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I've Been To Over 20 Homeschool Conferences. The Things I've Witnessed At Them Shocked Me.
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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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I was homeschooled (and I mean homeschooled, like, in the subculture) from Kindergarten through high school and am nominally a functioning member of society in spite of that fact. AMA.
I'm sorry, dear, but if you've ended up on lemmy it's fair to say there is something a tiny bit non-functional about you.
I did say nominally.
What were the most difficult things about transitioning from being a 'homeschooled' kid to being a 'functioning member of society' for you?
I'm not the OP but was also homeschooled similarly. For me it was being culture shocked by how many different nuanced perspectives are out there. Growing up I was provided more of a black and white view and very little social interaction to teach me otherwise - until college haha.
It actually was a nice revelation realizing not everyone is so prejudiced and bigoted about everything. However, the damage was done and I still had to work a lot to undo it and "catch up" to how to normally interact. Now I'm well adjusted so it's all kinda in the past for me, but I won't do that to my kids.
Prob one of the other difficult things for me is being taught homophobia and having to learn how shitty that is and the guilt that I still live with to this day because of beliefs I used to hold. That sucks.
If that can make you feel better, I wasn't homeschooled, and I still needed to adjust myself as an adult (and still do every day).
You are a product of your environment and you shouldn't feel ashamed sbout things you didn't know any better.
Be proud of the fact that you embraced the culture shock and opened to the world to become a better person.
That's a lot more than many people that had "normal" childhood (what is normal anyways?).
Yeah. I still feel ten years behind
That's growth!! Well done.
For me, because my homeschooling was part and parcel with a very conservative religious upbringing, the most difficult part is, in a sense, still ongoing.
I don't want to imply my childhood was like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or something, I was aware of what was going on in the world and stuff, but certainly sheltered and heavily influenced by my parents in how interpreted what was going on.
Breaking away from that, interacting with society more directly and more diversely than I otherwise would have, has overlapped with breaking away from a lot of the cultural and religious beliefs that were instilled in me.
That's not an overnight process. I think anyone who has left behind a religious upbringing could relate to that, homeschooled or not, but the homeschooling and relative 'isolation' adds a twist to it.
Thanks, that's really well said. I'm happy you never had to live in the bunker!
Religious teachings are so strange in the sense that they can give you a strong moral compass but can just as easily give a sense of superiority that can lead to imposing your personal beliefs on others. It's definitely a really nuanced topic.
Congratulations! Do you find people point out you have gaps in "common" knowledge?
It's not pointed out to me, necessarily, but I stumble over (or into) many gaps in my knowledge. Mostly having to do with soft skills though.
Another homeschooler chiming in, my circles actually tended to perform better than our local public/private schooled friends on the SAT/ACT, and myself and a lot of my friends went in to some sort of STEM field.
Granted, there is a spectrum. As a homeschooling parent now I see a different side of this community. There are some kids that really should be in a school system because they aren't being taught what they need to be taught. I don't agree completely with the video, but John Oliver has a decent video he posted recently on homeschooling.
Side note, it's really hard to find a balanced, not white-washed, Christian/not at odds with our worldview, but not Christian nationalist history curriculum. We have a worldview and want our kids to be educated in a manner that matches our world view, but we want them to learn accurately what happened throughout history. I might end up having to buy the curriculum in the article, it sounds promising.
And, what constitutes a 'better adult'? This question is, ultimately, at the heart of the decision for people like my parents who chose to home school for religious reasons.
For my parents, a 'better adult' was one who had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, believed that the smallest possible government should somehow exert the maximum amount of control over people's bodies and beliefs, and that the earth is 6,000 years old despite all readily available evidence.
Happily, they also believed a 'better adult' is a well-read one and so they encouraged me to read as much as possible and were (in hindsight) surprisingly lax with what I read, as long as it was a book. So I ended up drawing much different conclusions than they did about stuff.