Conversation

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.
David Pinsen
@dpinsen
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
What about the positive aspects (high-trust community, etc.)? Seculars and the semi-religious have attempted to replicate that without the religion, but it seems hard to do. E.g., with Judaism, as
@lukeford
has noted, non-orthodox communities seem to die.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@dpinsen
and
@lukeford
I agree that it's harder to create lasting trusting communities without religion, though I imagine non-religious homeschool communities (and maybe experimental 'free-range' schools?) probably have similar levels of high trust.
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Michael
@Tweeb0
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
and
@dpinsen
I would advise to continue questioning evolution, just because you were taught with some brain washing tactics that evolution was a lie, doesn’t mean it is all true.