this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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I think the inherent problem of homeschooling is you will eventually have to leave home. Learning how to deal with shitty teachers, peers who are bullies, bigotry, and so on are all part of life after you leave school. Obviously, these are things that shouldn't happen and ideally we'd eliminate these problems in a functioning society. But we don't live in that world, nor can we build it if we don't confront problems in front of us.
So when homeschooled kids eventually step out into the workforce, they encounter those same bullies, those same shitty instructors, those same bigots, etc. but they're not 10, they're 25 and have no idea what to do. They don't know how to emotionally respond and their response isn't appropriate for their age, so the problems are a worse experience than if they went through public school.
Essentially, it's sweeping the rest of the world under the rug. Even the best parents with the best homeschooling skills ever can't live forever to maintain that environment. Some day, they have to let go and hope their kids have the skills to handle themselves. Except that won't happen because the world is the other way.
I think you make a good point and it somewhat accurately represents my own experience. I've often felt like I'm behind socially. Not in that I'm immature in the sense of entitled or dysregulating, but maybe the way to put it is simply inexperienced. Now some of that feeling may be owed to other causes, like ADHD or anxiety, but I think being homeschooled along with the other stuff made it a perfect storm for it kinda thing.
Like in my case, I would not quite agree with: "They don’t know how to emotionally respond and their response isn’t appropriate for their age" Because that makes it sound to me like I'd be dysregulating and acting out. For me, I think it's more like, I'm not well acclimated, for better or worse. And I say for better or worse because let's be real, being well acclimated to the horribleness that is capitalism isn't necessarily a good thing. Like that saying, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" (or words to that effect). But when it comes to raw survival, you do need to be able to deal with it in the day to day.
To some extent, you can pave over these things with politeness to get by. It just makes for a very lonely existence if you're not doing well at building and maintaining lasting ties with others (which requires maintenance and vulnerability, not just being a person that is "nice" or "fun"). But it's harder to bond through, say, shared experiences if you didn't share the same experiences. So this is one of the ways homeschooling can set people apart.
I probably didn't phrase this very well. By "emotional response," I mean the feelings you have internally and mentally. The thoughts in your head. For example, say your flight gets delayed. And internally, you get angry and flustered. You start doom spiraling about how this will destroy your life. A healthier response would be to acknowledge you're angry, are justified in feeling angry, but then accepting your situation and to start thinking about your options. The person having the first type of response acts out like a child where they start screaming at airport employees, while the second type of response is one of a well-adjusted adult.
I think people who are homeschooled have something similar when they deal with uncomfortable social situations, like bullies or bad leadership (obviously they aren't going to have a tantrum at the airport). They get stuck on the part where they're angry or scared, but don't know how to accept there's a problem and to start finding solutions. When you go to school, you learn how to mentally navigate these problems in order to make physical changes.
I do agree it's bullshit we have to acclimate ourselves to the horribleness of capitalism. Schools reinforce capitalist ideology. But again, as socialists, don't we have to know how to be adjusted to capitalist society so we can navigate it? A socialist who doesn't know how to interact with people conditioned by capital to be anti-communist will have trouble converting those people to the cause.
It's a fine line and definitely unclear how much homeschooling can help or impede a baby leftist. More people have been completely destroyed by capitalist education than have been converted to communism.
Ahh okay. I think I see your argument more clearly now. Though I'm skeptical as to whether that'd show up as a consistent theme in homeschooled people across the board. Some of it may be more down to other things, like if a person learned to "fight" when threatened (not necessarily physically or angrily) or learned to "fawn" or to flee (avoidance). As well as the extent to which a person was dealing with helicopter parents (jumping in to handle everything for them, bailing them out of bad situations, etc.) or parents who had an approach that more nurtured autonomy.
In theory yeah, but I guess then we'd need to get into the weeds of what it means to be adjusted to it in the first place and what's the difference between that and being okay without it, without wanting to fight back. A well-paid lawyer who is largely doing okay under capitalism might be well adjusted in the sense that they don't see much of a reason to oppose it fundamentally. A person who is struggling to pay rent, they can be adaptive to changing conditions, but the constant friction is going to put them at odds with the model of society.
So when I say "well adjusted," I'm more thinking of "sees themselves as a part of the system and is okay with that". Being able to navigate things even when you are not and see yourself as apart from it, I'd more call that adaptive. And it's questionable to me whether capitalist society is teaching much of anyone to be adaptive, other than throwing them to the wolves and saying "figure it out on your own and the blame is all on you if you fail." For example, people go to school, whether it's homeschool or public school, and they do a system where they're graded for assignments and if they get good grades, they're considered to be doing well. Then they go into a workforce that's more about experience and connections, that might give you a bad "grade" (performance review) as an excuse to not give you a raise and other such fuckery that really has nothing to do with the system of learning they grew up in.
Mind you, this is not intended to defend homeschooling exactly. More to say that I don't think we can simplify the behavioral results so easily.
First time I've seen someone that's gone through similar to what I've been through.Shit was rough, social relations are hard to maintain, and it defiinetly has negatively affected my education. Main thing I got out of it was a slight respite from stress via school, but the lack of structured learning has made things like studying theory more difficult for me than it probably should be.