Homeschooling: C/D?

Well, how poorly socialized do you want your kids to be, on a scale of one to ten?

As per my experience (via television show "Wife Swap") most home schooled children seem to be some sort of religious fundamentalists?

or dirty hippies

It seems like there are two major groups of homeschoolers that I've run into; one is the religious type and the other is what I'd describe as the crunchy granola type (often SAHMs who are involved with La Leche League, which often goes hand in hand with natural childbirth fixation and sometimes anti-vaccination stuff as well*).

*Full disclosure: I am a SAHM, I did hang with LLL, but I loved my epidural when my first child was born and would have had one again if baby #2 hadn't arrived so fast - and the anti-vaccination stuff makes me want to scream).

ha ha xpost

I think even more important than giving your kids a solid, well-rounded education is socializing them properly. So many people relate so poorly to others.

HOOSchooling vs. homescHOOSling

I used to think homeschooling sounded vaguely appealing until I spent years at home with my kids. I need the break from them and they love the social aspects that our public schools provide. I did do some preschool workbook stuff with 4lex when he was little, but it was just for something fun to do.

There are a lot of homeschoolers out there now, and you could probably find them locally and even meet their kids if you wanted to.

Your gf might want to do it and she might change her mind... but if you guys did decide to go that route, I think you can homeschool and still provide a social/school context with other homeschoolers.

HOOS, she doesn't bring these things up after random comments along the lines of "You know, those polygamist commune women had *some* good ideas...," does she?

would luv to be homeschooled by this SAHM
http://wallyworkmangallery.com/art/sahm_19710804.jpg

xpost HEY LAY OFF THE POLYGAMISTS, NED, WE COULD USE ANOTHER WIFE AROUND HERE FOR SURE

Kids can be socialized in other ways - after school sports, dance classes, art, etc

home schooling becomes more necessary every year. I don't want my kids in a conformist factory / idoctrination center and am neither a religious wacko nor a hippie

Thankfully not all schools are "conformist factory/indoctrination centers," but I take your point.

The Trenchcoat Mafia is the informal name given to a group of counterculture students from Columbine High School, in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, (near Denver and Littleton). This group of students became the subject of media scrutiny after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

I'm a damn smart person and could larn some kids good but DAMN I would want them to be out of the house sometimes.

Those dance classes are all secretly run by the aliens from They Live.

Part of the reason I wanted my kids to go to school was for them to be exposed to views other than my own (and my husband's). But I'm also lucky that the local public schools are pretty good here.*

*although they teach math in a way that totally baffles me

DAMN I would want them to be out of the house sometimes.

Abbott so painfully OTM that it hurts.

Minnesota math: "If eighteen mosquitoes attack you per second in the course of a summer day, how quickly will you go insane?"

Do organized activities socialize kids in the same way? A lot of socialization is the dead time in class or at lunch/on the playground learning to deal with gurls or kids you wouldn't otherwise deal with.

and I'm sure the religious wackjobs think that five nights a week at church socialize the young'uns plenty, but in my experience they're RONG.

Oh my goodness the only thing more hellish for me than public school "socialization" was CHURCH "socialization."

I plan on homeschooling my children... only at zero hour though.
They will get up at 6:30 in the morning and then we will drive to my office, where class will begin promptly at 7:00 and I will give a 55-minute lecture, with questions (time permitting). I will then drive them to regular school, getting them mcgridles on the way.

They will both love and hate the experience -- as they will both love and hate their father, as is the nature of being a child.

On the one hand it's good to get "socialized" (realization: the majority of people in my life will probably be people I don't especially care for) but doesn't anyone think putting 500 15-year-olds in one building for 40 hours a week is like making a CRAZY FACTORY?

Her desire to homeschool stems from a couple items, it seems:

-we'd know they were getting a *thorough* education instead of being taught "for the test"
-we'd know they were safe from school violence
-"studies show" homeschool kids are further ahead than others in their age group etc and don't we want smart kids

To "uh socially inept much?" objections she insists homeschoolers get a social life just as full and interesting (if not more so) through the opportunities afforded kids outside a classroom setting. And yeah, like Abbott says, public school = crazy factory.

