While I don’t necessarily agree with everything Dr. Laura Schlesinger says, or rather how she says it, I was delighted this morning to receive a link to her blog this morning and a post she made on homeschooling.
Dr. Laura’s blog post was entitled, Home-Schooling Does Not Hamper Socialization. Now this is not a huge revelation, I have mentioned it many, many times. The fact that Dr. Laura took the time to put it in her blog, in a way gives homeschooling a bit more credibility, or it at least gives homeschooling families a reason to do little I-told-you-so dance.
Her blog discussed a study that compares homeschooled college freshman to publicly school college freshman. Both sets of these students were in Christian schools. The students were evaluated on typical colleges issues dealt with in counseling centers. They are emotional, behavioral, social, and academic issues. The results were that…
home-schooled students scored significantly lower on the anxiety subscale, while no difference was found between the two groups on the remaining scales. Additionally, there was a general trend characterized by home-schooled students reporting fewer symptoms of emotional distress and social problems, and achieving higher first semester GPAs.
Perhaps it is time to stop beating the dead horse called socialization when debating homeschooling. Personally, when I am met with the question, on a weekly basis, I have completely given up stifling a little laugh and a great big grin. The whole debate is just laughable.
If you read through Dr. Laura’s blog, you will also find that drugging children and ADd/ADHD diagnoses are also a sore spot with her. In addition to Dr. Laura pointing out the results of this homeschooling study in an effort to refute the argument once and for all, she also states that “instead of drugging kids to be docile, perhaps we should turn to the successes of home-schooling.” In another post regarding the recent California ruling against homeschooling she simply sums up the issue with this simple sentence. “So, a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the certification of all parents who make that huge commitment to their children’s education. Unbelievable.”
*Have a question about homeschooling? Just ask.
* Have you seen the homeschooling curriculum glossary?