Pardon the long quote but every word of this screed is priceless:
15 yo daughter returned to school this semester to grab some credits that are trickier to get with homeschooling
https://twitter.com/MamanLunettes/status/1745520308428124304?t=ULwVoFmOvvROQc3bTazhAQ&s=19
Some regular school stuff, from her perspective really does seem absurd:
– have to ask for permission to read, pee or close eyes?
– have to show steps in math, but it’s their steps?
– cannot drink water in specific areas of the school hallways?
– can’t leave the school at lunch for a walk outside?
– teacher can yell at kids?
– staying seated for 7 hours?
– everyone sad and gloomy?
And a whole lot more. Needless to say she’s already got a reprimand for refusing to present ID to a teacher who scolded her in the hallways for drinking from her bottle
Oh what a joy this VSC (Very Special Cookie) will be in the workplace. And in society at large.
I see VSCs all the time. Parents never took the trouble of socializing them because that’s onerous and unpleasant. Socialization means teaching a child to self-contain and accept the multitude of social limitations and demands as not only normal but good. And if you are aiming for psychological health, pleasant. We self-contain physically, as in learning not to pee if circumstances are not propitious. (I don’t interrupt my activity to pee when I teach or give a talk). We also self-contain emotionally and learn the difference between “everybody is gloomy” and “everything seems gloomy to me because I’m unequipped to deal with the situation.”
Socialization is the unpleasant part of parenting. The child doesn’t like it but you know you have to do it. Or you pretend you don’t, like the quoted mom.
The number of students I’m seeing who are incapable of following simple directions is enormous. They will take so much longer to be successful in the workplace because this skill, which had to be taught in childhood, remains undeveloped. The girl in the linked tweet is posing, of course, in order to please mom. But her capacity to self-edit to be part of a working group is already atrophied. Forget the capacity to feel joy when encountering a new environment. That never even made an appearance.
The one that really got to me is “have to show steps in math but it’s their steps.” I mean, oooh, you don’t say, Very Special Cookie. This is only the definition of working life. That’s what people get paid money for. No matter how many degrees they have or what great talents they possess, people do what they are told. And it’s OK.
Gosh, forget the working life. Imagine a person like this trying to form a family. With a baby, you really don’t pee until the baby is ready for you to pee. You eliminate the spice from your cooking because the husband has a sensitive stomach. You play Magic Mixies for two hours straight even though you are decades past the age where you could appreciate the pastime.
In short, this is not about schools. It’s about parents who want to avoid unpleasantness and end up raising children who are unable to control their raging Special Cookieness. When kids come to the house, I immediately see who’s getting socialized and who isn’t. They all go to the same school, so it’s always the reflection of the parents’ approach. For instance, some kids ask for a snack in polite, complete sentences. Others open the refrigerator and start rummaging there without saying a word. Some look around to see where we leave shoes and put theirs in that place. Others just fling their boots around wherever it pleases them. And it’s the same basic lesson that the 15-year-old in the linked story hasn’t been taught: when you come to a new environment, observe, learn, adapt, and be sincerely cheerful about it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yes and no.
One of the reasons to homeschool, is to avoid socializing your kids into the industrial model, and prevent institutional destruction of their ability to think, ask questions, come up with alternate solutions, etc. HS grads are far more likely than average to start their own businesses straightaway, instead of going into “regular” jobs, far less likely to be satisfied with becoming cubicle drones. I don’t think this is a bad thing.
Some of the homeschool alums I “schooled” with during my own brief homeschool tenure, are now amazing assets to the community, and no, they’re not working desk jobs and wouldn’t really be suited to that life. Off the top of my head… one of them owns and runs a popular brewery in the old downtown, and is almost singlehandedly remaking “historic downtown” from a drab failing semi-abandoned business district, into the cool restaurant district. He and his wife bought a defunct garage in the area and re-made it into a nice home. They homeschool their own kids, and are basically apprenticing them into their family’s business ventures. He’s now running for mayor. Another has become head pastor at the church we attended when we were kids. A third has just been made city manager. They married young, have kids, and have stayed married… and even among those pursuing more traditional careers, they’ve mostly chosen to bypass the 7-yr college route in favor of things more family-friendly, such as nursing (2yr vocational program, which you can later add more training to, to become a more specialized nurse). On the whole, they were smart kids and maybe could have done more profitable things, but their priorities were shaped by family life and independent-mindedness, not schools. They mostly don’t go for jobs that would require them to work 60+ hours a week or delay marriage and kids to be successful. They find their own ways.
