In many places the public schools are not OK for Christians. They teach evolution even in Catholic schools. So it it mainly these groups that home school? The high IQ kid will not get much of the social part of school anyway. Unless you separate them in gifted class, like our middle schools do. 3% at top are defined as gifted.

Kansas
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/regional/Kansas.htm

In my opinion, homeschooling is detrimental to the intellectual and social progress within society. Learning from someone qualified to teach their subject matter, contrary to popular belief among evangelical christians, will not turn your kid in to a god hating lezbeen.

I too. However, on of my oldest internet friends...have posted on his forum for 10 yrs...is a hard core home schooler. There is a conservative spouse, but I think it has more to do with his own resistance to authority. A bit of a libertarian.

I'm sorry, but the experience I got out of a public education system could not possibly be paralleled by homeschooling. The lab time, the equipment, the advanced programs (thanks to IB, I'm starting college with half of my classes out of the way), and my experiences as a sound engineer in the theatre. Those are some of the many things that homeschooled kids miss out on.

The_Metatron wrote:

aberneth wrote:In my opinion, homeschooling is detrimental to the intellectual and social progress within society. Learning from someone qualified to teach their subject matter, contrary to popular belief among evangelical christians, will not turn your kid in to a god hating lezbeen.

Well, shit.

I like god hating lesbians.

Yeah. That's why I joined the theatre.

Tero wrote: 3% at top are defined as gifted.

like somebody gave them a present. Who? God, that's who.

aberneth wrote:I'm sorry, but the experience I got out of a public education system could not possibly be paralleled by homeschooling. The lab time, the equipment, the advanced programs (thanks to IB, I'm starting college with half of my classes out of the way), and my experiences as a sound engineer in the theatre. Those are some of the many things that homeschooled kids miss out on.

Bully for you. Half the public schools in our country have no lab classes at the high school level. Essentially no public schools have labs at middle school level. Half the public schools in our country have perhaps one or two "advanced" classes and zero which would count as credit for a year of college. At least half the public schools in our country have serious problems with gangs, weapons, drinking and hard drugs. So, yeah, the kids get socialized alright. But not right.

When you're a parent and that kind of statistics defines your local public school, you have several choices. Move somewhere the schools might be better (if you can find a place, and if you can afford it); enroll the kid in private school (if there is one, if you the kid can get admitted, and if you can afford it); you can send the kid to the crummy school and take time off work to cajole the counselors and principal into doing what should be their jobs, meanwhile always hoping that the next phone call you get isn't the principal telling you your kid is on the way to the ER after getting jumped and would you please meet them there to sign the paperwork for the surgery. Happened to my younger nephew two weeks ago; he may never see out of one eye.

Or, you can homeschool. Making the decision to homeschool is even easier if the kid is already unconventional, as in really bright, because they're already a target and already underserved by the pablum that passes for education in most classes. If they're going to have to teach themselves everything worthwhile anyways, why should they sit through six hours of brain-deadening just to get to the goody-time in theater class ?

For that matter, the homeschoolers in our town ARE the theater - the local stage company is made up almost entirely by homeschool kids and homeschool graduates, and they put on four professional shows a year. The only downside I can think of to homeschooling is that the parents end up with so little time to themselves.

So, while I'm thrilled for you that my tax dollars gave you a great educational experience, I hope you recognize that your anecdote is not helpful to parents in the real world who don't have the choice of your school.

aberneth wrote:In my opinion, homeschooling is detrimental to the intellectual and social progress within society. Learning from someone qualified to teach their subject matter, contrary to popular belief among evangelical christians, will not turn your kid in to a god hating lezbeen.

Seconded.

I myself am home schooled. I enjoy it. It allows me to learn in a way that is convenient for me.

I am a member of a public speaking group for home schoolers that meets every Friday. It allows me to socialize as well as develop public speaking skills, which may be very useful later in my life. However, after a few weeks, I noticed something very interesting: out of the 20+ students that attended the meetings every week, I was, and continue to be, the only atheist. In fact, I'm the only non-Christian student.

Sometimes some groups of religious people are tolerant. Homeschoolers may have some, no guarantee. Lots of groups exist, find your own.

I think kids deserve to be educated by qualified professionals. There are very, very few cases in which home schooled kids have that benefit. Besides, if a family can afford to keep a parent home at all times to serve as a (unqualified) teacher to their children, they can afford to send their kids to private school, where the teachers know what they're talking about. Homeschooling because public schools suck is not an excuse.

