Cohousing-L Mailing List: Communities and home schooling

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

At Sharingwood we have 5 families with school aged kids. Three of the 
families send their kids to public school, 1 family has kids in private 
school and 1 family home schools. There are 4 families up the road who 
home school.

Two of families which send their kids to the local elementary school 
are active volunteers in the classrooms of their kids at least one day 
a week. Two families are also active in the local co-op preschool.

My observations about this in our own community and from the kids up 
the street:  The kids who have been, and are being home schooled have 
trouble being very social with other kids.  This is true even in the 
highly social environment of cohousing.  They tend to stick close to 
mommy in new situations and when placed in an environment with other 
kids tend to "hide" in corners and such. They have trouble taking 
turns, sharing and understanding the give and take of social play.   
The kids who have experienced the social environments of either 
preschool and public or private school, seem to adapt better to social 
situations, seem to have better social skills in groups and tend to be 
the leaders in the groups they form.  I have heard of, but not actually 
seen a large scale study on home schooled kids which tracked them from 
home to adult hood. Does anybody have access to this?

If you define a child's world in terms of their parents you can of 
course have a huge impact in transferring your beliefs into your kids.  
This is why so many religious parents who can afford it home school.  
This is not necessarily bad but can be limiting.  One of the values of 
public school is that it takes the kid away from their parents and 
opens up new viewpoints and ideas.  Scary? Depends on your politics I 
guess.  I looked at the religious curriculum of one of the neighbors 
doing home schooling up the road.  It was terribly  incomplete in terms 
of history, politics, and science. Reading, writing and arithmetic were 
pretty well covered, although using a pedagogy which has been discarded 
by most schools. (punishment and shame for failure).

Obviously with a whole host of interesting adults around, a cohousing 
community offers a lot of educational enrichment to the kids.  This has 
been true for my children, age 3 and 6. They get informal chess 
lessons, cooking lessons, art opportunities, nature lessons, motorcycle 
engine lessons, building lessons  .....you name it.  If an adult  is 
outside doing something the odds are high one or more kids will wander 
by to find out what is going on.  Last night the power went out and the 
kids learned about generators.  The educational opportunities are 
enormous and endless.  I continue to be struck by the leadership skills 
I have seen demonstrated by some of our cohousing kids.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood.