And we haven’t gotten controversial. I do recall having a one-sided conversation with someone who was so anti-homeschool ”no matter what”, we changed the subject.

I live in a suburban area with good schools. Our county department of education offers supplies and curriculum plans to any parents who home schooled. l was aware of a few home schooling families. Some feared letting their child mix with the general population. Others wanted to be in control of all instruction and social contact. i know one family of anti vaccers for any disease who live outside the town limits. Some ultra conservative families want no contact with children from other families and prefer to teach social studies from their own viewpoint. One father told me, ”I will tell my children what to think.” And I think many home schoolers do not want to entrust their child to stranger teachers or classmates. In rural areas, home schooling may be the only answer, or boarding school, especially for secondary school.

Our across-the-street neighbors home-schooled their three children via consortium. I think it was a combination of religious beliefs and a desire to keep to their own schedule, instead of to the local academic one. They had a vacation house in Maine, and they wanted to be able to go whenever they wanted. There was a whole network--one parent in the group taught math, another language arts, etc. The children were only able to befriend the others in the group or children from their church. At times it seemed to me that the three were a kind of science experiment. There was no reason why they needed to take AP Calculus at the age of 10. They swam, but they had to be elite. The oldest girl has shoulder surgery at 12, from too much butterfly. She developed an eating disorder too. They were nice kids, but everybody felt sorry for them. I was shocked that they were allowed to go away to college.

My neighbors decided to homeschool their 3 kids because the wife said, 'all they do in school is worksheets' -- she felt she could give her kids a more varied, more hands on, more tailored to their individual needs education than a bunch of standardized worksheets. The kids were fine, they were a nice family. The kids all decided to go back to public schools after a few years at home, for the social aspects. Oh, and the woman was already a stay-at-home mom, so the family wasn't giving up an income.

Members of our family, both DH and mine, have chosen to home school their children. In both cases, it is for religious reasons. They make it a point to expose them to extra curricular activities and are sociable children. What I find though is that they only socialize within their church families. I don't think it really prepares the children for the world and the different people, views, etc. that they will encounter in life. Hopefully, it doesn't make them close-minded individuals.

One father told me, ”I will tell my children what to think.”

I am a retired teacher and what we teachers do (at least all the ones I ever worked with in my almost 30 years) is teach children HOW to think. It is not our job to teach them what to think and I would never have told my son what to think, either.

I had a student in my last year of teaching who had been home schooled before coming to us. He had several siblings who were home-schooled and two others who were in public school. All those in public school were receiving special education services which is why they stopped teaching them at home. The child in my class was very disturbed and to be honest, a complete nightmare in class. It was no wonder his mom couldn't handle him or the two other siblings they sent to us. Oddly, they pulled him out the next year. I ran into him at a store that year. Still a bit out of control with mom nowhere to be seen. I hope he has been successful in the last five years. He was bright and I actually liked him in spite of his behavior!

ETA: I think home schooling can be a great option for some kids. I can understand doing it when local schools are not rigorous and welcoming places. I think it is a shame when children are pulled out for religious reasons alone.

Oh, and in Virginia, the state has specific and strict requirements and guidelines that parents need to follow for each curricular area and every grade level.

It is a very personal decision, one that I personal wouldn't do, but I can see the positives.

I only knew two families. Similar to orchid and faft.

One was upstate NY. The mom didn't agree with the public school curriculum. She was part of a group and they got together at times and shared lessons and activities.

The other family was religious and didn't want their children in the public school due to religious restrictions.

Kids that are home schooled can still participate in local sports, music schools, gymnastics etc as a way to intermingle.

There is more than one way of doing this.

Eld, do you mean there is more than one way of doing this? Or maybe "that is one way of doing this"?

