I saw the Daily Show episode last night wherein the author of a story on Patrick Henry College said some fairly silly things about homeschooling, betraying her ignorance and bias. In the article, she says:
Homeschoolers are not the most obvious raw material for a college whose main mission, since its founding, five years ago, has been to train a new generation of Christian politicians. Politics, after all, is the most social of professions, and many students arrive at Patrick Henry having never shared a classroom with anyone other than their siblings.But since when are homeschoolers unused to social interaction, and since when is a classroom the best place to experience such interactions?
I used to work in the IT department there in Patrick Henry College and I dealt specifically with the student population. I can tell you first hand that I have never seen a smarter, nicer and well socialized group of young men and women. They are constantly in the top of all the competitions they get into.
It is unfortunate that ignorant people get to speak out against homeschooling when they (and Torgox) have no clue what they are talking about.
Re:PHC
pudge on 2005-06-28T22:49:50
I like what Jon Stewart said to the article author. She said something about how these kids don't really know how the world works, that they are naive... and he responded, how does that differentiate them from any other college students?
I don't really know anything about this college (although if I have any more questions now I know who to ask:-), but I do know that the common assertion of homeschool kids not being socialized is rubbish. People pick out the few examples of them not being well-socialized and extrapolate from that to support their existing preconceptions, when there are just as many (if not more) poorly socialized kids (per capita) in public and private schools, too.
Re:PHC
chaoticset on 2005-07-01T15:12:18
Usually people arguing against homeschooling really seem to mean "I don't understand the socialization process involved here, and some of the homeschooled people I met seem awfully naive, so there must be something wrong!"Like so many other things, the real difference between homeschooling "socialization" and publicschooling "socialization" is that one is more popular -- and hence, in a lot of people's opinions, the right choice due to its popularity.
Jon's statement is better than any I would have thought up, though.
:) Re:PHC
ziggy on 2005-07-05T18:02:31
It seems like one of the unstated fallacies here is that there is exactly one kind of "socialization" going on here.I may have been well-socialized going to a whitebread public middle school, but that certainly didn't give me the skills I'd need for navigating a crack house or a shooting gallery.
Similarly, the kind of socialization one learns in high school is very different from what one learns in college, and even varies by college to college. (Commuter schools are different from resident schools, suburban campuses different from urban ones, and add community colleges, transfer schools, strong/weak graduate programs and such into the mix.)
Funny thing is, I never stopped to think about it until I read that Jon Stewart comment...
Re:PHC
pudge on 2005-07-05T18:11:11
It seems like one of the unstated fallacies here is that there is exactly one kind of "socialization" going on here.
Yeah. e.g., my kids will spend a lot more time around a wide variety of adults, and get better socialization of that kind, than will kids who spend over 15,000 hours in school.
