When a child is enrolled in public school, he or she is under the guidance of an adult instructor and expected to follow a set of rules set in stone, and to behave accordingly. Disrupting the learning of classmates is a serious offense. Indeed the definition of socialization is the development of group-based functional social skills, towards an end. Oddly enough, if you remember your time in public school, sans-bias its very likely you remember partaking in very little of this. In order for true socialization to occur, the rules and structure would need to be decided upon by the collective of students as a whole, socialization is the ability to navigate the challenges of working together. Most schools do not offer that opportunity. In many cases a child can successfully graduate from all levels of public education without making a single friend, saying hello to their peers, or working collaboratively at all with other classmates. If public school were the true source of development for social skills in our youth, it would not be following the structures it continues to maintain today.
Furthermore, a homeschooled child is expected through nature to participate with their instructor and any other learning partners, develop plans and advocate for themselves on their needs, or to express their needs. A one-to-one home-based educational platform regardless of ability or philosophy does require the child to adapt socially, to function on a constantly social basis of interaction. In a public school the child can zone out, or so long as they are interacting with the manipulatives handed to them, or the tools provided, they are considered to be sufficiently socialized for remaining well behaved in a classroom of 10-30 other children. Those who are struggling to remain diligently focused on their tasks, and obey the rules of socialising are said to be performing poorly.
In my experience as a mother, the friends my children were making at school lacked the social skills outside of the controlled environment to function comfortably in a socially-focused scenario. They were uninterested in their environment, and constantly waiting on adult intervention to dictate what was right or wrong. If a child is able to exist comfortably within the unrealistic confines of the classroom, how are they to expand and generalize these things to the outside world where many people work, live, and exist.
It is in my autistic child's best interest, if they are to smoothly transition into an independent living situation, to be able to maintain a job while remembering to pay their bills, maintain a healthy social life, eat well, and be diligent in all manners of self-care.. to have role models in their social environments who have the most opportunity to excel in these ways. The most socialized students are often the homeschooled students, and this intensity in naturalistic intervention is a non-intrusive, and most typical path of growth that a child with ASD can experience akin to their neurotypical peers.
There are of course exceptions to this concept, children in public school can develop good socialization skills, particularly through an intensive extracurricular schedule, through play-based learning environments, Montessori-styled early years centers, and kindergarten programs. The challenge to this however, is that they do not remedy the ill effects experienced in the containment of the mainstream classroom itself, it lends itself to putting a band-aid over it, masking it, or worse generalize the bad habits. Often times a student from a Montessori-styled program may struggle transitioning as they go up through the grades, particularly a child with ASD. Integration is of course a favoured option over segregation in most communities, however the individual child's well-being needs to be prioritized above the rest of the class when considering their personal development, needs for success and expectations. In a truly socialized classroom, the idea of independent learning plans, is a given.
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