this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I would not quite agree with "They don't know how to emotionally respond..."

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.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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.

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.