Socialization

From the American Heritage Dictionary:
socialize
TRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To place under government or group ownership or control. 2. To make fit for companionship with others; make sociable. 3. To convert or adapt to the needs of society.
INTRANSITIVE VERB:
To take part in social activities.

One of the questions homeschoolers hear often is, "But what about socialization?" The question usually encompasses all of the definitions above except the first one (although perhaps that one ought to be examined just a titch). This lumping of definitions means that the question also encompasses a number of assumptions, such as:
(1) School makes kids fit for companionship and for society.
(2) Positive social activities happen for every child in school.
(3) Homeschooled kids are isolated to such an extent that they will not be fit for companionship and society, nor will they get to take part in social activities.

Our societal belief in the first two assumptions is pervasive and virtually unchallenged. In fact, over the last few years I've been struck again and again by how often people accept such societal beliefs without even thinking about them. No logical reasoning is applied. Someone said something to me the other day about "drinking the unschooling Kool-Aid," implying that unschoolers are brainwashed or cultish or perhaps even doomed. Personally, I've seen far more evidence that indicates that we, as a society, have been drinking the school Kool-Aid!

So, I'm here to offer a dose of antidote for the assumptions listed above. I suspect that even listing the assumptions has prompted my readers to see their flaws, but I'll enjoy pointing them out anyway.

(1) School makes kids fit for companionship and for society.

Ahem. Actually, maybe I won't tackle this one myself. Here instead are a few quotes from John Taylor Gatto's "Underground History of American Education."

"By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a form of school technology was up and running in America’s larger cities, one in which children of lower-class customers were psychologically conditioned to obedience under pretext that they were learning reading and counting (which may also have happened). These were the Lancaster schools... They soon spread to every corner of the nation where the problem of an incipient proletariat existed."

"As I watched it happen, it took about three years to break most kids, three years confined to environments of emotional neediness with nothing real to do. In such environments, songs, smiles, bright colors, cooperative games, and other tension-breakers do the work better than angry words and punishment. Years ago it struck me as more than a little odd that the Prussian government was the patron of Heinrich Pestalozzi, inventor of multicultural fun-and-games psychological elementary schooling, and of Friedrich Froebel, inventor of kindergarten. It struck me as odd that J.P. Morgan’s partner, Peabody, was instrumental in bringing Prussian schooling to the prostrate South after the Civil War. But after a while I began to see that behind the philanthropy lurked a rational economic purpose."

"In the first decades of the twentieth century, a small group of soon-to-be-famous academics, symbolically led by John Dewey and Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College, Ellwood P. Cubberley of Stanford, G. Stanley Hall of Clark, and an ambitious handful of others, energized and financed by major corporate and financial allies like Morgan, Astor, Whitney, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, decided to bend government schooling to the service of business and the political state—as it had been done a century before in Prussia. Cubberley delicately voiced what was happening this way: 'The nature of the national need must determine the character of the education provided.'" (emphasis added)

In other words, American schools were, in fact, designed to socialize kids—into factory workers. The students' fitness as companions has never been a goal.

(2) Positive social activities happen for every child in school.

Oh, I hope no one actually believes this. It simply isn't true. I'll take myself as a case in point. I went to a decent suburban school where there was virtually no violence. I was a successful student. I was reasonably happy in school. I had some fun. I was mildly popular ('though that one is harder to write, because I always felt like an outcast).

I had nightmares every night the week before my 10-year high school reunion.

Imagine what school was actually doing to me if it could have that effect on me ten years later. Imagine what school does to the kids in schools that aren't essentially safe places, to kids who aren't so successful, happy, enaged, and popular.

At my 20-year reunion, one woman wouldn't leave her hotel room because she was overcome with guilt over the way she had bullied her classmates.

And then there's the idea that school is a place where kids can be with their friends. That is also not true! School does not foster social interaction; there are dozens, even hundreds, of rules that prohibit it. Classroom management and school administration is very much about controlling and stifling the natural response of kids who find themselves in the company of other kids—that is, laughing, talking, playing, socializing. (Does the phrase "Stop socializing" sound familiar to anyone? I heard it more than once when I was in school.)

