NotSheep

For years, the “socialisation” question has been thrown at home-educators: how will our children learn to participate in society if they don’t go to school. The answer most of us give is that school is not the best place (or even a good place) to teach social skills. Putting large numbers of children of the same age together and expecting them to learn appropriate behaviour from each other is optimistic at best. Children develop good social skills by being around people who already have good social skills - that is, usually, people older than themselves. Home-educated children have more opportunity to do that than those who are in school for long hours, then cooped up doing homework for more hours and spending the few remaining hours with friends who are the same age as themselves (because that’s who you get to meet in school). In recent years, there’s been a push towards schools offering childcare before and after school; many schools are now open from as early as 7 a.m. and have after-school clubs which run until 6 p.m. or later. Schools are being encouraged to offer even longer hours: there’s a school near us which runs a youth club from 6.30 to 9.30 every weekday evening. When are children supposed to spend time with their parents, their siblings… in fact, anyone other than their peers? School, say home-educators, is an artificial environment in which good social skills cannot be expected to develop.

With that in mind, go and read this and this.

The IPPR report isn’t published yet (it’s due for release next week), but here’s a taste of what it will say:

Nick Pearce, from IPPR, said these figures pointed to an “increasing disconnect” between children and adults.

He said youngsters were learning how to behave from one another instead of from adults.

“They are not learning how to behave - how to get on in life - as they need to.”

The researchers concluded that the lack of adult interaction has left British teenagers increasingly vulnerable to failure.

In Britain we have come to both demonise and fear our teenagers: the yobs, the hoodies, the street gangs - the Asbo generation which terrorises neighbourhoods.
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Such gloom is in contrast to evidence that there has never been a better time to be young.
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More British teenagers leave school with good qualifications and go to university than ever before. Youth unemployment has fallen dramatically in the last 25 years. Today’s parents are richer than ever before and young people have access to an extraordinary range of activities and opportunities undreamt of even a generation ago.

And yet the mental well-being of our adolescents is among the worst in Europe.

In contrast to their European counterparts, they spend far more time with their peers than with adults where they miss out on the development of what are called “soft skills” - the social and personal development which is increasingly vital in a country built around service industry.

The conclusions are obvious - but far from easy. We need to repair the disconnect between our adolescents and the adult world.

It seems that home-educators were right all along (again): the best place for learning how to get along in the real world is (surprise!) the real world.