As yall probably know, I was homeschooled from birth to the end of 'high school', and cut off from most secular culture - except for 3 months, when I attended public school at the age of 14, and ran into a lot of public school norms that shocked and confused me (cont).
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1. The wasted time. SO much wasted time. The whole day felt so slow, with lots of waiting and a tiny amount of learning inside it. I remember thinking I could have done the work of the whole homeschool day inside of 1-2 hours at home.
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2. The impersonalness of the teachers; it was disheartening when the teachers treated my work like it was just another thing on an assembly line of grades (which it was). It didn't feel like I was 'being taught by someone', but like I was pressing buttons in a teaching computer.
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3. The maturity level of the other kids. I'm not sure how 'legit' I'd view it today, but I remember distinctly thinking that the kids in public school felt approximately two years 'younger' - in jokes and mannerisms - than the other homeschooled kids I knew of the same age.
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4. The lack of community. Maybe this was partially me-specific because I was weird and religious, but it seemed true even beyond me - that you couldn't trust kids that weren't your friends. I was used to near-total trust in all the other kids I met in my life.
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Again, not sure how much my school experience was warped cause I was the weird religious kid - but overall it felt more fearful, more impersonal, and more useless than homeschooling did, by a significant margin. If I ever have kids I'm 100% keeping them away from public school.
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I was in public school for my K to 12 and this all sounds familiar. I skipped a lot of high school class and learned about stuff online (that was only 49% porn and sex stuff) and those days often felt more productive from a learning stand point. I was a weird atheist kid.
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Not totally sure - I think my social skills turned out pretty well, but the disconnect in culture made it hard. For example, I couldn't pick up on pop culture references or a lot of slang, which made interacting with other people awkward pretty often.
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