Here's a good example: The Federal Way, Washington, school district is contemplating a ban on iPods and cell phones. District reasoning runs as you might expect, with reference to distractions and text-message cheating, but the ban would cover not only classtime but time between classes and during lunch. Where does their reasoning fit into that? What's really happening is a change-with-the-times expansion of the district's anti-social-interaction ruleset.

Another good example: Classes in MJ and Chloe's elementary school were rewarded for walking the hallways in straight lines with no talking.

(3) Homeschooled kids are isolated to such an extent that they will not be fit for companionship and society, nor will they get to take part in social activities.

Over the years, the media has provided us with a few stories that seemed to support this assumption. There have been some much-publicized cases of child abusers who isolated their children from society and called it homeschooling, and the news stories about these people often carry the implication that these parents' freedom to homeschool gave them the freedom to abuse. Educators line up for the chance to say so on national television. It's bullshit, pure and simple. After all, most abused children are in school. I don't mean their abuse happens there (although it can and too often does), but it happens. School or no school, child abuse happens.

Rather than being about isolating our children, homeschooling is about putting our children into the real world. Instead of being confined to a room with kids their own age, our kids have friends of all ages. Homeschooling families have access to an increasingly vast network of peers, resources, and facilities. I'm sure many homeschooled parents wish their kids were more isolated, because all the running around they do makes for a busy life!

The reality is, homeschooled kids are only as isolated as they want to be.

Our family experience provides a good example. We are a somewhat insulated family, relatively homebound (when we're not out chasing hurricanes), so you might put our routine at the "isolationist" end of the homeschooler social spectrum. Knowing what you know about us and reading the brief history that follows, you might see that it's not very isolationist at all.

In the early days of our unschooling, MJ and Chloe were still in touch with their friends from school, and we had regular get-togethers with them. Those connections dwindled as time went on, and for a couple of years, the girls were perfectly content with the social activities our lifestyle naturally provided (cousins and other relatives, neighbor kids, family friends, Kendo devotees, boat yard and marina workers, sailors, park rangers, etc.). Then last year, MJ expressed an interest in widening her social circle. Chloe didn't much care, but she's gone along for the ride.

I found Hope for Horses, MJ's home away from home, where she has become very close to the adults who run the charity. I can't count the people that involvement has brought into her life, from veterinarians to farriers to musicians to movie makers.

I reached out to the unschooling community and Frank reached out to the cruising community, and we formed friendships with families all over the area. Chloe attended Summerhill School and formed friendships with kids from all over the world. MJ attended the Not Back to School Camp and formed friendships with kids from all over the country. Then we attended the unschooling conference, where a lot of those connections came together in one place (yes, there was even another former Summerhillian there), and discovered what a community of people we have become part of.

And then there's the community we're not part of, the more traditional homeschooling community, with its clubs and co-ops and meetings and potlucks and seminars. It's there, anytime we want it.

The result of this less homogenized socialization is kids who are comfortable talking to people of all ages. Sure, homeschooled kids like hanging out with other kids—and that is definitely a generalization to which there are numerous exceptions—but they don't automatically reject a newly met adult as a potential friend.

Yesterday, at a little gathering of unschoolers that I orchestrated at a park in Monroe, kids sat chatting with us moms at least half the time (with the rest of their time spent running around the tennis court and playground with the other kids in joyful abandon). The kids ranged in age from 12 to 16; nobody's age mattered, nobody was too cool to play, nobody was too young to be included.

Why do people cling to the idea that socialization only happens in school?
I have my own theories about why people cling to this idea so vociferously. There's the self-aggrandizement or self-delusion of the educational establishment. There's the self-protection of adults who suffered in school and can't face the prospect of it having all been for nothing. There's even my conspiracy theory about our government's continuing need for an obedient proletariat. But I'm afraid the real reason is simply that many of us are too well schooled to question our beliefs.

For any who are ready to start questioning, this page provides links to studies that support the ideas in this post:
http://atypicalhomeschool.net/general-information/the-cultural-myth-of-socialization/