Though to me her reasons FOR homeschooling seem to stem just as much from bugaboos & stereotypes about public schooling as my reasons AGAINST it stem from stereotypes about hippies & bible whackin nutjobs.

well you can put them through ritual scarification from 6-17 or you can just make them drink from the frying pan at 18, it's up to you

i had homeschooling of the crunchy-granola variety through 3rd grade (although we weren't actually allowed granola; too much sugar). the schooling was great -- my mom's an excellent teacher. she later got a teaching certificate and has now been a middle-school science teacher for 20 years or so. i think the homeschooling of me and my sister was as much to give her some focus, something of her own to do apart from my dad's pottery shop, as it was to keep us out of soul-deadening public schools. when i finally started going to school, i was in good shape academically.

BUT ian is otm about the socialization. i was a grade ahead in reading and at least a grade behind in social skills. my mom tried hard to provide socialization, we spent plenty of time with friends and whatever, but there's a big difference between that and learning to survive a roomful of randomly selected peers. i don't think i would have been a natural socializer anyway -- took me years to get the hang of it -- but i definitely had a disadvantage.

otoh a lot of the stereotypes of soul-deadening public schools are true too. (as are the stereotypes of elite private schools and the kind of kids and families you find there.) so there's a certain amount of poison-picking in all this. i'm gonna send my kids to public schools as long as it seems not completely horrible, and try to fill in what's missing. but i don't rule out anything. including sending them to live in the woods for a few years when puberty hits.

"socialization" is much more about learning patience and developing a healthy sense of when and how it's appropriate to lose it than it is about having friends or whatever. if your kids can't act out and get in trouble at school once in a while where are they going to learn how to get away with being themselves in the real world?

I can't begin to imagine what kind of pathetic jackass I would've been had I been homeschooled. I'm weird enough as it is.

"socialization" is much more about learning patience and developing a healthy sense of when and how it's appropriate to lose it than it is about having friends or whatever.

yeah exactly

Stick them into school, teach them more onna side. There's a thousand ways how grade school can be improved and enhanced upon, start with those(civics, science, history, guitar, etc)

I wasn't exactly homeschooled, but both my parents were english teachers, and began teaching in the early 70s when all the really/relatively progressive started coming in. I was taught with flashcards and massively enabled with books to where I had a far higher reading ability than most other primary school kids. I think i've mentioned this before, but I always got a kick out of how my GOP-voting conservative parents consumed all these progressive teaching materials when I was a young dorkling.

california just banned homeschooling.

just saying

[everything we do is right]

pity about the california schools tho : /

we just don't want anyone to get uppity

The zealots and the granolas aren't the only two kinds of homeschoolers. We were a third kind, the pointy headed intellectuals.

We homeschooled our daughter when we lived in California (grades 5-8) because the public schools available to us there were such shit. Not all CA homeschooling was banned -- there are still a bunch of charter schools within the public system whose purview is homeschoolers.

I was not home schooled, but as I may have mentioned elsewhere, my parents were Jehovah's Witnesses until I was about ten, so even though I went to school every day I was tied EXTREMELY tightly to the apron strings and not allowed to socialize after school and such, so much so that I probably turned out a lot more like what home schooled kids are imagined to turn out like than any actual victim of the feared process. You know -- weird, isolated, hideously insecure but with an overbearing, entitled, Veruca-Salt-type mentality... I was forcibly cut off from socializing during some very formative years for socialization, and it had nothing to do with school. It was just some horror-show parenting by a couple of pretty darn unstable people.

Anyway MY POINT IS (finally) that you can send a kid to school for the entire requisite term and still end up with a complete mess of a kid. I'm guessing here, but it seems fair to me to assume that the inverse is just as true. Because having a mentally healthy kid is not about school or not-school, it's about the parents not being a freakshow.

But, grain of salt, coming from me. I may well have had my reading of everything skewed by all that couch time over the years.

It seems to be mostly Americans doing this. I have never come across Belgians who did this, even though we do not have to send our kids to school. The hippies send their kids to Frenet/Steiner schools. The religious nuts probably send'em to Catholic school. It's funny since I'm extremely anti-religion but will still send my kids to a Catholic school. We have some twisted idea here in Belgium that Catholic schools are better than state run schools. Anyhoo, Abbott is painfully OTM: having your kid around 24/7 is damn tiring. It's nearly impossible to have anything done: I run the shop and take care of my two kids. I am happy the oldest goes to a daycare three days a week. The youngest will do two half days per week from next month and then four half days from July onwards.

Anyhow homeschooling: completely dud in my opinion unless you want to save your kids from the evil clutches of Darwinian evolution theory. Or if you want to raise your kids like complete socially inept freaks. (I may be exaggerating here.) I don't see any point really (if you want to follow the same text books as schools.) That said, what if you live in a far remote farm or something? That I could understand. But still...

We homeschooled our daughter when we lived in California (grades 5-8) because the public schools available to us there were such shit. Not all CA homeschooling was banned -- there are still a bunch of charter schools within the public system whose purview is homeschoolers.

But you would have sent your kid to school if you were offered good schools, right? That lets you off the hook. ;-)

Where is a HOOS planning on raising these kids?

It has always struck me as absurd to pay property taxes which subsidize yr local public school and then not to use it or contribute to its development and then wonder why local school system sucks. By all means, give your kids educational direction at home but do not be the middle-class parent that further erodes public schools through non-engagement. FALSE ECONOMY YO, and also yr education and experience benefits other than own kids - how is that bad?

Mind you, I went to excellent public schools (my HS is still ranked at 1, 2 or 3 in the state dependent on survey; mom & aunt and uncles went to same places) and my friends who have stayed and raised their kids in my town were proud to send kids there - a few of us even returned there as teachers.

I was not home schooled, but as I may have mentioned elsewhere, my parents were Jehovah's Witnesses until I was about ten

yeah when i finally did start going to school, the j.w. girl in my class was sort of my saving grace in terms of being more freakish than me. she had to leave the classroom every morning when we sang "my country tis of thee," and also during all birthday and holiday activities. i felt bad for her, but i was glad someone else stood out as the weirdo.

But you would have sent your kid to school if you were offered good schools, right?

True, homeschooling didn't occur to us until she'd been going to a CA public school for a month and hadn't been taught a thing.

Or if you want to raise your kids like complete socially inept freaks. (I may be exaggerating here.)

I hope you're exaggerating, otherwise I'd be pretty fucking offended. What parent WANTS to raise socially inept freaks?

I don't see any point really (if you want to follow the same text books as schools.)

That's the last thing we wanted, and homeschooling was the perfect alternative. If you don't see the point, fine, but you're not looking very hard.

i am all for supplemental home-schooling, which seems like it should be common sense but doesn't happen a lot, to my knowledge -- my mom did that with a couple of my younger brothers, working specifically on the subjects and skills they had the most trouble with, and even though she hasn't done much home teaching since they were in grade school, i think it's kept them far ahead of the curve early on, and therefore throughout their academic careers

1) lol @ gershy

2) i'm afraid the handful of home-schooled kids I knew personally (though admittedly not very well) were of the religious, culture warrior variety and were very much dud. Well, their parents were very much dud. I'm willing to concede that the scenario Rock paints could work out favorably. It does seem like a very last resort scenario though.

RH, I was exaggerating. :-) I really don't see the point of homeschooling, mainly because I find that our school system is GREBT.

Of the home schoolers I know well (all 2 of them), they are both very bright and very QUIET. Talking on the phone with one of them is like, him: mumble mumble, me: come again? x12. He's opened up a bit in college, but he's still pretty awkward. I think his parents were of the "public schools will not teach them enough aristotle" or some shit type. Similar for the other guy who started college at 17, and whose 12 and 14 year old sisters take some community college classes already.

save up a bunch of dough and send your kids to a montessori or waldorf or quaker school, which are usually pretty excellent schools that tend to avoid the soul-sucking bullshit that makes public school so appealing

and make sure they play sports or something too so they dont end up with only weird 10-year-old hippies for friends

^^ good on you!! i was going to post a "sorry if that sounds like i'm calling you presumptuous", i do think it *can* be done right but it takes an above-average commitment and also outside help (or training, cf your wife) ... it's really there in the difference between kids who are homeschooled due to illness and homeschooled due to parents having countercultural leanings. don't forget "it takes a village ..." etc

BTW my soon-to-be nephews-in-law, ages 5,5 and 8 are being homeschooled because they live in a rural area. they are beautiful beautiful kids (i have one on my desktop photo) and i worry a fair amount about their development and how they will, if ever, transition into other educational settings.

i've met a lot of kids who were homeschooled and a lot of those kids had serious problems in high school.

which is not to say there aren't serious problems in the public high school system - there are problems, but the problems are remediable, and charter schools and reform high schools are making big strides toward fixing those problems.

but i think that people have to look at the idea of homeschooling w/ some level of realism. it's a lot easier to take a student out of the public school system (and into a charter school, or an alternative school) than it is to place a student in the public school system.

i have a student, she's 16, she's slipping into serious problems w/ self-destructive behavior. and major disenfranchisement w/ education. and myself and many people around me believe that a big contributing factor is the difficulty she's having w/ managing the transition from home-school into public school. but she doesn't have a choice, because both parents died in a car accident, and the grandparents that she's living with don't have time or energy to homeschool her.

so that's the worst-case, "road to hell paved w/ good intentions" story, that you have to worry about when you homeschool. if i have to give up on this, will my kid transition into regular school OK?

btw, the research shows that montessori students in general *don't* have the same level of problems as home-schooled students w/ transitions.

i think what most parents want from homeschooling -- small class sizes, personalization, interest-based education, not teaching to the test -- is available in the charter school system.

yeah it's nice to see some support of homeschooling on here! I thought you guys would think of yourself as freethinkers, do-things-your-own-way types, and if you do, why not *consider* homeschooling (if you can afford it financially)? I reckon most of you are smart enough to do it...and it's not like elementary school teachers are our best and brightest, sadly (much respect to those here who teach in el ed of course).

and wtf at the argument that homeschoolers miss out on important socialization, unless this is just the logic of hazing ("well I hated el ed so my kids should suffer too"). Do you all consider work your main place of socializing? If not, why think of school as your kids? You play after school with your friends, and on weekend, and in the summer.

not like elementary school teachers are our best and brightest, sadly

dude, shut the fuck up. my gardener didn't finish high school - do you think i tell him how to take care of my yard, or do you think i ask him for his help?

wtf dude: you get to hire your gardener, and if he sucks you fire him, right? it's not that way with school

you sound like an excellent judge of other people's shortcomings

maybe you should consider a career as a shitty public school teacher?

What do you base the idea that elementary school teachers are not our best and brightest on?

Are regular schools really all that bad?

Whatever kind of schooling a kid gets and whether they're lucky enough to live in a good school district, I still think a big key is parental involvement in their learning. But that can take all kinds of shapes.

like duh, 70% of elementary teachers are white females under 40 w/ liberal arts degrees. it's *obvious* they're not our "best & brightest".

My fifth grade teacher was the smartest man I've ever known. I found out he died a few months ago, and it killed me. I was way more heartbroken when I found out he died than I was at the death of my cousins or great-grandma and even that of a high school friend. He'd have days where we'd just ask him questions, anything we could think of, and he'd know the answer. Best of all, if he didn't, he admitted it and told us he'd ask someone who did know (he always did and told us the answer the next day). That taught me no one does know everything...he was just such a loving, brilliant, upstanding man.

My fourth grade teacher, OTOH, was like was nick was talking to me about...not letting me check certain books out from the school library or read them because they were "too advanced." I spent hours and hours that year trying to wiggle out my baby teeth so I'd have an excuse to leave the room ('lol lost a baby tooth, can I go to the bathroom?'). I had a lot of enmity toward her.

And thus it was all through my public schooling. Some terrible teachers, some great teachers. And I think the important thing about public school for me (one of them) was getting to learn fairly early on the difficult lesson for a child that not all adults are that exceptional. The world is imperfect but there are still good people in it, and you can take them as role models and try to avoid being like the others.

My parents are both very smart, esp. my mom altho she has just a high school degree. I would have learned almost as much from them at home but as a teenager it was nice to get out of the house! People don't always get along with their parents and I know I would have had difficulty separating 'parent parent' from 'teacher parent.' It was nice that I had teachers I could confide in and have as role models, and praise from them about my intellect meant something very different than praise from my parents. Also, high school newspaper was definitely the best thing in all my public school years. I won national awards and worked at papers after high school bcz of my experience w/the world of journalism & its software, mechanics, etc. I would never have had that if I got home schooled.

- the end -

was like was nick was talking to me everyone about

one of the things that surprises me when people talk about homeschooling is the sheer presumptuousness of the idea that if your child isn't learning in school through the the efforts of trained faculty then the best thing to do is to pull the child out and place the education in the hands of the untrained

I tend to agree with this point, which is no surprise because both Vahid and I are teachers. I'd like to think that my graduate studies and years of experience as a teacher give me some skills and insight that a layperson lacks. Pedagogical trends in education nowadays point away from an overemphasis on content and toward developing social and critical thinking skills. These skills are best developed through a combination of adult instruction AND peer learning, and the peer learning is essential.