They also miss out on the social learning provided by attending school. Getting out of the house is good for kids. Spending time apart from their parents is healthy too.

I don't know how keeping kids at home because there are no science labs in public schools is helpful. I don't suppose most homeschoolers have labs in their homes. You're just taking them from one sub-standard facility to another. Instead of keeping the kids at home, how about doing SOMETHING to change the predicament public schools are in?

And seriously? Drugs? Drugs are EVERYWHERE. Keeping kids home and sheltering them from substance abuse is not beneficial in the long run. Just engage in effective parenting and give the kid the knowledge and tools they need in order to make good decisions. If they decide to toss what you say out the window and use mushrooms anyways, well, at least they're getting it out of the way at a young age. You can shelter them from drugs until eighteen and they'll do the same damn thing the second they get out of your grasp. Sheltering children is a profoundly lazy means of "parenting".

It's quite frustrating listening to home schoolers. The evangelical christian home schoolers are awful because they don't teach any of the curriculum necessary in order for a kid to get into college and keep them dumb. Then there are the secular home schoolers whose children are just too goddamn special to attend school with all those other peoples' kids. It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's. Moms and dads aren't the most objective individuals regarding their kids.

I found school offensively easy. I never had to try in order to do well. I just did. I may not have learnt anything academically speaking that I couldn't have learnt on my own or from a private tutor but the experiece was beneficial and ultimately made me a stronger individual.

School isn't supposed to be fun or convenient. It's a life experience you get through. No one is too special for that.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I think kids deserve to be educated by qualified professionals. There are very, very few cases in which home schooled kids have that benefit. Besides, if a family can afford to keep a parent home at all times to serve as a (unqualified) teacher to their children, they can afford to send their kids to private school, where the teachers know what they're talking about. Homeschooling because public schools suck is not an excuse.

They also miss out on the social learning provided by attending school. Getting out of the house is good for kids. Spending time apart from their parents is healthy too.

I don't know how keeping kids at home because there are no science labs in public schools is helpful. I don't suppose most homeschoolers have labs in their homes. You're just taking them from one sub-standard facility to another. Instead of keeping the kids at home, how about doing SOMETHING to change the predicament public schools are in?

And seriously? Drugs? Drugs are EVERYWHERE. Keeping kids home and sheltering them from substance abuse is not beneficial in the long run. Just engage in effective parenting and give the kid the knowledge and tools they need in order to make good decisions. If they decide to toss what you say out the window and use mushrooms anyways, well, at least they're getting it out of the way at a young age. You can shelter them from drugs until eighteen and they'll do the same damn thing the second they get out of your grasp. Sheltering children is a profoundly lazy means of "parenting".

It's quite frustrating listening to home schoolers. The evangelical christian home schoolers are awful because they don't teach any of the curriculum necessary in order for a kid to get into college and keep them dumb. Then there are the secular home schoolers whose children are just too goddamn special to attend school with all those other peoples' kids. It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's. Moms and dads aren't the most objective individuals regarding their kids.

I found school offensively easy. I never had to try in order to do well. I just did. I may not have learnt anything academically speaking that I couldn't have learnt on my own or from a private tutor but the experiece was beneficial and ultimately made me a stronger individual.

School isn't supposed to be fun or convenient. It's a life experience you get through. No one is too special for that.

You seem to have a limited, stereotypical understanding of homeschooling. Home schooling has nothing to do with "being too special" for public and private schools. It's about teaching in a way that fits a students's needs. The classroom environment isn't for everyone. Some students learn better through home schooling. This doesn't make them "intellectually superior" or "too goddamn special". It simply means that they learn a bit differently.

In the 21st century, where the internet is the primary system for sharing information, finding a qualified teacher to teach students what is necessary to get a quality education is offensively easy . There are many online schools that provide qualified professionals to teach students in a variety of ways, including using a microphone and whiteboard. These schools provide textbooks, both virtual and physical, for students to study when a teacher isn't needed. Setting up a home school environment where the teachers know what they're talking about is quite easy.

