeschool my two girls, now ages 7 and 10 yrs. My hypothesis is that moms/and or dads are not going to put up with bad behavior when they have to spend the entire day with their kids. Our kids learned the system quickly and our time together is civilized and productive. Disrespect is not tolerated, period. And, we don’t have to worry about someone suing us because we took away a privlege. This study suggests to me that the “socialization” issue that public schools praise is highly overrated. At least this is not how I want my kids “socialized”. BTW, this check list is a common research tool, and it’s not tough to pick out the problem behaviors (they usually have interrater reliabilities).

Katharine

By: BadaBing

BadaBing — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:31:14 +0000

Non-home-schooled kids are more likely to be left to their own devices after school. They have freedom to hang with the wrong crowd, score weed at the local skate park, get into fights with siblings, spend hours in front of the TV or play video games. I’d like to see in that study how a similar group of kids with stay-at-home moms fare, i.e., moms that choose to stay home vice pursuing a career. Involved parents bring the hammer down on bad behavior and actively encourage [force?] kids to do things like homework rather than veg out watching “Married with Children” or “The Simpsons.”

By: Alison

Alison — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:27:07 +0000

I completely agree with O’Hara that age segregation is the crux of the problem. My school district has been having trouble with bullying, too much and sometimes dangerous fooling around, and rude/bad behavior on school buses. It seems to be almost exclusively students (mostly boys) who are 10-13 years old. This school district has separate schools, and so separate buses, for 5-8, 8-10, 10-13, and 13-18 year old, elementary, upper elementary, middle, and high schools respectively. The trouble occurs on the upper elementary and middle school buses.

This is age segregation (the only adult in the “room” is driving the bus!) at its finest, i.e., Lord of the Flies. Hypothesis for suggested study: Students riding on age-segregated buses (age range of student population is equal to or less than 3 years) engage in and experience more socially inappropriate behaviors than students riding on non-age-segregated buses.

I have to admit that my children are homeschooled. We have many reasons for homeschooling but age segregation in public schools is among the top ten.

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:07:22 +0000

Frankly, I can’t help but wonder how much of this simply has to do with the dynamics of learning in large vs small class sizes. In big classes, do kids have to assert themselves more to get an education?

I’d like to see a similar study done with homeschooled children vs. children educated in classes with 10-12 students. But then again, how soon do we think our education system will adopt a model of 10-12 students per teacher?

By: LayLo

LayLo — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:18:29 +0000

We decided to home-school our children PRECISELY because we observed a family of 4 girls (all home-schooled) over the course of 2-3 years. They were the most well-adjusted teens we’d ever met — they could hold a lengthy, informed, and interesting conversation with adults. Our 4 little kids adored them and loved to have them babysit for us. Then we found out they were popular in their church youth groups. We were sold.

And now other people compliment us on our respectable, well-adjusted teenagers.

By: markm

markm — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:29:37 +0000

As Stacy said, schooled children learn too much about how to behave from their peers. Homeschooled children learn it from adults.

Rory, I doubt it’s just the type of parents. School can dilute the parents’ influence and example. Ministers are “religious, highly educated”, but some of the worst-behaved kids in my school were the children of ministers. They couldn’t have been worse if they’d been spending their time with their parents instead of other children, and probably would have been better. OTOH, there are some pretty bad parents out there, but I doubt that school instills any better behavior in them than their parents would…

By: Stacy in NJ

Stacy in NJ — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:12:31 +0000

We homeschool. I think the reason homeschooled kids are better behaved is primilary because they spend more time with adults one-on-one or in small or family groups. Some schooled children spend very little meaningful time with adults one-on-one. People tend to adopt the behavior of those they spend time with.

By: Bill Leonard

Bill Leonard — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:56:26 +0000

I wonder how “problem behaviors” are identified, and by whom. “Shy, timid” and “shows off” (more gregarious than the shy or the timid) and many of the others mentioned are personality traits that can be found among different siblings in millions of families. Unless we’re talking truly pathological behavior, how is it necessarily a “problem behaviour”, and why is is so-classified?

By: allen

allen — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:36:48 +0000

I wonder if it isn’t that vaunted socialization that isn’t to blame?

The Lord of the Flies might not be on the non-fiction shelves but it does describe how kids settle their differences when an adult isn’t around – might makes right. In that atmosphere aggressiveness pays off, civility doesn’t and the stress level is high.

I wonder if anyone’s done a similar study with kibbutz kids?

By: Joanne

Joanne — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:10:58 +0000

I’ve changed “link” to “cite.”