The other day, someone visiting my political blog asked me about socialization. To be more exact, he said,

I do have a burning question that I have been meaning to ask. When it comes to homeschooling your kids; how do you ensure they get the social interaction with peers that they would not get in a traditional school system? The reason I ask is I have met kids who are homeschooled and get tremendous educations, but they have the social skills of a houseplant.

I answered by rattling off the list of things they do with other children and pointing out that socializing with mixed ages of children (and even adults), as homeschoolers do, is arguably more beneficial than being sequestered with only a group of same-aged peers all day.

What I didn’t get into is why I do not want my kids socialized by the public school system.

Look, I don’t want to get caught up in railing against the public school system. For the most part, it is counter-productive to foster an us/them mentality, but - and this is a big but - there is much to criticize with the public school system and when it is being held as the standard-bearer against which we must measure our success, then, well, criticize I will.

I had an experience the other day that really drove home for me the major draw-back to public school socialization.

I don’t want to get into it in detail, but basically there are two kids in our neighborhood who have very little supervision. They come over by our apartment and cause trouble with my sons and when I try to talk to them about it, they are very mouthy and disrespectful.

To make matters worse, the other day, I told the boy to stop coming over and causing trouble with my son and the girl started yelling at me, with that head-swiveling attitude that is all the rage these days. As it turned out, her mother had pulled up in her SUV, which emboldened her. The mother immediately started yelling at me that my kids are not so perfect. I agreed and said that’s why I watch them.

I told the mother that she needs to watch her children. She argued that it is my responsibility to come over to her building and get her when there is a problem and I am not to address her brats kids. We went back and forth about whether she should be watching them or I should drop what I am doing and go to her house every time her kids are causing trouble, but she just yelled and swore. I learned that you cannot reason with people like that, especially when she jumped out of her vehicle and threatened to beat me up.

The kids and I went in. I sat them down and talked about what just happened. I apologized for not walking away sooner. I never should have gotten into it with her. I did conduct myself more maturely than she did - I didn’t swear or yell, or make threats - but I did call her a name, in the context of pointing out how low-class it is to swear like that. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire (and it was why she threatened to beat me up, which was a funny way to respond to my charges of being low-class, which needless to say is not the word I used).

I told them that it is important to have experiences with people who act like that because there are people in the world who act like that. I was caught off guard because I thought people like that only existed in high-school, or on the Jerry Springer Show, which I am now convinced is not just acting. I forgot how I should respond - by walking away and not antagonizing - because I have spent the better part of my adult life avoiding situations like that.

That might sound like an endorsement of the public school socialization. The public schools are full of kids who have role models like that woman. In fact, my son was in the same class as her daughter when he was in public school. It is definitely a place where they can gain experience dealing with people like that, but that is not what I recommend

According to Wikipedia, socialization is the process by which human beings or animals learn to adopt the behavior patterns of the community in which they live.

The question then is, where do I want my kids to learn to adopt behavior patterns?

At home, with me guiding them and teaching them how to appropriately handle a bad situation? Or at school, where they are exposed daily to children that are learning their behavior from parents who swear and use violence to solve problems (and in many cases, create the problems) and where they will often have little-to-no adult guidance to help them learn to work through those situations?

I know my answer.