I find it disappointing that you associate home schooling with such childish elitism. Do you have any evidence to back up this claim:

It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's

It's extreme generalizations like this that make me doubt that you know very much about home schooling apart from the stereotypes. I'll say it again: home schooling has nothing to do with being elite academically or intellectually. It's about teaching your child according to how he/she learns best. I'm sure that there are many children who were home schooled because of their intelligence or academic talents, but to throw all home schoolers into a single box is completely foolish.

Dear Mr. Hotshoe, if I may, I will analyze your response section by section, interjecting my own responses here and there, while trying to keep my condescending nature to a minimum.

hotshoe wrote:
Bully for you. Half the public schools in our country have no lab classes at the high school level. Essentially no public schools have labs at middle school level. Half the public schools in our country have perhaps one or two "advanced" classes and zero which would count as credit for a year of college. At least half the public schools in our country have serious problems with gangs, weapons, drinking and hard drugs. So, yeah, the kids get socialized alright. But not right.

In the section, you essentially establish that half of the students in this country who are enrolled in public schools receive little hands-on experience, little or no advanced education, and are subjected to violence and other manner of seedy behavior. You go on to explain that these students are imparted with negative social values and traits. This is a fallacy of composition.

When you're a parent and that kind of statistics defines your local public school, you have several choices. Move somewhere the schools might be better (if you can find a place, and if you can afford it); enroll the kid in private school (if there is one, if you the kid can get admitted, and if you can afford it); you can send the kid to the crummy school and take time off work to cajole the counselors and principal into doing what should be their jobs, meanwhile always hoping that the next phone call you get isn't the principal telling you your kid is on the way to the ER after getting jumped and would you please meet them there to sign the paperwork for the surgery. Happened to my younger nephew two weeks ago; he may never see out of one eye.

This, again appears to be a fallacy of composition, or some other false generalization. Let me break this down to you: "You have 3 options: Move to a better school, move to a better school, or send your kid to a crappy school so they will get in to trouble and be stabbed in the eye". Appeal to pity, too?

Or, you can homeschool. Making the decision to homeschool is even easier if the kid is already unconventional, as in really bright, because they're already a target and already underserved by the pablum that passes for education in most classes. If they're going to have to teach themselves everything worthwhile anyways, why should they sit through six hours of brain-deadening just to get to the goody-time in theater class ?

Okay, so I am spoiled. I go to a good school. We aren't better funded than the other schools in the district, but we have a good staff. That being said, I'm not exactly conventional. I scored a 2260 on the SATs, straight 6s on my IB tests with a 7 in chem. I'm a 99th percentile kind of guy. And I'm a gay liberal vegetarian atheist crowded among a bunch of neoconservative "I'm in a relationship with Jesus" types. But again, for the other half of the country that apparently doesn't suck, the scholastic experience of a public school is more comprehensive than home school. However, like the homeschooled theatre goers you mentioned below, my school had no theatre class. It was an afterschool program which was 100% self sufficient. So, I sat through 6 hours of brain "deadening" to spend 8 hours building set after school. How is this relevant to the above? Home schooling, like public schooling, is a your-mileage-may-vary situation. I'd also like to point out that homeschooling carries a cost as well. For the parent responsible for the education of their child, it becomes their job. Working a bread-winning job and homeschooling your kids just isn't feasible. Unless you don't sleep. So that, too, carries a cost, greater than the cost of almost any private school, possibly even moving. If either of my parents had given up their job to homeschool me for 12 years, we'd be out a LOT of money, to the tune of 7 figures. I don't know about you, but 1.2 million dollars can buy one damn fancy house where I'm from. And, assuming that one parent is already a stay-at-home mommy/daddy, than the family probably has money to send their kids to a private school. Unless, like so many conservative christian families, they have a hundred children.

For that matter, the homeschoolers in our town ARE the theater - the local stage company is made up almost entirely by homeschool kids and homeschool graduates, and they put on four professional shows a year. The only downside I can think of to homeschooling is that the parents end up with so little time to themselves.

As you said earlier, well, bully for you.

So, while I'm thrilled for you that my tax dollars gave you a great educational experience, I hope you recognize that your anecdote is not helpful to parents in the real world who don't have the choice of your school.

The implication that parents who live in areas that have good public schools are not living in the "real world" is a fallacy of some kind, but I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm certain that it is in there.

Thank you for paying for my education. Some day, I'll pay for your retirement.

