I've been hearing this one a lot lately. I thought perhaps it was dying off, but no...it's back lately and seemingly as strong as ever. IT is the idea that homeschooled children are "sheltered". It seems that people who know very few homeschoolers have this idea that we all sit around our kitchen tables forcing our kids to do school work for 6-8 hours a day just like kids in school sit around doing school work in desks all day. I've been in the homeschooling community since my oldest was born 12 years ago and I honestly don't think I've ever met a homeschooling family quite like that. Granted, that may be because they are at home sitting around the kitchen table and we never see them (lol), but in all seriousness I just don't think that type of homeschooling family is very common. People are by nature social creatures. Even the most reserved of us crave human contact and a change in scenery on occasion. And even the most reserved homeschoolers I know get out more often than your average school child for field trips and learning opportunities outside their homes.
Forgive me. I'm getting side tracked by trying (once again) to explain that homeschoolers aren't as "sheltered" as people might think. Flogging that horse was not what I inteded to do however. Where I was really going with this diatribe was slightly different this time. I was thinking about this whole "sheltered" business again the other day while explaining to a mom on a forum about all the interesting things we do in an average day, when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe I should turn this question around. Maybe the question isn't "Are homeschooled children sheltered?", because in reality all children are, and should be, sheltered (i.e. protected) to a certain extent. Maybe the question should instead be which group, on average, is REALLY more sheltered in our society? Is it the children who are at home or those who are in school? Many people whose experience is solely school based seem to think that homeschooled children come up short, but having been a public schooled child myself and now seeing the other side of the coin, I beg to differ.
In an average week, my supposedly "sheltered" children go many different places and communicate with many different people. They might take swimming lessons from a beloved swimming coach with children of various ages, learn Japanese phrases and culture from their sensei who is from Japan, or call the naturalist on staff at the local nature center to talk about the cool snake they found. They might get into a dinosaur discussion with a childrens museum staff member while on a field trip (which is very different from a lecture by the same staff member!). They might go stargazing at midnight, watch and discuss world news because it's INTERESTING to them, chat on line with friends from all over the globe, ask the vet questions about instruments and tests and animal health while taking the dog to the vet. They might scour our cookbook collection looking for something new to fix for dinner, spend time catching snowflakes and looking at their shapes, or spend days on end watching birds at the birdfeeder and learning to identify them by their cries ("here comes a nuthatch!"). They might decide they want to try their hand at cartooning, rocket building, gourmet cooking, piano, or ballet. They might grow their own food in the backyard, take "behind the scenes" tours of the local museum (because they are the only kids who come in there during the day), or ask the waitress at our favorite Indian restaurant about her trip to India, or do any number of other things.
These are just a sample of the average, every day types of activities and interactions my kids have. They aren't special, once in a lifetime experiences. They aren't things that we go out of our way to do specifically for their "educational benefits". We don't live in a big city. As a matter of fact, we live in the country outside a small rural town. We don't drive long distances very often or spend a lot of money going exotic places. These are all things we do within a short drive from our home on a single income, yet, we communicate with people of varying ethnicities, economic levels, and backgrounds regularly by simply going about our lives and doing the things that interest us.
Compare this with the average experience of public schooled children. Unless they move several times a year, the vast majority of public schooled students are limited to a small number of teachers and a small number of classrooms. They go to ONE school with ONE cafeteria serving limited food selections. They are exposed to ONE pre-determined set of children, all of whom are the same age, and most of whom are from the same geographic area and most likely from a similar economic background. They are expected to learn ONE lesson at a time from ONE pre-chosen curriculum and ONLY when told to do so. They are never allowed to leave the watchful eye of their teacher, nor are they allowed to leave the "safety" of the school walls and fenced in playgrounds, except on rare field trips, during which they are kept under even stricter supervision than at school. Their daily experiences are, on average, extremely limited in number and restricted by highly controlled circumstances. Even after these children leave the school to go home, what they do with their time is STILL determined by the school via homework and at home assignments. It seems to me that it is school children, not homeschooled children, who are more "sheltered" - from themselves, from others, and from learning.