The only person I know that homeschools is the woman who does my hair. She homeschools only one of her kids, and it is because he was being ruthlessly bullied, and neither the school authorities nor the perpetrators "parents" even attempted to fix the problem. He does online school at home, and both she and online instructors teach him. He is in a theatre group, a sports team through their church and a few other activities, and he is thriving. It is a shame she had to remove her kid rather than the evil little brats tormenting him being punished or better yet, expelled and prosecuted, but it works for them, She hoped that by high school they can try regular school again if he wants to. If he doesn't. she and her husband say he can finish all his schooling online if he wishes. Sometimes the option to homeschool is the only good option out there.

Elmer, thanks for starting a separate thread for this topic. It's an interesting topic that deserves it's own post.😁

I have an engineering friend/work colleague whose four children are homeschooled. My friend and his wife are a delightful, warm, fun Muslim family. They actually now have five children having just had a baby. And yikes, my friend is 51 now. But that's for another topic 😄 Both my friend and his wife each have two masters' degrees, my friend's being in engineering, so they're both quite educated. My friend's wife has an MBA and I'm not recalling the second degree at the moment.

I learned a lot about the rigors of homeschooling through my friend as I didn't know much about it. I don't know the specific program they follow, but I know that their children are far above their peers in public schools. Their 13 year old son at the time was reading at a college level. The 11 year old built his own computer from scratch.

They have a "classroom" with classmates that they meet virtually with once or twice a week. A couple of other days of the week are also spent with their classmates doing various activities. The kids also participate in different sports, like soccer and baseball. So they are getting tons of socialization. From what I can tell, they are getting a more advanced education than they could be getting in public schools.

Educating a child is the primary responsibility of the parents. Our society (USA) provides parents with four ways of accomplishing that task: 1. Public school, 2. private school, 3. homeschooling and 4. hybrid combinations (e.g. public school plus hiring a tutor for certain subjects giving a child difficulty OR homeschooling plus public school for gym class, etc.).

Since the parents are primarily responsible, homeschooling is the method that allows the parents to fulfill that responsibility directly themselves and, therefore, needs to be available. Making it illegal, as it is (was?) in Germany is immoral because it thwarts the parents' ability to fulfill their responsibility.

Am I saying all children should be homeschooled? No. Am I saying homeschooling a specific child will always result in the best outcome? No. However, public schooling and private schooling do not always guarantee the best outcome either.

Since the primary responsibility resides with the parents, that does not mean if they avail themselves of a public or private school for their child that they are off the hook. Reneging that responsibility is one of the biggest education problems we have in the USA. Parents need to keep tabs on their children - make sure they are attending school, doing homework, etc. AND keep tabs on the education their children are receiving.

I'm just glad to see the balanced answers. Whew

I dont think it’s one-size fits all when it comes to education. At one time I admit I leaned a little bit that way but I was pretty young and naive back then. There have been so many strides made with the study of learning disabilities since I attended elementary and middle school, I am constantly amazed at what parents are telling me about how much better their child learns and thrives so much better when taught in the proper environment.

And not just LD; we all know there are children who are bullied, etc, who do better in smaller, quieter environments that a home-schooling situation can provide. I know it cannot be easy these days for the teacher, whether that teacher is a parent or classroom teacher.

I do believe as children get older, they need to assimilate if possible into some high school or other classroom instruction to prepare them for college. A neighbor’s child runs on the HS track team and takes physics and higher math classes at the high school now but all their kids (4) were home schooled earlier. She said she could teach her but felt the school could do a better job and she needed to be with a peer group more at 16.

wish, I agree that some parents are too ready to expect the schools to provide the entirety of their education, and to be fully aware of what their children need. Parents must participate as well, and be aware of what their child needs and wants, not just what the parent wants.

Our niece began to home school her youngest child after he had such a negative experience when he started attending school. His teacher had a gruff, severe teaching style and seemingly thought it unnecessary to treat very young students with compassion or kindness. He became very frightened at attending school, so our niece raised the issue with the school principal, to no avail. Niece is a stay at home mom, so it's fortunate that she is able to home school and her son gets lots of socializing from engaging in sports and other activities.