Nautilidae wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I think kids deserve to be educated by qualified professionals. There are very, very few cases in which home schooled kids have that benefit. Besides, if a family can afford to keep a parent home at all times to serve as a (unqualified) teacher to their children, they can afford to send their kids to private school, where the teachers know what they're talking about. Homeschooling because public schools suck is not an excuse.

They also miss out on the social learning provided by attending school. Getting out of the house is good for kids. Spending time apart from their parents is healthy too.

I don't know how keeping kids at home because there are no science labs in public schools is helpful. I don't suppose most homeschoolers have labs in their homes. You're just taking them from one sub-standard facility to another. Instead of keeping the kids at home, how about doing SOMETHING to change the predicament public schools are in?

And seriously? Drugs? Drugs are EVERYWHERE. Keeping kids home and sheltering them from substance abuse is not beneficial in the long run. Just engage in effective parenting and give the kid the knowledge and tools they need in order to make good decisions. If they decide to toss what you say out the window and use mushrooms anyways, well, at least they're getting it out of the way at a young age. You can shelter them from drugs until eighteen and they'll do the same damn thing the second they get out of your grasp. Sheltering children is a profoundly lazy means of "parenting".

It's quite frustrating listening to home schoolers. The evangelical christian home schoolers are awful because they don't teach any of the curriculum necessary in order for a kid to get into college and keep them dumb. Then there are the secular home schoolers whose children are just too goddamn special to attend school with all those other peoples' kids. It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's. Moms and dads aren't the most objective individuals regarding their kids.

I found school offensively easy. I never had to try in order to do well. I just did. I may not have learnt anything academically speaking that I couldn't have learnt on my own or from a private tutor but the experiece was beneficial and ultimately made me a stronger individual.

School isn't supposed to be fun or convenient. It's a life experience you get through. No one is too special for that.

You seem to have a limited, stereotypical understanding of homeschooling. Home schooling has nothing to do with "being too special" for public and private schools. It's about teaching in a way that fits a students's needs. The classroom environment isn't for everyone. Some students learn better through home schooling. This doesn't make them "intellectually superior" or "too goddamn special". It simply means that they learn a bit differently.

In the 21st century, where the internet is the primary system for sharing information, finding a qualified teacher to teach students what is necessary to get a quality education is offensively easy . There are many online schools that provide qualified professionals to teach students in a variety of ways, including using a microphone and whiteboard. These schools provide textbooks, both virtual and physical, for students to study when a teacher isn't needed. Setting up a home school environment where the teachers know what they're talking about is quite easy.

I find it disappointing that you associate home schooling with such childish elitism. Do you have any evidence do back up this claim:

It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's

It's extreme generalizations like this that make me doubt that you know very much about home schooling apart from the stereotypes. I'll say it again: home schooling has nothing to do with being elite academically or intellectually. It's about teaching your child according to how he/she learns best. I'm sure that there are many children who were home schooled because of their intelligence or academic talents, but to throw all home schoolers into a single box is completely foolish.

It's not that much of a stretch. Most of the homeschooled kids in this country are homeschooled because their parents wish to shelter them from god hating lezbeens. They're evangelical christians, jehovah's witnesses, and other man of far-right christians. As such, they ARE sheltered. They ARE taught to fear science and reason.

aberneth wrote:

Nautilidae wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I think kids deserve to be educated by qualified professionals. There are very, very few cases in which home schooled kids have that benefit. Besides, if a family can afford to keep a parent home at all times to serve as a (unqualified) teacher to their children, they can afford to send their kids to private school, where the teachers know what they're talking about. Homeschooling because public schools suck is not an excuse.

They also miss out on the social learning provided by attending school. Getting out of the house is good for kids. Spending time apart from their parents is healthy too.

I don't know how keeping kids at home because there are no science labs in public schools is helpful. I don't suppose most homeschoolers have labs in their homes. You're just taking them from one sub-standard facility to another. Instead of keeping the kids at home, how about doing SOMETHING to change the predicament public schools are in?

And seriously? Drugs? Drugs are EVERYWHERE. Keeping kids home and sheltering them from substance abuse is not beneficial in the long run. Just engage in effective parenting and give the kid the knowledge and tools they need in order to make good decisions. If they decide to toss what you say out the window and use mushrooms anyways, well, at least they're getting it out of the way at a young age. You can shelter them from drugs until eighteen and they'll do the same damn thing the second they get out of your grasp. Sheltering children is a profoundly lazy means of "parenting".

