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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@dpinsen
I generally view all the negative aspects of the homeschooling as bound with the religion - for example, the only thing I learned about evolution was that it was a lie, and also there were very strong, oppressive hierarchical structures inside the families.
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Austin M. Craig
@austinmcraig
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
As a weird religious kid who went to public school from K-12, I can confirm the exact same impressions. For the entire stretch. Torture, and one I never understood while there. Everybody treated it as “normal” (there are still “normal” things I feel this way about today).
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Austin M. Craig
@austinmcraig
Replying to
@austinmcraig
and
@Aella_Girl
I remember the day my parents dropped me off at college because it felt like the greatest day of my life (to that point). Was incidentally a weird religious college, but that’s a tale for another day. Out if the frying pan 🍳 , into the fire🔥.
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Lulie
@reasonisfun
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I'm curious to hear from secular/hippy homeschoolers on the community/trust side of things. (
@_FitCrit
?) I had mixed friends, and found schoolies tended more cruel and/or caught up in judgement. Libertarian home-ed folk may've been less community-oriented? Escaped my notice.
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