We live in a very rural area with only one high school in the county.

We have friends, now in their late 50s, who homeschooled their two children. They are very wealthy and somewhat conservative. We understood their reasoning was they didn’t want their kids exposed to temptations that most all kids experience when around other kids - drugs, premarital sex, simple teenage rebellion, etc. Their kids did not participate in sports or clubs or any activities at all. They stayed home.

Predictably, as soon as they turned 18, they bounced hard toward ”the other side.” The boy has been in and out of jail numerous times and is estranged from the family. I believe the girl has several children but has minimal contact with her parents. Neither live near here.

It is so so sad. The parents are good people and have so much to share with their kids but, although they were well-meaning, I believe they nearly ruined their children by trying to protect them from the world.

How about 40 school shootings so far this year in the U.S.?

Another forum I'm on, there's one gal who insists home schooling is the only answer. Why? Because the schools are running an agenda that sexualizes children, prepares them to be used by pedophiles, exposes them to p*rnography and encourages them to become transgender with hormone blockers and mastectomies. And please don't say gay. Frankly I think she's off her rocker and would be scared for her kids if they were home schooled and only exposed to her extreme views.

My big concern with home schooling...which is the same concern I have for public education, is how do you know if kids are being adequately taught, learning the right things and meeting standards of achievement for their age. At least in schools the teachers have to meet some standards of education, but how does a parent who say, can't do math, teach their child algebra? What you don't want is the uneducated teaching the uneducated. And even at that, just because you understand a subject, doesn't mean you can teach it.

I still recall this video which is clearly the downside of homeschooling.

Well, not all Christian homeschooling is like that. Homeschool isn’t regulated in every state. But, I do agree that education is necessary to teach. I recall a program with a homeschooling family, I do think they ere relisoous conservatives, and the interviewer asked the oldest daughter about high school. She replied that she was going to be a wife and mother in the same vein as her own mother, so domestic arts she could learn at home were more important. I just wondered how she was going to teach her own children, and if she had sons. how she would teach them beyond 8th grade. Her own mother had a college degree and was covering their sons’ high school education.

One of my kids had a friend who was ”unschooled”. At age 8, he and his older sister had not learned how to read. Their mom one day said she had noticed this, and that their friends could read, so she was going to add actual instruction into their day. No religion at all in that family. (btw, I had been friends with this mom in high school, she was pretty intelligent then, but she remembered very little lf that time because, she said, she had done some serious drugs in college. yikes)

I think the example I gave of a 13 year old homeschooled child reading at the collegiate level speaks for itself. I don't know anyone's 13 year old in public school, like grandchildren of friends, reading at that level. And because their dad is an engineer, all 4 children have advanced math and science skills. The program they follow has academic standards that have to be followed, milestones that need to be met, for advancement and academic success. These children will be much better prepared for whatever path they choose to take for their futures.

But most parents don't have double master's degrees.

I recognize that not all christian home schooling is like that video. And one need not be of a particular religion or any religion at all to neglect teaching basics in a home school environment. I think what's striking though is this is clearly a loving family that wants to and thinks they are doing what's best for their children. What happens in home schooled environments where the parents are less attentive?

One question I have is, if a child is removed from any oversight, how do you know what they are or aren't learning?

My GF teaches elementary classes at a xtian school, and the efforts she's gone through and the 30 years experience in teaching hundreds of children with specific needs and creativity she brings couldn't be matched by a parent raising a child or a few children. It is also her full-time job and she is expert at it. How many parents can devote the time necessary to become expert at teaching?

Another question I have is, did we learn anything about home schooling during Cvd lockdowns?

I also wonder about abuse and neglect. How often is it through the school system that abuses at home are revealed, that a child has an alternative adult to report to to find safety. And in many areas, it's schools that provide adequate meals for children. Or even things like, how many children find out they need glasses because the teacher noticed they couldn't see the board? I'm sure there are many other ways a teacher reaches children that wouldn't happen otherwise.