I agree that in this example, there’s some VSC stuff going on that the student needs to get over. The main problem isn’t that the kid is encountering these obstacles, but that the parent is touting them as good things instead of working with the kid to figure out how to navigate and use institutions to get what the kids wants, without being a prima donna *or* getting steamrolled by the institution. It’s a fine balance. Even at home, we have to have guidelines about drinks and snacking! I have a 9yo who will use “can I go get something to eat” all day long to avoid doing any educational work. Amazing how hungry and thirsty you can get, when you have a writing assignment to complete. We are working hard on training to the kids to do the necessary work *first*, then go get a drink. It’s surprisingly difficult, but self-discipline is that important.
My kids, as a result of homeschooling (but also of having weird parents) are not normal. Normal isn’t a goal for us. We work hard on getting them to be polite and resourceful, communicate clearly, and know when it’s important to follow instructions… but also when it’s time to decline and how to do so effectively and politely (or forcefully if the situation calls for it). I believe the degree to which “good kids” are socialized by schools to blindly follow instructions and norms is dangerous to them, and to everyone around them. You have to know when to resist, and it takes time and experience to know when it’s important, when it’s not, and what action is called for. Discernment is hard, and kids mostly don’t have it. You have to embarrass yourself a few times to develop any kind of judgement.
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” the parent is touting them as good things instead of working with the kid to figure out how to navigate and use institutions ”
I’m less charitable. The mother, for social clout, is making sure her daughter won’t thrive in any environment with other people around. I’ve worked with the type of person who thinks ever order has to be challenged and it’s a miserable experience.
It’s not hard to let kids know: An unavoidable and sometimes disagreeable part of life is having to do things that seem stupid or not do things for reasons that seem stupid. Sometimes there are good reasons for this that aren’t immediately obvious sometimes there were good reasons that are no longer valid and sometimes…. reasons just don’t enter into the equation. Sometimes you can and should challenge them but those occasions are not nearly as common as it might seem to your very wise teenage self.
“nursing”
Call me crazy, but I don’t want to deal with nurses who aren’t able to follow orders and follow protocols whose immediate sense is not apparent. Nurses are incredibly important in the overall functioning of healthcare but they’re not positions that call for challenging authority on anything like a routine basis….
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I was not suggesting that they don’t follow orders. Simply that despite being smart enough to go into corporate careers with masters’ degrees, they didn’t automatically jump into the 7yr college pipeline that bright kids in high school inevitably get shunted into. They were more able to evaluate their options, understand their priorities, weigh the costs, and do what was right for their own values, goals, and preferred lifestyles, instead of just… whatever the guidance counselor said they should do.
School settings seem to operate under this weird assumption that college is the ultimate good, and I swear they get kickbacks for the percentage of kids they send off to traditional college. It’s really not the best choice for everyone, *even for the bright kids*, and I think homeschoolers in general are better equipped to evaluate their post-high-school options and make rational choices about them.
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“being smart enough to go into corporate careers with masters’ degrees, they didn’t automatically jump into the 7yr college pipeline”
College is certainly not something everyone wants or needs. I’m just less impressed by the idea of homeschoolers being specially bright and more dismayed by the decay (planned destruction?) of the public school system. When I graduated high school there was no idea that everybody had to rush off to college and it took me a few years to decide that it might be worth looking into seriously.
Parents micromanaging their children’s education just doesn’t seem optimal at all. I can see it as the least bad option for many at present but the US had a public school system that worked well enough before the bi-partisan effort to destroy it kicked in (I think the early 80s is when it really began). Where I live has a public school system, that functions well enough (lots of problems but nothing worth exploding the way US education was). There’s also a private sector in education but all things considered it’s mostly not worth it.
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eh. I’ve stopped worrying about that. Once we committed to keeping our kids out of the public school system, it didn’t matter anymore. It is too large a thing for us to tackle, and even if we were that energetic and motivated… we wouldn’t be able to reform it in time for our kids to make use of it.
It’s a concern, but at this point it’s a very abstract concern.
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“I’ve stopped worrying about that”
I understand, I’m not going to be doing anything to bring it back either. But it just seems like such a massive waste…. to throw away a functional system in order to “save” a few dollars (republicans) or indoctrinate students into dysfunctional nonsense (democrats).
Recognizing what was lost is also important…
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Yeah, there was a point where the US had a public school system that worked reasonably well. I’m in my forties and that hasn’t been the case at any point in my lifetime. Sure, it’s OK to recognize that, but… it’s an exercise in nostalgia. Maybe we could build a monument to it. At some point you have to stop yelling “that’s not fair!” and “this isn’t how it’s supposed to be!” and direct your energy instead toward: “What’s the best we can do right now, for our kids, with the resources available to us?”
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