Homeschooling is an oxymoron unless your legal guardian is a trained teacher who commit themselves completely to their trade and teaches the standard curriculum 8 hours a day including PE, shop, and regular excursions Monday through Friday for ten months per year for 12 years.

Also you need a family of about 20 or so siblings who take these home classes with you because that’s integral to developing essential interpersonal skills at a critical psychological window during childhood development.

There is no home “schooling”, you either go to school or you don’t go to school, those are the options.

If there is one thing going to highschool in Texas taught me it’s that Germany was communist during WW2.

Well, also that it may be good if you have time to NOT neglect the child and can get mentors/tutors to help them.

But even then they have to go to school at some point to learn socializing, no?

Homeschooling is rarely successful and deprives children of the chance to socialize and practice it. As well a lot of the people who do it use it as a method of indoctrination for religious reasons.

It’s hubris and/or abuse, and should be illegal barring exceptional circumstances.

Public schools should be well funded.

Private schools should also be illegal.

I went to school where I live and it was abysmal. My oldest 2 I homeschooled for a few years, eventually found a good school they could go to. Those 2 had a much better attitude towards school than the later ones who had to go from pre-K, (they felt more in control of their own education) and similar academic achievement in the end.

I sure as heck could not have homeschooled them through high school. And they did plenty of things with other kids, and more with mixed age groups than school kids do.

It’s possible the kids you met who were awkward were homeschooled because they were so socially awkward and not the other way around. Mine can socialize circles around me, and I’d say the 2 who started later are more socially adept.

ETA 2 things. Homeschooling is well supported by the school district, kids get tested every year. And no we are not religious.

“Think you can provide more resources and well thought out and efficiently applied curriculum than a centuries old and constantly corrected product of society that draws on every corner of society and hundreds of lifelong full-time employees whose entire lives revolve around hopefully improving society and giving the confident, respectful, and considerate qualities to children? That system isn’t perfect and is compromise and resource-short hell… Why not give it a REAL half-assing and short-change your kids EVEN WORSE!”

I lived in an area with bad schools for about 4 years. I spent time in public school and a number of church schools. Religion fucked me up pretty good, but at least my parents weren’t crazy religious nuts, so I at least got to come home to some normalcy. I didn’t meet a lot of home school kids until way later. I have met several that are brilliantly well adjusted human beings, who were non-religious homeschoolers who were doing it for other reasons. I’ve met other people who think water boils because god wills it and sickness is caused by demons latching onto your unconfessed sins.

I’m generally against it in most circumstances, but I do think it depends largely on the intention of the parents. If we had better public schools, I think the amount of homeschoolers would naturally drop quite a bit.

I briefly dated a girl who was homeschooled. She was a very nice girl, but holy fuck was she awkward in social settings. So many references that people our age should get would go right over her head. She was also from a well off family so when she didn’t get these things, she kind of made it out to be like a class issue. “Oh that’s from a rap song is it? We were never big on rap in our household.” Well, we’re you living under a rock? You don’t know to the window, to the wall?

I will give her parents credit. She was very well read and learned to play a lot of instruments. She was very knowledgeable of the arts, but anything pop culture related was clearly a no go in her childhood/ young adulthood, and it made her quite dull.

Her brother was also fucking creepy man. I got real serial killer vibes from him. They were socially very similar, and I’m pretty sure the brother was closeted and gay. I had just assumed that he was out by the way he spoke, and acted, then one day she said something about how he needs a girlfriend. I said something along the lines of “are you sure he’s looking for one?” And she got super offended and said she doesn’t know why everyone thinks her brother is gay, and that men always hit on him which he supposedly hated. That could also just have been a lack of socialization and picking up on societal norms? Maybe he actually was straight, idk but he acted and looked very much the part. All in all the vibe was super off with them.

I think kids need to socialize to develop correctly. That girl, her brother and the handful of other homeschooled people I’ve met in life very much have reinforced that belief. I especially am worried about this current crop of anti vax types with little to no critical thinking skills home schooling their children. The HBO documentary - “This Place Rules” covered this briefly, and I worry for those children. I have a friend who has similar fringe beliefs and has talked about homeschooling his kids. I hope for that kids’ sake they actually send him to school because if not, he’ll be sounding like the kids in the video below.

https://youtu.be/Hdk3a9pI_jA

I have neighbours homeschooling their kids, that ate similarly aged to mine. Sometimes we see them at the school playground on the weekend. The kids seem fine, the parents seem normal. They mentioned they take the kids to a weekly home school kids play date, and there is some sort of education resource worker that makes sure the kids are learning what they need to.

Unless you’re an expert on child development and education, then you’re not qualified.

My toddler is thriving in pre-school. We can’t teach her how to be independent and socialise with other kids at home.

I can see a life situation where we would homeschool for a limited time. I’d expect both teaching parent and kid to do standardised testing to make sure the education is up to the national curriculum.

Home schooling should be be an excuse to not school, which it seems to be in some parts of the world.

Every homeschooled person I’ve met has lacked all tact but YMMV. I haven’t met anyone that was homschooled after leaving university so no clue if that improves over time.

I think it’s a big mistake, but don’t think ‘the law’ should get involved, either.

Include meals, that’s a good incentive and will help a lot of kids that are fed total garbage at home.

if we can’t feed children what are we even doing?

Big part of school is training on how to be socialized into society. Interact with people who are different than you. Homeschooling provides none of that.

Actually not too bad. I wasn’t fully homeschooled, however, my old man augmented what school was teaching me. Basically he taught me mathematics, reading and writing. It kept me well ahead of my class. I had a good handle on fractions and so on at about grade two.

Then again, my old man was a physicist with a PhD.