Back in the day when I was having children this was a very large topic. Many assume these children's socialization is at risk. Curiously one of the biggest reasons, at the time, supporting homeschooling was to save your child from socialization before the ego was ready. It was claimed that a child's ego is so fragile throwing them out in the world too soon kept them from being people who made up their own minds on things vs a sheep following the heard. I think a huge debate could rage over the idea teaching WHAT to think vs HOW to think. My 30+ years in schools has taught me there is very little room for a student to express an opinion outside what the prevailing social constructs allow. A few years ago boarding schools were discussed here and I was surprised then and I hear it again today that so many assume as parents they couldn't give their child a diverse, well rounded life experience. They had to rely on other's for that. The last few years gave parents a glimpse into their children's education and many were not pleased. Home schooling and private schooling are on an uptick because parents did not like what they saw being foisted on their children. Schools should serve society. How did parents become sooo unaware of what goes on in schools? I think the negative impressions of home schooling are encouraged because society more and more want to believe it is not detrimental to stick babies/children in institutions for most of their day. Two income families are the norm and society is doing it's best to perpetuate the idea that kids are better left to other's to raise. Sadly I think we are seeing the fruits of this line of thinking every day played out in the news.

My two grandchildren are homeschooled and I have very mixed feelings about it. My DIL is a trained elementary school teacher and grew up where they live. She knew the local schools were quite bad, and she has done an excellent job homeschooling. My just turned 16 year old GD did research when she was 11 on synesthesia and read quite challenging material on it. She is still very interested in psychology and how people think, make decisions and why they believe what they believe. She reads (voraciously) both fiction and non fiction, has read Shankur Vedantun's book, Hidden Brain, and listens to his podcast. She's very socially at ease with a wide range of people and knowledgeable about politics and what's happening in the world. I do worry that she doesn't really have a foreign language--though she works on German (her choice) on line--and no lab science.

My grandson has health issues that would have made public school a nightmare for him. At almost 12 he is very interested in history, requested Nat'l Geographic's history mag for a Christmas present, and is also extremely interested in falconry and hopes to be able to apprentice to a falconer when he's a little older. He also is quite interested in cooking, unlike his sister. But he too can talk with anyone with ease

Both are always encouraged to think, even when that thinking is different from what my deeply religious DIL believes and more like what my son (and I) knows about evolution, geology, etc.

However, and this is a big However, I, with a graduate degree from Harvard, strongly believe in public schooling. I do not think a modern nation can hope to survive with the Balkanized education we now have--so many schools so badly funded and with poor teaching, so many home "schooled" so bizarrely and so poorly, so many of them Christian home "schooled" as the frightening video shows. These people will become voters, citizens--and will be completely unequipped for the increasingly complicated and desperate issues the world faces. (On the other hand, most high school graduates are just as badly educated and poorly prepared. Try asking your average adult when Columbus discovered America. I once got a date of 1700s.)

And BTW, 'Unschooling" has a specific meaning and it most certainly doesn't mean NO schooling. It basically means allowing children to follow their specific interests and building education around those interests. My DIL followed some unschooling recently, letting GD read widely on religions of the world because she was interested in why people believe what they do and building educational activities around GS's interest in falconry. Family trips often involve historic places for GS's interests. GD put a course together for herself on politics this year. No matter what the child's interest, education can be built around it--eg math in cooking or carpentry, botany in gardening, biology/physiology in animal raising, etc.

The unschooling family I knew was originally skipping some basics that you might need to pursue those interests.

Of my 3 grands, and 2 great grands one grand, and one great grandchild (both 16) do very well in home school settings. two grands (17, and 11) were kept back a year because of the 1 1/2 years of home school. the last great grandchild. just does ok in reg 8th grade. I guess what it says to me is each child needs different things to learn. Lastly some parents are no able to be teachers either.