It's quite frustrating listening to home schoolers. The evangelical christian home schoolers are awful because they don't teach any of the curriculum necessary in order for a kid to get into college and keep them dumb. Then there are the secular home schoolers whose children are just too goddamn special to attend school with all those other peoples' kids. It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's. Moms and dads aren't the most objective individuals regarding their kids.

I found school offensively easy. I never had to try in order to do well. I just did. I may not have learnt anything academically speaking that I couldn't have learnt on my own or from a private tutor but the experiece was beneficial and ultimately made me a stronger individual.

School isn't supposed to be fun or convenient. It's a life experience you get through. No one is too special for that.

You seem to have a limited, stereotypical understanding of homeschooling. Home schooling has nothing to do with "being too special" for public and private schools. It's about teaching in a way that fits a students's needs. The classroom environment isn't for everyone. Some students learn better through home schooling. This doesn't make them "intellectually superior" or "too goddamn special". It simply means that they learn a bit differently.

In the 21st century, where the internet is the primary system for sharing information, finding a qualified teacher to teach students what is necessary to get a quality education is offensively easy . There are many online schools that provide qualified professionals to teach students in a variety of ways, including using a microphone and whiteboard. These schools provide textbooks, both virtual and physical, for students to study when a teacher isn't needed. Setting up a home school environment where the teachers know what they're talking about is quite easy.

I find it disappointing that you associate home schooling with such childish elitism. Do you have any evidence do back up this claim:

It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's

It's extreme generalizations like this that make me doubt that you know very much about home schooling apart from the stereotypes. I'll say it again: home schooling has nothing to do with being elite academically or intellectually. It's about teaching your child according to how he/she learns best. I'm sure that there are many children who were home schooled because of their intelligence or academic talents, but to throw all home schoolers into a single box is completely foolish.

It's not that much of a stretch. Most of the homeschooled kids in this country are homeschooled because their parents wish to shelter them from god hating lezbeens. They're evangelical christians, jehovah's witnesses, and other man of far-right christians. As such, they ARE sheltered. They ARE taught to fear science and reason.

I agree that a large portion of home schoolers are taught this way to give them a "Christian education" (whatever that is). However, I was addressing the comment about secular home schoolers and academic elitism, not the extremely religious home schoolers.

Also:

Okay, so I am spoiled. I go to a good school. We aren't better funded than the other schools in the district, but we have a good staff. That being said, I'm not exactly conventional. I scored a 2260 on the SATs, straight 6s on my IB tests with a 7 in chem. I'm a 99th percentile kind of guy. And I'm a gay liberal vegetarian atheist crowded among a bunch of neoconservative "I'm in a relationship with Jesus" types. But again, for the other half of the country that apparently doesn't suck, the scholastic experience of a public school is more comprehensive than home school. However, like the homeschooled theatre goers you mentioned below, my school had no theatre class. It was an afterschool program which was 100% self sufficient. So, I sat through 6 hours of brain "deadening" to spend 8 hours building set after school. How is this relevant to the above? Home schooling, like public schooling, is a your-mileage-may-vary situation. I'd also like to point out that homeschooling carries a cost as well. For the parent responsible for the education of their child, it becomes their job. Working a bread-winning job and homeschooling your kids just isn't feasible. Unless you don't sleep. So that, too, carries a cost, greater than the cost of almost any private school, possibly even moving. If either of my parents had given up their job to homeschool me for 12 years, we'd be out a LOT of money, to the tune of 7 figures. I don't know about you, but 1.2 million dollars can buy one damn fancy house where I'm from.

I'd like to point out that this is assuming that both parents work. This isn't always the case. There are many situations (such as my own) where the father works and the mother stays at home. For these people, it's isn't necessarily a sacrifice to homeschool children, especially in the 21st century where online schooling provides everything that is needed for the student to learn, including textbooks, several teachers, and an academic advisor to keep the student on track. This doesn't mean that there won't be any work on the parents side, but it certainly makes their "job" much easier.

Do they send you the frog to dissect in the mail to the homeschoolers? Then you follow the video on the internet to open it up?

