"Every kid has to get beat up a few times...."

It's been 11 weeks since we decided to homeschool, and already I'm tired of hearing about socialization / social development / social skills. People who have been homeschooling for years must grit their teeth and change the subject when this stuff comes up-- I mean, there are only so many times you can give your personal lecture on why your children will be perfectly socially healthy, thank you very much.

Even some of my oldest friends, who I know from first-hand observation were absolutely miserable for the entirety of high school, mention socialization. I am beginning to wonder if most of the nerds and loners and unpopular kids in school (which included me) now feel that they were better off in the long run because they endured the crucible of school social life. That it was good that they were teased or bullied or subjected to a hundred petty cruelties, because it made them into stronger people.

This is the immune system theory of social development: you need to suffer minor assaults or you'll overreact to them later in life, the same way a child who grows up in a spotless home is more likely to have allergies and asthma. An immune system needs to be challenged in order to calibrate itself, to develop the right degree of response; so does one's social persona.

One homeschooling journal asked readers to write in with some of the dumbest stuff people had said to them about homeschooling. Two of the quotes were:

[S]he challenged my home schooling saying my son would still miss out. "It's important for him socially too. He needs to be offered drugs so he can turn them down." (link)

An acquaintance said, "Every kid has to get beat up a few times in public school or they won't be able to cope in the real world." (link)

That's the immune system theory in action.

First of all, the analogy fails because my friends and I did not fight off the taunting and teasing. We did not combat it; for the most part we endured it in silence and confusion. Looking the other way and keeping your mouth shut is not a defense, it is acquiescence. Some of us might claim to have been unscathed, to have brushed it off without a further thought, but if that's the case, it's due to some innate fortitude that we didn't learn in school.

Secondly, if a kid needs trials and tribulations for proper development, then why shouldn't parents holler at them, insult them, revoke the things they enjoy on a whim, and generally mistreat them? If what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, why not give them some trouble? Why not drop them off at the bully's house for a play date?

Parents don't do that because we know nurture is what allows children to grow up, grow wiser, and yes, grow stronger. You don't tend to the seedlings in your garden by introducing aphids and fungus and salt to 'toughen them up'. And yet there is this common wisdom that in school, a hefty dose of adversity is a good thing, because it's the real world, and kids better damn well get used to it. I kept wondering how anyone could say homeschooling was not the real world, whereas the artificial environment of a school was, but I think I'm starting to get it. They mean that learning is after all not any fun, that people after all are cruel and lacking in empathy, that people would never engage in meaningful work without tangible rewards (grades and prizes for kids, money for adults). Cynicism is a driving force behind this notion of the real world and the need for kids to be 'socialized' to accept it.

John Gatto talks about the ways in which school makes children behave cruelly toward one another. He points out that having 20-some small children vying for the attention of a single adult breeds competition, jealousy, and hostility. I'd like to devote a future post to this, and other reasons why I think schools create an artificially nasty and hostile environment, but for now I'll just say that the real world is in reality not as mean-spirited as school. If attention and approval (either from adults or fellow students) are resources, it's a classic situation of too few resources breeding warfare. There is no reason for it to be like this. It's not real life.

But suppose we set all of these objections aside for a moment. Suppose I stipulate that children grow through adversity and wither under shelter, and that the "real world" is as hostile and undemocratic as schools. Suppose people are right: a homeschooled child will be incapable of accepting current society and all its nastiness, lack of cooperation, lack of freedom, insistence on conformity.

Well, good then! I'm glad if they wouldn't be willing to put up with it. They might decide that such a harsh culture needed to be improved, and set about trying to change it. Whereas a kid who's been to school and learned to take their lumps in silence would continue to take their lumps in silence. What's so fantastic about that? What if all you really learn by enduring abuse is to endure abuse? Wouldn't we rather our kids learned not to tolerate abuse?

Another objection I have is that some of what I saw happen in high school was not a matter of minor challenges to a person's system. There are ways that a kid's life can be derailed by what happens in those teenaged years. This isn't a matter of how Laura learns to deal with Nellie Oleson. And it is not, unfortunately, true that whatever does not kill us makes us stronger. Some things make us weaker, less certain, less confident, less independent.

And lastly, does anyone really think I can protect my kids so well that they never have to deal with disappointment, rudeness, inconsiderate treatment, anger, disrespect, or hostility? Do they think my children will reach college never having had their feelings hurt before?

* * *

It is curious that socialization tends to be the first thing that pops out of someone's mouth when they hear we're homeschooling. If my friends had been happy and popular in school, perhaps I'd understand this, but they weren't. My friend who was roughed up in 9th grade because he looked at a jock's girlfriend during English class mentioned social skills right off the bat, as if school is a good place for kids to learn respectful and kind behavior. When even he trotted out the social skills issue, I started to think that there's something defensive about mentioning socialization. That it's more about seeing the tough times we had in school as beneficial, because to feel otherwise is to question the system (our parents and teachers included). When you have kids of your own, and don't plan to homeschool or cannot, the motivation to see school's social environment as ultimately helpful is obviously much greater. So, while no one seems particularly interested in my children's actual learning, people are positively chomping at the bit to suggest what a great thing it is for everyone to be teased, taunted, and bullied in school.

All of this strikes me as analogous to 'spare the rod, spoil the child,' another maxim that has rationalized ill treatment of children for too many years.