My son's Kindergarten teacher yelled at the class on their first day. Weeks later a friend of mine who taught at the school told me she saw him with hands tightly clasped against him as though he were trying to hold himself together. At some point in that year, while getting dressed for school, he asked, "Why are you doing this to me?" I didn't have a good answer for him.

But I began reading John Holt, and when I learned that same harsh teacher was following her class to First Grade, I was ready. We became in-and-out homeschoolers. Our rural, relatively unsophisticated school district had some very good teachers (several were friends of mine) and some wretched ones. Without going into examples, I'll simply say that "tenure" was a dirty word in my house.

We took advantage of the good teachers, and kept our son home the other years. My husband, a PhD chemical engineer, covered math and science, and I took the rest. This was in the days before social media, but I was in frequent contact with a group of homeschoolers in our state, and that was helpful. The head of the group was a teacher who traveled to our home to assure the state that we were meeting its requirements.

I don't have a single regret about our experience (nor does my son), but today's homeschoolers have more advantages. Groups have sprung up, with activities for homeschoolers. Both religious and secular curricula are available. The practice in general is more accepted.

I'm sure some in our area regarded us as very strange indeed. My husband was on the school board, and one of his children was not always in school. (Our daughters liked school for the most part, and did well.) To give you an example of what the community was like at the time, when he ran for the school board, callers didn't seem interested in his Yale education; they wanted to know where he went to church.

My husband is a public school superintendent and works with home schooling parents all the time, providing guidance and whatever resources they need/require. While he understands there are some cases where home schooling is better for some kids, overall he isn't in favor of the idea because so many homeschool students fall behind their public and private school peers. (Please note: I said "so many" not "all.") Some parents do a great job and the kids are doing well by all accounts.

Homeschool kids who live in our district can participate in school sports and some other public school activities if they want. Many home school families in our area work together to set up field trips or do other things together to get some of the socialization their kids would otherwise have in school. There is even a homeschool store parents can shop at for supplies and learning resources.

I would never homeschool my kids (unless a physical or neuro condition necessitated it) and am very glad I wasn't homeschooled myself, but I'm okay with it being an option for others.

What I find strange is that a handful of the parents admit they home school while they work from home all day. Personally, I don't get how that works. How can you do right by both your job and your kids' education?

"But most parents don't have double master's degrees."

That's true. These children are so fortunate to have such educated parents and have the ability to provide such a quality education. Their children will go far in life, whether it's in college, trade school, or whatever they choose.

IMO, there are so many differences in the school systems of communities, cities, counties and states, along with the laws and abilities &/or intentions of the adults involved, that it's impossible to assess home schooling as something monolithic. Comments here testify to those wide variations.

My nephew is on the Autism spectrum and was bullied in elementary school to the extent that he stopped eating, so my BIL home schooled him for several years until they found a more welcoming school where he thrived. He's now 18 and graduating HS. BIL is college-educated as well.

It's an option, but there are some folks who do not support the concept of public education, which has done tremendous public good, despite its continued undermining over decades by those opponents of it.

"How can you do right by both your job and your kids' education?" Having taught via google meets through the COVID lock down I would say that most do not. Students were unattended and on their own most days. 'Homeschooling" has turned into classes on line which gives students a lot of time, access and little supervision. It hasn't proven to be a great recipe for educational success. Closed schools and low test scores are all over the news this week. No one looks beyond the closes schools to the actual experience of students. We are in denial about how little attention students gave to their studies. Introducing screen to screen learning has been more of the culprit than the lessons teachers attempted to teach. We saw most of our kids in bed, often would not turn their cameras on so no one know what they were ACTUALLY doing while 'in class'. Parents were in the homes for the most part but when they put each kid in a different room where no one was watching... Over the years we have had many students leave brick and mortar schools to 'go on line'. We have not heard of many of these students graduating. It takes a committed family and more motivated than the average student is for this to be successful. For those students who excel in education it can save them a ton of time where teachers are busy spending most of classroom time dealing with naughty kids vs teaching. It's true that systems vary from state to state or municipality to municipality but across the board the educational systems in America are not what they were or what they should be. There is little respect for education and this is passed from parent to student. Opting out of the mess schools are is a life line for many. So to answer the OPs original question Who tends to do this: Families who have not experienced success, kids who do not fit the mold and are struggling with peers, Students who are sick to death of being bogged down by naughty peers, Families where the parents had poor school experiences and want to save their child from that pain and frustration, as well as those who disagree with the moral codes 'taught' in schools (or lack there of), those with deep religious convictions who want their children to have a strong sense of right and wrong.

