education or schooling? yes, you have to make a choice.

While watching an old 20/20 report on the incompetence of public schooling in the USA, I encountered an anti-homeschooling comment. The comment, as is typical for anti-homeschooling sentiment, dwelled on the lack of social skills homeschooled kids have.

Here is the problem with that idea: if you meet enough people in life, you will meet lots of people who lack social finesse. The public schools are full of kids who lack social skills. What is the benefit of teaching your child that it's normal and/or acceptable to bully people, to form cliques based upon being mean and exclusive, and to respect disrespectful authority figures?

Are those part of the reality of life? Unfortunately. So many folks had a problem with school when they were forced to attend, but don't seem to understand that the socialization process standardized by "normal schooling" in the United States of America is detrimental to the formation of a healthy society.

If you meet a homeschooled kid who seems to lack the ability to handle the dysfunction in the world, that is a good thing. If you meet a homeschooled kid who seems to have trouble befriending the conniving and asinine kids others produce, that is a good thing. If you meet a homeschooled kid who isn't going to accept your authority over her or him simply because you're older, that is a good thing.

People know how we generally socialize is messed up, but people are also creatures of habit. What is so great about normalizing poor habits? If homeschooling is a threat to the establishment, a threat to the regular ways of acting in life, I'm okay with that.

Anyone who isn't okay with that is not high on my list of people to care about. And, if homeschooled kids don't seem to want to talk to you or your children, maybe it's a better use of your mind to try to figure out what you're presenting that's distasteful, instead of automatically assuming the homeschooled child has a problem.

We don't need another generation of selfish, mob-mentality jerks. Besides, I was under the impression that school was about getting an education in math, grammar, science, and the like. If your main concern for homeschooled kids is their socialization, perhaps you need to take a better look at the society you're in.