by Lori Faith

Created on: March 08, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

My preteen son smiled with anticipation as the cashier innocently asked, "and why aren't you in school, today?" The simple question, asked one hundred times by one hundred cashiers, is by far his favorite. Informing the uninformed has become an opportunity for which he lies in wait.

"I'm homeschooled," he sweetly replies, "which means that I am in school 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You see, the world has become my classroom. I am no longer limited by four walls and a curriculum that dictates my learning."

The cashier gasps as she looks at me in disdain, "but what about socialization?"

Ah, the question of the hour. I stifle the urge to reply that my son has just communicated quite well with a cashier, thirty years his elder, in a grocery store and choose to educate the cashier on the definition of the word itself.

I begin by telling the cashier that according to dictionary.com, the word socialize means "to make social; make fit for life in companionship with others."

As I asked the cashier, I now ask you as the reader, to tell me when, in her years since high school graduation, has she been in a situation with 25 people, exactly her own age, and a person in charge who is fifteen to twenty years her senior? In the public schools, the teacher spends the majority of her day disciplining the disruptive half of the class while the rest of the children are told to quietly finish busy work. The children are only allowed to talk and communicate with one another during a fifteen minute lunch period and for five minutes between classes. Where is true socialization taking place in public schools?

True socialization is accomplished when a child learns to interact with children and adults of all ages in many different environments. Homeschooled children are given the opportunity to learn true socialization on a daily basis. While public school children are hidden away in their classrooms, homeschooled children are out in the world communicating with cashiers, learning real-life lessons and living as truly socialized members of their communities.

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