Here’s my two cents worth:

We live in a small town. Our public school has 80 total students in K through 8. For high school, the public school students are tuitioned to a public high school in a neighboring town. I attended the school for 8 years. I was bullied unmercifully BUT I got a great education as the teachers took the time to do a lesson plan for each student based on their abilities.

Fast forward to my children’s education in the same school. Still the same small classes i.e. 6-10 students BUT with one lesson plan for the entire class. The lesson plan was geared to the student with the lowest level learning ability. My children were bored to tears. I addressed this issue many times with the teachers and school administration over the years and was told that was the “district” policy. We spent considerable time and funds getting our children the additional education and enrichment they craved and needed including a lot of home schooling after school hours.

When it came time to move on to high school, we tried again to embrace the public school system to no avail. There were a few fantastic teachers, but the majority were just going through the motions. Needless to say, we had enough. We opted to send our daughter to private school and do a hybrid homeschool and public school for our son. We took advantage of the classes with the fantastic teachers and home schooled our son in the other subjects. Home schooling whole subjects was not easy as we needed to follow the public school curriculum and benchmarks. I have a graduate degree but I am not a natural "color inside the lines" teacher. It was painful! LOL

This fall, our grandson was scheduled to start Kindergarten in the same school his mother and I both attended. DD and I did the research and the policy of teaching the entire class to the student with the lowest level learning ability was still in effect. DD asked me if I would home school him and I declined. I know my limitations. DD did here research and found a wonderful private school to send him to where he is thriving.

Having spent years advocating with public schools for my children’s education and still seeing the same attitudes and policies in place 25 years later I am no longer an advocate for public education for my family.

I am so disheartened by the attitudes I have encountered in the public school system, where:

· The bright students are held back from reaching their potential

· The bullies have all the rights, and the victims have none

· The teachers interject their political beliefs into the curriculum rather than teaching critical thinking

· The creative, fantastic, energetic teachers are discouraged from growing and the entrenched conformists teach to mediocrity

That being said, there is no right answer to the home school vs. public school question. It depends on the child, the flexibility of the school system, and the family, their abilities and willingness to make the sacrifices and their ability to teach.

Arcy, I think the Covid school closings can’t be compared to homeschooling. Homeschooling is a considered choice, and many homeschoolers use a combination of in-person and online instruction, with parental involvement or oversight. Covid school closings foisted a situation on families who might be ill-equipped to manage it, and besides, the parent was not involved in determining the schedule or curriculum.

A worse failing, IMO, may be how schools handled the return to the classroom. And I am certain thwt standardized test scores for the last couple of years, and possibly for a few years to come, will be meaningless.

I read a bit of a doctoral dissertation on education in France during the war, and the disruptions there. That was worse, but I think there are some similarities.

My views:

My experience of knowing or encountering people who have homeschooled their kids, numbering just a handful, all had one thing in common - they were people who in my opinion had unhealthy extreme personal beliefs and propagandized views of the world around them. Who wanted to keep their children in an aseptic bubble, with not too subtle views consistent with this quote above " One father told me, ”I will tell my children what to think.” ".

Regarding the comment above:

" Educating a child is the primary responsibility of the parents. "

I'd make it broader - a parent's responsibility, discounting any disabilities or special physical or social needs individuals can have, is to be sure that their children have experiences, involving school learning and many other things too, that will prepare them to be happy, self-supporting, functioning adults. School-type education in a narrow sense is one part of this and so too are many other things.

