There is a very hot discussion going on over on Democratic Underground about home schooled kids. To be specific, the question that was raised was “would you hire someone who was home schooled?”
I answered the question very bluntly, and very truthfully.
I said “no.”
There are some very simple reasons I won’t hire a home-schooled kid, and whether you want to believe it or not, none of them have to do with the fact that the overwhelming majority of home-schooled kids today are that way because their Fundamentalist wacko parents don’t want them to be taught that the Earth is a day older than 6,000 years or that Adam and Eve didn’t ride dinosaurs. My reason for not being willing to hire a home-schooled kid has a very logical, religion-neutral basis.
To be honest, if your kid is home schooled, then I as a (hypothetical) potential employer have no independent, certifiable, verifiable way of knowing that your kid learned anything at all.
You see, when you graduate high school, you get a diploma. That’s an actual certification that you learned a certain minimal amount of information required to get that piece of paper. If you take the GED, then that’s a certification that you know a reasonable amount of what someone who went through high school knows.
However, if you were home schooled through high school, then all I have to vouch for your knowledge is, essentially, a note from your mom.
You see, home schooling has no standards. In the vast majority of areas it has no oversight. For all I know, your “home schooling” could essentially have just been a visit to Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University. I have no way of knowing that you actually gained the basic knowledge that you are going to need to fulfill the basic requirements of any job.
There’s also the socialization matter. In schools, even the most exclusive private schools, kids are still forced to interact and deal with people who are not “like them.” They are exposed to different ideas, different viewpoints, and different ways of handling problems. We are an imitative species, just like our monkey brethren. (Which some of you might not have learned about in your “home schools.”) When a kid doesn’t get to socialize and interact with people not like him* he loses one of the most important skills he’s going to need in the real world. We learn early on, and sometimes painfully, how to properly react to people we don’t have things in common with or perhaps don’t like. When you homeschool your kids, you’re wrapping them in a little cocoon and when they have to deal with an obstreperous manager or customer they might not be ready to handle it.
Now, I will say that I will hire a home-”schooled” kid who managed to get accepted to (and hopefully graduate from) a University. Again, college transcripts are, to me, in the same category as the high school diplomas that your home schooled kids won’t have. It’s an impartial, independent, certification that you know something. Or, at least, that you should. Someone in a position to truly evaluate your knowledge and skills has given it their blessing. That’s fine.
So, if you’re home-”schooling” your kids, I personally think you’re doing them a disservice, but it’s your right. But don’t ask me to hire them without making them take the GED or some form of independent testing to prove that you actually taught them something real.
One thing you might not learn in a home “school,” and to be honest not enough people learn in real school, is that the proper way to refer to someone of indeterminate gender in English is to use the masculine. It’s not sexist, it’s not “antiquated,” it’s the way the bloody language works. Deal with it.
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