Also, kids need to learn to be independent and self-directed. They need to function away from their parents in a potentially distracting and challenging environment. Socialization is about a lot more than just "making friends."

wtf dude: you get to hire your gardener, and if he sucks you fire him, right? it's not that way with school

There is a germ of a valid point buried down deep in that.

yes but you could say the same thing about the *entire* civil service

There are some measures of whether or not my gardener sucks - what are they for teachers?

I'm very sympathetic to teachers on this point because I was a terrible, bullheaded student. (ex.) I failed trig in the single digits because I was angry about things in general and that was the class I hated most so I just didn't do the work. How can it be the teacher's fault when a student refuses to do the work/learn (or cannot do the work/learn).

I believe (based on my experience and what I saw) that that's more common than most people/parents would like to believe and makes grading teacher performance all but impossible.

what if we all, just, like, taught... each other?

What annoys me most about home-private-alternative-schoolers is that, as a class, they view their private investments -- be they time, money, or whatever -- as a reason NOT to invest their taxes in the public school system, which brings a benefit to all, not just their super-special little spawn. Thus, the class divide grows, as the education of those who cannot afford better declines in quality. That sucks.

There are some measures of whether or not my gardener sucks - what are they for teachers?

the california standards for the teaching profession?

32 page document here

What's the teacher standard equivalent of "my roses are all dead"?

"my students are all dead"

If you really want to pop out the next Euler, you need to snatch an underpaid mathematician from the local 2-year college and have him pump the kid's brain fulla math 4-8 hrs/day from age 3, anyways (e.g.). All this home-schooling-by-the-stupid-parents BS only gives neurotic parents warm groins and a reason to sniff at parties.

The people I know who were homeschooled or went to progressive Steiner-type places seem a lot more laid back and secure in themselves than average.

Looking back on the state comp I went to, it's amazing how scathing everybody was, you couldn't breathe without somebody taking the piss out of you. I was really suprised how nice and people were when I worked in a large office over the summer before uni, you could have a conversation with someone without constantly making lame wisecracks or trying to get one over on the other person. I did sort of miss the banter, though.

when i went to interview at the charter secondary school i'll be at next year i interviewed w/ a bunch of students and almost 100% of them said that one the the main reasons they were at the charter school was because kids in public jr high were mean.

The three boys, all home-schooled, have also been charged in connection with the vehicle break-in.

AWESOME

"Home-schoolers can figure out how to turn a skull into a bong"

Houston police believe the teens disturbed the grave of an 11-year-old boy who died in 1921.

less awesome

Hannah was homeschooled: classic.

lol sorry to have been an asshat on this thread. I was just surprised at the extent to which trad schooling was being defended. I would have expected more iconoclasts, more fuck-the-system attitude.

lol being contrary

Expectation is a prison.

being contrary = 99% of ILX

well now i'm working at the charter school i described upthread and a lot of the kids were home-schooled for part of their life. i see about one great result for every two results where i'm like, well, there are probably pros and cons as far as how that turned out for your kid. but i also see a lot of beautiful things in the homeschooled kids that i hadn't considered when i was doing my strident asshattery thing on this thread. things you don't often see in public school kids. i will say there is a certain sensitivity and creativity in the kids ... like this year i did a project on molecular models i did last year. last year i got 25 rote posterboards printed from the internet and one model. this year i got like 10 models, 5 models made out of found objects, 5 paintings, a few flash animations, a movie, a short story, etc etc. beautiful stuff. i don't think it's me, i think it's the kids.

i am still planning to send my kids to montessori elementary school, btw.

Thanks for that. Seriously.

i was thinking about schooling earlier today. a big thing around here is to move to the neighborhoods with the "best" public schools, which usually means very high property values, so you have to be rich to move to the neighborhoods with the "best" public schools. that doesn't really help kids whose families are farther down the economic ladder. what would i do if i were a parent with limited means? i'd probably choose a decent enough school, and leverage my own geekiness into a solid extracurricular education. i believe "school" is really important, but school doesn't teach you many of the important things in life until you get to the college level, at least. socialization and discipline yes, bureaucracy and slavery to state-mandated test scores, hell no.

that last sentence meaning "why public schools are good, and why public schools are awful."

that's why the whole charter school thing is taking off:

"best" public schools just means traditional high schools full of white kids w/ basic life advantages. the curriculum at my high school (rated #1 in the nation at the time) and the curriculum at the "failing" "urban" school i taught at were the same, as was the teacher pay, as was the quality and education level of the teachers. actually, if anything the practices were better at the "worse" school. the problem is the measuring stick, which is test scores.

