How homeschooling affects children’s social skills

There is always a debate on the topic if the child will be able to do well in the domains that span curricular and extra-curricular activities when homeschooled rather than attending a usual public education system. It turns out that the key element put forth against the homeschooling system is that it will hinder the child from gaining social skills. Based on the results of the various surveys that have been done on this topic,  it seems that the claims that take on homeschooling for depriving the kids with social awareness are somewhat false. Hence it would be interesting to discuss if the homeschooling is really a substance that could leave the child devoid of the communication and behavioral skills with peers and outside world.

From the concerns that come from few people who are not in favor or don’t like the system of homeschooling, it is very much obvious that they are complaining that child will not be able to socialize out much.  According to them, as a result of this outcome from homeschooling, the child will not be able to correlate the situations of their peers. In this system, it is not guaranteed that the educators may it be parents or the one who is hired, will be a trained professionals like the school teachers, thus paving way for the non-supporters of homeschooling to argue that how is it possible to expect a student who has been homeschooled to get an education of standard.

What does researcher say?

In a report that was generated after analyzing kids from both the systems namely the public education and the homeschooling system, in the year 2010, by Widener Law Review, it was found that the kids who had homeschooling performed very well such that they outweighed the academic achievement levels in few cases when compared to that of the students going to the public schools. Apart from it, they were brilliantly achieving the similar kind of results that were obtained by their other system counterparts. It was also thrown into the light, the fact that the homeschooling children didn’t do any less when it came to the topic of socialization and they were good at communication. In a study where the Vineland Adaptive Behavior scale was used, homeschooling students performed better against those who were attending a formal school education, in the arena of communication and daily life needed social skills. The scale mentioned here is a diagnostic tool which has got a good name as well tester in measuring the skills needed for a human’s social life.

Dealing the opposite side

Yet there are downsides that are apparently present in the system of homeschooling. It isn’t a better system when it comes to the case of a child’s social mobility with other kids of the same age. From the reports of many case studies which were done on homeschooling, it revealed that the children were very well praised for being too good in communication with people who are older than them in age, say starting from an age difference of 3 to 4 years. Analytically, there is no evidence of how the child would behave with the same age group when compared between the two systems that were discussed here. Thus this is one place that leaves a gap for the people pessimistic about the homeschool system to speak strongly in their favor.