That is exactly right. I remember the kid who showed up to public high school after being homeschooled for K-8 seeming completely bewildered by typical patterns of teenage behavior. Thank god his parents did not decide to go all the way to grade 12.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. A thinly veiled insult perhaps?

That's not how I read it... Going to school means interacting with dozens/hundreds of other people (many of them peers who are still developing social interaction skills). Encountering those behaviors is inevitable in that setting.

That's about what I was getting at. You also get authority figures that are inconsistent and tyrannical, the wonders of bureaucracy, and extreme limitations of personal liberty. You get to learn how to deal with stupid and illogical people, bullies, and all the other elements of the vast canvas of personality types.

It's great training, and not to be discounted. But having a haven of stability in the home is an essential counterbalance.

I came here to write basically this. I know some parents who use the attitude of "the world is a rough place, so kids need to learn how to deal with it" as a justification for dealing more harshly with their kids than I would (kind of like valuing a "school of hard knocks" approach).

Based on my own childhood, I both totally agree with the premise and come to a fairly opposite conclusion: home must be a haven since it is the only place that has any reasonable chance of being a haven. School almost certainly won't be; other kids can be real assholes sometimes.

But why do you stress the "public" bit?

It's what I know about. Also, public schools have to take everybody, so you are more likely to have to encounter people across the spectrum of abilities.

I've seen a lot of people that went to private schools really not understand just how stupid can be nor how such people think, because their world was chopped off at something like a 105 IQ floor.

No one at school knows them or cares about them, like in the real world where most people are utterly indifferent. Just as your boss or your therapist does not really care about you neither does your teacher. Some friends do, eventually, but you aren’t friends with someone instantly. They don’t know or care about you at the beginning either.

It could be interpreted that way, but it also holds a certain amount of truth.