Fresh Perspectives: HPU Anthology of First Year Writing, Spring 2013

In fact, most parents who homeschool their children try and counteract this problem by providing as many social opportunities as possible for their children. In a recent study, results showed that the average homeschooled child participates in 5.2 activities outside of the family and home on a regular basis (Romanowski 126). Not only do homeschooled children have various opportunities for socialization, they may actually have a higher quality of socialization than traditionally educated students. Public and private schools are seen as a working structure for socialization, but children’s interaction with others is usually limited to those with staff and other students. Homeschooled students, on the other hand, typically have a very broad scale of interaction, starting at home with their families and branching out into the entire community. These students have the opportunities to partake in even more extracurricular activities than most schools offer, as well as have a more flexible schedule to accommodate all of them. According to Ray, students who are homeschooled can have internships and apprenticeships, go on field trips, do volunteer work, and hold jobs, in addition to more mainstream extracurricular activities such as playing musical instruments or sports (Ray 52).

Furthermore, public and private schools do not always provide the best type of socialization for students. Romanowski reports that when homeschooled students were compared in reference to the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale in order to ‘measure’ their personalities, it became clear that they scored much higher than their traditionally schooled counterparts, demonstrating that “homeschooled students have a higher and more positive self-concept than the public school students” (Romanowski 126).

In addition to homeschooled children being seen as social misfits, some argue that homeschooling “fail[s] to prepare good citizens” (Romanowski 126). People assert that, while homeschooling may produce good students, it does not create productive citizens. Some even go as far to say that homeschooled children are isolated from politics and worldwide events. In fact, just the opposite seems to be true. While 35% of US adults say politics are just too complicated to understand, only 4.2% of homeschooled adults feel that way (Romanowski 126). If people argue those homeschooled students are social misfits, isolated from the rest of the population, Romanowski would argue the opposite: While 37% of traditionally educated adults partake in community service, 71% of homeschooled adults do (Romanowski 127).

Not only are homeschooled adults obviously successful in the social world, they are also economically successful, as two-thirds of homeschooled graduates were self-employed and none were unemployed or on welfare, according to a study done in 1991 (Romanowski 127). Another study shows that homeschooled students are active in their communities from an early age. Rockney reports that as many as 90% of homeschooled students spend at minimum twenty hours every month participating in organized community events involving people of all ages (Rockney 5). Homeschooling does not prevent students from learning about the outside world or seeing other ways of life, either. According to Kunzman, homeschooled children are encouraged to speak their minds, even in the most conservative homeschooling households (Kunzman 85). Overall, statistics demonstrate that homeschooled students are not social misfits; on the contrary, they are very active members of their communities, socialized with a broad variety of people and experiences.

Another argument pitted against homeschooling is that people only homeschool because they have extremely conservative religious views that they want to teach their children. Romanowski points out that homeschooling, in fact, began as a liberal movement-not a conservative one (Romanowski 128).

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