Socialization

I’ve been read­ing arti­cles at Fam­i­lies of the Tal­ent­ed & Gift­ed this morn­ing. I could write a LOT about the thoughts sparked by this mate­r­i­al. I’ll try not to flood you 🙂

These two def­i­n­i­tions, though:
def: Social­iza­tion (n.) — the adop­tion of the val­ues of a group.
def: Social skills train­ing (n.) — learn­ing to inter­act with others.
strike me as being at the heart of the whole “home­schooled kids aren’t prop­er­ly social­ized” debate.

You know what? Those crit­ics are right. The con­flict is in the val­ue judgment—is social­iza­tion a good thing? Crit­ics of home­school­ing make an inher­ent assump­tion, that “the adop­tion of the val­ues of a group” is good and impor­tant. Many home­school­ers, myself includ­ed, disagree.

No, I don’t want shad­owkatt to adopt the val­ues of any group. I want her to devel­op her own val­ues, and live by them as an hon­or­able per­son. If that means she is poor­ly social­ized, then so be it. In fact, I con­sid­er it some­thing to be proud of.

Social skills train­ing, on the oth­er hand, IS valuable—and we’ve cer­tain­ly done that. She has excel­lent social skills, as I fig­ure any­one here who knows her will agree.

The term “peer” does not, in essence, mean peo­ple of the same age, but refers to indi­vid­u­als who can inter­act at an equal lev­el around issues of com­mon interest.
— W. C. Roedell

Yes, the abil­i­ty to inter­act with one’s peers is important—but I agree with Roedell. Peo­ple the same age aren’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly one’s peers.