The Department of Education recently took a survey of home schooling and a link is below. I wouldn't say the view of the topic is "balanced" because the home schooling applies to only 7% of children. That suggests that the vast majority of parents of school age children are either not supportive of home schooling or do not have situations that allow them to do so as a priority. In the attached link, pay particular attention to Figure 4, the reasons given for home schooling. The first five are consistent with people having extreme and somewhat aberrant views I mentioned before as being common to home schooling proponents I've known. Which are obviously nothing more than my own anecdotal encounters.

The video posted above is shocking. A young girl who appeared to be maybe 8 years old didn't know what 5x5 equaled and the family laughed about that, while the mother piped up which biblical sections they had studied. As if that were meaningful in the context of a simple demonstration of that poor child's deficient math instruction appropriate for her age.

Gov't survey - Reasons for home schooling and demographics

Edit to add - I enjoyed all the various comments.

it seems to me that 3 of the first 5 don’t reflect an extreme or aberrant view. If your child is not in a safe environment, why would you have them there? However, the large percentage of people who gave that as a reason (not necessarily as the primary reason), surprises me. I would be interested in more details about that one.

Family life is aberrant? I hope not. Making up for academics is aberrant? If a parent can provide better, then why not?

Moral and religious instruction can be provided outside of school, for sure. (When my father was in public elementqry school in the ’30s, they were dismissed at 2 on Tuesdays

so all children could have religious instruction. I don’t recall if Dad said the teachers of the various faiths came to the school or if the kids went to their church. But this was in the suburbs of Chicago, not bible belt.) Certainly morals are learned first at home, but also pretty much everywhere a child goes.

Edit to clarify my comments: more information about respondents answers is necessary to know if their reasons are ”extreme”. Dissatisfied because the science instruction is poor, perhaps lack of facilities and materials? because it uses actual animals for dissections? or because they teach evolution/don’t teach evolution? There are a lot of factors there, and for the other top 5 reasons.

If the parents are intelligent and highly motivated home schooling can work most of the time. An intelligent parent will recognize short comings in themselves and seek assistance. Just being smart and well educated is not necessarily going to make you a good teacher. I once had a college professor who was tops in his particular field in botany but who sucked as a teacher. He could not teach. I can extrapolate from that. I have known a few home schoolers over the years and highly motivated and intelligent didn't seem to be their thing but lots of school requirements seemed to help. You have to have a state that requires that and for the religiously motivated they are going to try to dodge oversight. Bad.

I know that public schools are not all equal. I went to a lot of schools and some were seriously bad. Good teachers, bad teachers but without a regular change of parents who makes up for bad parent teachers?

The idea of letting children follow their bliss in education is flatly dumb. Education is hard work and the sooner people accept that the better. You get your base down and then you have something to take flight from. My youngest sister went to a school experimenting with bliss-Florida by the way of all the weird places. People moved to get their elementary kids out of that school and it actually affected house values. I did wonder how many kids decided that today they wanted to learn fractions. My sister did not learn to divide. Algebra might be excess to need for most people but basic arithmetic is really useful stuff. I had to teach my sister to divide over the phone long distant when she was a teen.

So ups and downs...oh to not have to repeat the same stuff over and over because most students rinse out their brains over summer vacation. The major down and I think the most serious is no one has to see those home schooled children and horrible things can go on and no one will know. We had a particularly nasty case of home schooled abuse in the local town and one child died and one of the others was so under weight it was a miracle he didn't die and several other children wittnessing and even participating in the abuse that will affect them the whole of their lives.

I agree with everything Annie D said.

Homeschooling can be isolating, if done that way. But it doesn’t have to be, and IMO the successful homeschooling, as well as traditional-schooling, families are out and about within and beyond their communities and age groups.

This has been a fascinating discussion.