charter schools get away from the idea of test scores as quality by offering small class sizes, interest-based curriculum and personalized services, all of which lead to very positive student-school relationships, which is more or less the opposite of what happens in the traditional "factory" high school.

i mean, i don't think my kids at this charter could beat the kids at my alma mater - where half the kids had parents who had PhDs or MDs or JDs and where >90% had finished college - in test scores. but i think these kids have those kids beat in life skills, motivation and basic goodness of character, and i am fairly confident that none of my kids are going to have the experience i did, where i coasted through life on high test scores until i hit a brick wall and spent six years at berkeley going "WTF am i gonna do with my life?!?"

^^ and this story happened to like 3/4 of my friends from high school

here's another thing we're doing: everyone at our school has a homeroom, does school-organized community service, does school-organized job shadowing and a summer internship. 100 teachers can't organize that for 2000 kids, but somehow 10 teachers can do it for 200. there's an economy-of-scale issue where relatively few people can do a lot more for relatively few students than relatively many people can do for relatively many students.

course i've slept about three hour a nights the past two months but that's another story

All you need is a good teacher, books. economy

fromyconomye
management
Middle English

ofhousehold

fromoeconomia
Latin

fromoikonomiā
Greek

fromoikonomos
one who manges a house hold

ofhousehold

fromoikos
house
Greek

related toweik
Clan
Indo-European

Social retardation can start anywhere.

^^ QED

Just an update: The daughter I homeschooled for four years (5-8) did, indeed, struggle a bit in high school. One, because she's just never been much of a people person and she had to learn the hard truth that A) she didn't have a lot in common with the other students and B)she had to figure out a way to get along all the same.

She did. It wasn't the easiest thing, and there were tears, but at the end of four years of high school, she was one of 10 members of her class to be awarded the highest honor the school gives. It was, by the way, one I'd dreamed of winning while at the same high school and lost out by two points. Needless to say, that was a moment of pure, unadultered, joy.

The other thing she had to learn was that she had to dumb down most of her writing, which was sad. She's currently a quasi-legend at the high school for being the "awesome writer who failed the state test." Yep, we have state-mandated testing, one of which is a writing on-the-spot test. Sarah did her best, and got a 1 out of 4 because, the judges'comments said, she must have cheated. No one writes that well off the top of their head.

Ruckuses were raised, by her English teacher, me, Rock, and the administration of the school. The arrogant, dismissive score was adjusted. Bastards.

Her school also had a poster contest every year, where each kid did a poster about a book they'd read. Sarah did "Angels in America" and it was a gorgeous design and beatifully written. The judges determined that she must have cheated and didn't even give her an honorable mention. Poor kid was totally torn down, but it helped her in the long haul. She met and got to know more of her fellow students who shared her outrage, and when the official winners were announced in an assembly, all the teachers had decided to give Sarah a "Best in Show" award. That was a rich, sweet moment. Everybody applauded. I nearly died of pride.

But I'm going on too long. Anyway, she went on to apply to a well-regarded college here in the state. After going down for an intensive interview with several professors and admin types, she came out laughing, having had a good time. And then they awarded her the first of ten full-ride honors scholarships given to that year's incoming class. She's had terrific classes, had a month-long trip to London after her first year, and is currently chief of the literary magazine, on the staff of the school newspaper, and a total theater geek who just spent a month of nights painting sets.

Bottom line, to me: Homeschooling for those four years helped her far more than it hurt. The primary reason I refused to let her continue in the CA school was because she was so far ahead that she never would have been challenged. Besides, they seemed to spend at least half of every day in P.E. I'm all for physical fitness, but ... duh? Stupid, much?

The person above who noted the relatively high level of creativity and sensitivity in her home-schooled students echoes exactly what my experience has been.

((P.S. Results involving homeschooling to "keep kids out of the world" and "away from bad influences" tend to produce far more failures than successes. Just saying.

Just one comment and I'll scoot:

If you are an active and caring parent, your influence - as a teacher, as a role model, and as a moral exemplar - will always far outweigh whatever happens at school. Home schooling parents often don't trust this to be true, which baffles me.

kthxbye

Thanks again to everyone.

Well, how poorly socialized do you want your kids to be, on a scale of one to ten?

^^^ this

"i am still planning to send my kids to montessori elementary school, btw."

I wish I could even dream of affording such a thing.