My kids did frogs in middle school, so there was science lab. Also African violets.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I think kids deserve to be educated by qualified professionals. There are very, very few cases in which home schooled kids have that benefit. Besides, if a family can afford to keep a parent home at all times to serve as a (unqualified) teacher to their children, they can afford to send their kids to private school, where the teachers know what they're talking about. Homeschooling because public schools suck is not an excuse.

Thanks a lot for flatly denying my own real-life experience.

They also miss out on the social learning provided by attending school. Getting out of the house is good for kids. Spending time apart from their parents is healthy too.

Most home-schooled students I know "get out of the house" as much or more as regular-schooled students; since they aren't chained to a school desk 6+ hours a day they have lots of time to travel.

I don't know how keeping kids at home because there are no science labs in public schools is helpful. I don't suppose most homeschoolers have labs in their homes. You're just taking them from one sub-standard facility to another. Instead of keeping the kids at home, how about doing SOMETHING to change the predicament public schools are in?

Again, thanks so much for your implication that I, personally, am responsible for changing the school system of an entire state, rather than simply accepting that it is not worth the Herculean effort, and choosing to exert my efforts into direct improvements in my own family life.

And seriously? Drugs? Drugs are EVERYWHERE. Keeping kids home and sheltering them from substance abuse is not beneficial in the long run. Just engage in effective parenting and give the kid the knowledge and tools they need in order to make good decisions. If they decide to toss what you say out the window and use mushrooms anyways, well, at least they're getting it out of the way at a young age. You can shelter them from drugs until eighteen and they'll do the same damn thing the second they get out of your grasp. Sheltering children is a profoundly lazy means of "parenting".

Boy, you're really on a roll, aren't you. Please quote where I ever claimed that I believe in "sheltering" children. What I actually said is that, since public schools in the US are often substandard educationally, it makes no sense to send children there merely for "socialization" purposes, since the socialization they'll get is not valuable. It's the exact opposite of the lazy parenting, which you claim.

It's quite frustrating listening to home schoolers. The evangelical christian home schoolers are awful because they don't teach any of the curriculum necessary in order for a kid to get into college and keep them dumb. Then there are the secular home schoolers whose children are just too goddamn special to attend school with all those other peoples' kids. It's always about how intellectually and academically superior their kids are to everyone else's. Moms and dads aren't the most objective individuals regarding their kids.

So you don't like homeschoolers you've met, therefore you're qualified to look down on me and mock the difficult choices our family has made ? Well, excuse me for breathing your air and thinking I'm special enough to deserve to do so.

I found school offensively easy. I never had to try in order to do well. I just did. I may not have learnt anything academically speaking that I couldn't have learnt on my own or from a private tutor but the experiece was beneficial and ultimately made me a stronger individual.

School isn't supposed to be fun or convenient. It's a life experience you get through. No one is too special for that.

Fuck, yeah, every fucking kid should absolutely be forced to have the same fucking life experience to get through. Fuck, yeah, no one is too special to be exempt from the un-fun, inconvenient, brain-deadening, time-wasting, unchallenging public school experience in the US. We're number one! Fuck yeah, let's go stomp us some of them stuck-up homeschoolers. Who the fuck do they think they are, someone special ?

aberneth wrote:Okay, so I am spoiled. I go to a good school.

Yes, and that was my whole point. Your original claim was that homeschoolers are deprived of great school experiences:

I'm sorry, but the experience I got out of a public education system could not possibly be paralleled by homeschooling. The lab time, the equipment, the advanced programs (thanks to IB, I'm starting college with half of my classes out of the way), and my experiences as a sound engineer in the theatre. Those are some of the many things that homeschooled kids miss out on.

However, only those kids who are "spoiled" like you, by going to a good school, are actually having those great experiences. Half the kids in our country won't be missing out on any of those things if they're homeschooled, since those experiences in fact are not offered at their local school. So your claim that they're missing out fails.

It's easy to assume that everyone should go to a public school when you happen to be lucky enough to go to a good one. But in real life, not everyone does. Not everyone is as lucky as you, and those that aren't as lucky may need to make their own choices.

Thank dog we live in a country where some choices are still available.

hotshoe wrote:However, only those kids who are "spoiled" like you, by going to a good school, are actually having those great experiences. Half the kids in our country won't be missing out on any of those things if they're homeschooled, since those experiences in fact are not offered at their local school. So your claim that they're missing out fails.

Hotshoe, as much as I agree with your overall point, I'd like you to provide evidence for the claim in bold.