It appears whether this is a good idea depends on the reasons why someone wants to do it - and then whether they have the necessary skills and aptitude to actually do it well themselves.

Pulling kids out of public school to insulate them from scary ideas, probably not so much of a good idea. Pulling kids out because you don't like the quality or ability of the public school teachers, but then not actually possessing any teaching abilities yourself either - also not so much of a good idea.

It's been interesting to read the ways this has worked out well for some kids. I'm still not convinced that on the whole it is a good idea - but for the right child, with the right involved parents, it can work.

I can only speak from my personal experience as a children's librarian (now retired). The home-schooled children I encountered in upstate NY were bright, involved in many subjects, and just wonderful to interact with. Public school children on the most part were also, but there were ones who were just coasting.

I am a fan of home schooling, if the parents are capable and totally committed to doing the best for their children.

Here' s my take on it as a retired teacher in public schools, and a grandma of a 1 year old.

• Retired teacher: Kids need the socialization that comes with going to school. No amount of field trips with other home schoolers make up for the socialization.
• School busses are Hell
• the quality of classroom teachers is going down, and bringing in "experienced people" like chemists, business office, etc, usually ends up as teachers that know their stuff, but no idea how to connect with kids. They dont know how to TEACH.
• Kids will seek their own level of type of kids to socialize with. Good, smart kids socialize with the same, and kids who dont want to be there will find their own kind too.
• I think band, choir and athletics is a big positive in public schools for kids.
• Grandma--the one year old of ours has two grandmas that were teachers. We will work with him a lot.
• Private school with smaller classrooms would be good. But do private schools have band, choir and athletics? I would not want to home school my own kid.
• Private schools do not put up with the illegal stuff that goes on in public schools.
• So NO to homeschool, yes to private schools if one can afford it.

To think that Scotland was among the first countries to pass a law requiring that parents send their children ages 5 to 13 to free public schools. It took some enforcing. Parents expected their children to go to work for wages. This was not some kindly, humanistic decision on the part of government. No, they wanted a better educated labor force. (Those canny Scots!)

Certainly the reason we pay taxes to support schools is for the education they are supposed to receive. It is certainly why I do. I am not a fan of spending my money so some amateur can experiment with educating their kids. As a person who had to change schools often I am aware of the holes you can get in your education when parts get skipped. Will parents follow a proper curriculum? Can they teach some of the complex things? Will they recognize learning problems. While professional teachers get training for that sort of thing they might be no good at it but you have the chance that the next one will be. One set of parents, one set of abilities. We have a family member who homeschooled and the kids might as well have had a vegetable marrow for a teacher but their school district offered 'cyber' learning and they would go in to a special lab and use computers and get assessed by teachers. Some of them did really well and some not so great but I suspect attending regular classes would have had the same results.

Mercy Alisande, where do you live?

Patricia, I had second thoughts about posting that information publicly, so I deleted.

ladypat, I actually learned a lot on the school bus and I considered it part of my education.

ladypat, I actually learned a lot on the school bus and I considered it part of my education.

If I remember correctly -- and if it hasn't changed -- France has a curriculum that is to be followed in every school in the country and its territories. I'd expect this to bind people to their nation, and to one another -- and not at all in political sense.

Germany has a policy about home schooling. They believe that it is important for children to be integrated into the German culture. As a country they have an interest in each student being schooled as a German. Children with medical and mental disabilities can be exempt. Religious home schooling is especially frowned upon. It is a different point of view than ours.

Sorry Alisande, I was simply amazed any school district would allow such illegal activities on the part of teachers.

My daughter is a teacher, and told me of a child who came into school at ten, with very poor writing skills. His mother said she didn't like reading or writing much either, so they mainly focused on math and science.

My daughter ended up with a very bright child in her class who needed a lot of remedial support, and was convinced he was stupid, simply because his learning was centered on his strengths, not on a rounded education.

I think home school education is not homogenous. For some it is far better, for others, that isn't the case