If you’re home-schooled, then how do you make childhood friends? How do you meet that dreamy girl, that you remember after all these years, just because she did something nice for you once.
You meet kids in your co-op. Or in your extracurricular activities (if you don't have access to non-school-related options like karate classes, dance classes, community sports leagues, etc., plenty of school systems still permit homeschooled kids to register for their extracurricular programs). Or by hanging out with your parents' friends kids. Or by playing with other kids in the neighborhood after school.
While public schooling does have its drawbacks, and some bad bullying scenarios (we’ve all been there), it also does have some good things. And you meet a variety of other kids, that comes from different walks of life, that may positively (or negatively) influence your own life.
Yes, it does. And for some people, public school is the best option. One of my sisters, for example, has a mix of kids in public school, private school, and homeschooling, because each of them has different needs and different approaches to schooling have ended up working out better for each child. But the fact that each option has its strengths does not mean that homeschooling is deficient.
Sure, you can supplement your kid’s social activities with going to church, or karate, or ballet, or piano, or other extracurricular activities, but it’s not quite the same.
Of course it's not the same. That's the whole point. But "not the same" does not mean "worse".
Church, for one, is too cohesive, and results in groupthink.
Depends on your church.
And that’s if you really want your kid to worship a bible, instead of understanding science.
Again, depends on your church. I grew up in a religious family, and made many friends through church, but I still got degrees in two scientific fields, as did several of my siblings, and I don't think you could accuse any of us of "worshiping a bible" or "not understanding science".
The other extracurricular activities on the other hand, lacks cohesion, that you don’t build lifelong friendships through that.
You have no evidence for that. My nieces and nephews, and homeschoolers I know of my own generation, would say exactly the opposite.
The other thing is, home-schooling tends to shelter your kids.
No. Homeschooling is sometimes used as a tool b people who want to shelter their kids to give them greater control. But it does not in and of itself result in excessive sheltering. Some of my niblings have online homeschool classes with kids from all over the country, with way more diversity than they would get in their local public schools.
> Some of my niblings have online homeschool classes with kids from all over the country, with way more diversity than they would get in their local public schools.
Is an online class with a diverse crowd a sufficient replacement for actually going out, interacting, and being next to people of various racial, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds?
I've spent half of my life on online communities. If I went out into the world thinking the average person I interact with online was the same as the average person outside, I'd be very stunned by the reality and very ill-equipped. The types of people I encounter on Hacker News and other communities/groups I participate in online, well, I've almost never encountered similar people outside.
Is an online class with a diverse crowd a sufficient replacement for actually going out, interacting, and being next to people of various racial, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds?
Probably not, but like I said, that's not an option for them, so it's not a fair comparison. The local public schools would not provide significant interaction with or proximity to people or differing racial, ethnic, religious, or economic backgrounds. Is an online class better for that purpose than a public school classroom in Fairfax, Virginia? No, absolutely not. But they don't live in Fairfax, Virginia, or in New York, or in California, or anywhere else that's reasonably diverse.
I think you vastly underestimate the diversity and types of people you'd find even in monocultural small towns. Being born in a town of 1000 people and moving all around the world, it's pretty strange the way people tend to look down on some places. There's plenty of variety within people that you'll quickly become aware of when you sit down are and expected to deal with them.
Why do you think I underestimate the diversity of places where I or other members of my family have lived, where we have gone to school, and where most of my parents generation have been school teachers?
I know there is plenty of diversity in small monocultural towns. But it is of a qualitatively different type.
Online or offline communities beyond 20 people are garbage. Being in a tight knit community is more important than the mechanism that is used for communication. It's the same reason why urban environments are so lonely. You meet way too many people.
