I went to a good suburban high school. I remember once going to a lower-track English class to take a test for another class with the same teacher. I was surprised by the chaotic environment. The boys in the back of the class loudly carried on their own conversations, which the teacher must have noticed but ignored. This never happened in honors classes. ... These boys were being DE-socialized.
Interesting. I went to a good high school in a small college town in the 80s. Our 9th grade student teacher in honors English told us the same story about her different classes. Yet I took wood shop with some of the kids from the lower-track English classes and they were all perfectly behaved in shop class. Maybe they were more interested in shop. I don't know.
I agree with Old Dad about socializing and homeschooled kids, whether the reasons are for learning to interact or (in our case) just getting out of the house and being part of a big group of kids. My eldest will be homeschooling via online courses this coming year. We're fortunate that our city has a free after-school program in a building with a gym. It also has a skateboard park and huge fields. The kids can do sports, play games, and get homework help. They also have a pool table, a ping-pong table, and other sundry things. DS will probably spend 10-15 hours a week there. This program is one of those rare gems that seems to have survived successive bad economies completely intact.
