By Reverend Brenda Hoffman

Children are born as social beings. Therefore, schooling is not necessary to "make" someone social. Truth be told, whenever you think about it, you cannot "make" a child do anything. Furthermore, what do you call interaction with parents, siblings and family? This is also social when you think about it.

There are many great joys to homeschooling. One of these is that children tend to make friends with a diverse group of people from all age groups and with a variety of interests. This is because these children spend much of their time interacting within the community.

Schools force children to be segregated by age group. Where else in life are people segragated in this manner? No where. In fact, such segragation creates the generation gaps that cause adults to misunderstand children, and children to know nothing about adults.

So, stop and take a moment to think about the "socialization" of school...

Contrary to "socializing" children, schools create a breeding ground for isolated cliques to form, segregated by clothing style, music style, popularity, money and status of personal interests. This creates a hostage-like environment in which children have little power. This then tends to breed a cruel peer culture in which children vie for dominance and territory. Children who are marked as being even slightly "uncool" (having the wrong hair cut, the wrong clothes, unique characteristics, etc) by the dominant peer groups are referred to as losers, and the harassment these rejected children endure can be socially and psychologically devastating.

The Columbine School Massacre exposed the sobering truth about the devastating affects of children who are rejected by their peers. This doesn't mean that all children will turn to such drastic "measures," but public school children WILL attempt to clone themselves according to the peer culture. In contrast, homeschool children tend to make friends with people based on internal qualities and genuine shared interests rather than on outward appearances and social group membership - something that is much more important than the trivialities of clothing and music.

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