Now imagine how much worse it'd be if more people were homeschooled and not exposed to opposing views. If their only source of information was a parent who believed in strange conspiracy theories and only associated with friends and family who had similar views.

School's greatest purpose is putting kids in a room with a couple dozen other kids that they may disagree with or even hate, and forcing them to learn how to deal with their existence.

Were you discussing high politics in the 5th grade or something? Because there's little opposing views in school up to say senior high school years!

So now school's purpose is no longer critical thinking but just socialisation with all social strata.

>Were you discussing high politics in the 5th grade or something?

Yes? We talked about the news and recent events in class around that time. It wasn't anything profound, but our classes definitely talked about it. This was also in the years following 9/11, so it was an unavoidable topic. We even had mock elections where we'd "vote" for real, current politicians.

If I'd only heard about the news and world happenings from home, I'd have a very different and far narrower view of things.

And it's not just politics. No clue why you assumed that. Schools put you in a room with kids from different backgrounds, different interests, different likes and dislikes. I see a lot of praise about homeschooling on HN, but the ones I've encountered (including cousins in my own family) mostly come from very isolated religious families seeking to shield their kids from the outside world. Maybe it's different for very wealthy people growing up in the valley or with other great resources provided to them, but most of the homeschooled people I've been around have had trouble acclimating to a world that isn't sanitized for their existence.

I'm not sure how you define "high politics", but certainly students discuss politics at younger ages than that. I would be surprised to find a school that doesn't include discussions on current events at pretty much every age level. Obviously the teachers had to be careful because even though they may feel strongly about an issue, most of them don't want to consciously bias the discussion.

I can even remember a teacher having us write a letter asking that a government facility in our region not be closed down because it would affect people in our class. I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade at the time. In 5th grade we had to write letters to soldiers fighting in the Gulf War - something that I have very mixed feelings about today because I do feel that supporting troops fighting in a war overseas is a highly political act.

Not sure why you were downvoted: the traction fake news, anti 5G, and anti vaccine movements get clearly show that there is an issue where critical thinking is concerned.

I'm afraid that unschooling correlates to parents being antivac, anti 5G, etc.

Well, for example in France, the category where you can find the most antimask persons is high educated women in their 50s.

Source? In all statistics I have seen up to now, men were more likely to be antimask then women. So French women seems to be outliers.

A thousand or so vocal Facebook users found on anti-mask groups were surveyed... Not exactly the epitome of representativity...

94% of them say they will refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19... Both educated and anti-science. Maybe their educational system failed them, or there are other important factors at play.

57% believe in a global Zionist conspiracy theory... 52% think the Illuminati are attempting to control the population...

Men are more likely to be anti mask in USA since in USA right wing tend to be anti science. In many areas of Europe right wing is more pro science than left wing though, so the roles becomes reversed.

I live in Europe and our right wing is taking clues from American right wing. They are more anti mask then average. The German demonstrations against masks were right wing for example.

Where were left wing people in Europe more strongly against masks then center or right?

Isn't German right wing in large parts religious so it is closer to USA than many other European right wing parties? I live in Sweden and right wing is much more pro mask here.

The only reason the right wing is pro-mask in Sweden is because it lets them be contrarian to the left-wing government. If the government had been requiring masks, the right-wing in Sweden would be against it.

This says nothing about population of people who homeschool.

Realistically, homeschool is done overwhelmingly by women. If it was social norm, it would be expected from women and not from men.

So, I guess, if women would really overall more antimask and anti-vaccine and anti-science, it would show up generation later.

Source? We do unschooling and know a lot of families who unschool and exactly zero of them are antivaxers or antimaskers. We tend to end up here exactly because we believe in the scientific method.