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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Home Schooling
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anoesis
Shipmate
# 14189
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
What I want to know is, why do so many people think that it's good, heck, necessary, for children to spend the bulk of their time with their exact age-mates all day?
I'll only answer for myself here, seeing as I originally posted about my own experience of being homeschooled, and how I felt/feel about that. What I would have liked, and would like to be able to be confident of, for others, is the opportunity to be able to spend time with age-mates. Is it necessary? Evidently not, because I survived and pass for a normal human most of the time, in most contexts. However, I missed out on heaps and heaps and heaps of...how shall I put this?...cultural zeitgeists, maybe? Had to be there moments - where I wasn't there? It's still happening to me now, at age 40, where something comes on TV, or a song comes on the radio, and a couple of people turn to each other and say, "OMG, do you remember when?...", and everyone goes, "Oh, yeah! I went to see that, like, twelve times" - or whatever, and I have to go, nope, don't know what you're talking about. On the flip side, I did once pretty much wipe out the competition during of a game of Well I Never, due to my lived experience having provided me with so many points of difference to the others... ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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The history of humanity give one little hope that strength left to its own devices won't be abused. Indeed, it gives one little ground to think that strength would continue to exist if it were not abused. -- Dafyd --
Posts: 993 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Anyone from a family that didn't have a TV, or that listened only to classical music is likely to have gaps in their knowledge of pop culture. You don't need to have been home-schooled for that.
What schoolfriends can do is 'tutor' you in the things you've missed. But that's not the same as experiencing it yourself, I imagine.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
I have a similar lack of common cultural references, owing to having grown up in a country other than the one I live in. I can't say it bothers me - and I completely reject the idea that "popular" culture is any more valuable than any other kind of culture.
And if that means I'm rather bemused by the interest in, for example, the Kardashian family, who as far as I can tell are famous for being famous, then I'd count that as a benefit.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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anoesis
Shipmate
# 14189
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Posted
You're both right, of course. In my case, homeschooling was only one factor in, I'd have to say, a whole concatenation of things which conspired to make sure that fitting in, anywhere, was always going to be an effort.
Yeah, so:
1.) Not part of the mainstream in educational terms.
2.) Immediate family aggressively Christian, insular, country sort of laid-back, tending-to-secular.
3.) Physical isolation.
4.) A child of immigrants, who, without rejecting them, had little to no interest in many of the defining aspects of this country's culture, and a continuing interest in the culture of the country they hailed from.
5.) Immediate family estranged from wider family (and on other side of world)
6.) An eldest child of what were, at that time, relatively elderly parents.
So, probably, no-one should pay much heed to what I have to say on the topic of homeschooling. It's just, I guess, one of the few things on the list above that represents an active choice, rather than a set of circumstances that one has to make the best of. Also, I didn't have an unhappy childhood, until the last couple of years. Probably from when I was about fourteen. I was desperately unhappy then, and desperate for a friend, a comrade, an ally, a fellow-traveller to compare experiences of the confusing land of adolescence* with.
*A thing my mother did not believe was an actual thing, just a notion made up by psychiatrists.
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The history of humanity give one little hope that strength left to its own devices won't be abused. Indeed, it gives one little ground to think that strength would continue to exist if it were not abused. -- Dafyd --
Posts: 993 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2008
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I brought up the same-age issue because I've heard it used as a major point against home schooling.
As for peers sharing joint cultural experiences, I'm not sure that kind of thing exists very much anymore--certainly not as specific to a particular age cohort.* I mean, who watches TV (as opposed to subscription cable) any more? The idea of the whole country watching a miniseries together, as happened in my childhood--ha. Instead you have a lot of offerings, all accessed by smaller groups, much like books. There is still shared pop music, but you can get hooked into that (and into politics, also shared) over social media. The same is true of things like Minecraft. It's internet-pollinated, by and large--at least that's my experience, watching my kid. Which is of course anecdata, but...
I worry about him, of course, since so many people have laid down the law to me that he "has to" spend most of his time with friends exactly his age or suffer unspecified damage. Which is just not possible due to oddities about our location. But I can't help the nagging feeling that they might be right...
And yet I see him functioning very well in a room full of elderly people, he is the favorite of the primary and middle school kids, and he can hold his own among ordinary adults.
I probably need to take a chill pill.
* for example, I don't see a generation gap in music etc. any more. The adults I know listen to much the same thing as their kids--or vice versa.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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