In public schools one at least knows what the teachers are teaching. Home-schooled kids are not protected from anything ranging from creationist crap to domestic violence (you as a teacher can spot if a pupil turns up beaten every other day).

Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?

Edit: for all those who down-vote, I'm writing this from a German point of view. Here, nearly every non-state/church-schooling effort has been plagued with massive problems: inadequate knowledge of teachers, sexual harrassment, violence scandals. Name the problem, you've had it.

Somehow I managed to graduated university with high honors (sister is in civil engineering on a full-boat scholarship, top of her class, brother got a full boat as well.)

Lastly, my other younger sister (14 years old) is going to be a sophomore next year, is currently teaching herself Python/Ruby, and takes senior-level math.

Homeschooling was the best thing that happened to me: I learned to love learning.

We were not homeschooled for religious reasons. It was purely a choice made by the family during a time when we were traveling after both parents retired. We each had the option at anytime to jump back into the public education system after we moved to Austin, but we opted to continue homeschooling instead.

Would I recommend it for everyone? No. Homeschooling should be dealt with on a case by case basis.

In high school, I played varsity soccer, and ran track at nearby public school, so I knew most of the kids there.

I also worked often, and met quite a few people that way.

If I could change anything about my social activities, it would be to live closer to where things actually happened. Growing up in the middle of nowhere in Maine gets boring :)

you voted for bush didnt you

If one were to read your post cynically, they would see that you were advocating everyone be forced into a worse education (often provably so, especially at many public schools) so that we could make sure the parents didn't teach them anything you disagree with and beat them up.

Nonetheless, I am glad that public education is compulsory here.

Forcing all children to go to the same schools is essential if you want children to have equal opportunities in life.

1. It gives the children coming from disfunctional households a chance to escape and a chance to be helped.

2. It guarantees that the child recieves an education that has a certain basic level in a broad range of subjects, independently of what the parents find relevant or interesting. I bet there are quite a few parents or future parents on this site who think that teaching children about art or literature is a waste of time. There are also people out there who think the same about history or math.

3. Children recieve an education from people that are associated with education. Not only will uncomfortable subjects such as the Holocaust (very central to education in Germany) or sexual education be covered, but they will also be taught by teachers whose relation to the children is free of all the emotional baggage of the relation between children and their parents.

4. Children need to socialize with other children

5. In public school, children "see" the part of society that their parents would like to ignore, be it out of ideological reasons or out of conveniende. If you are a person who leads a good life, free of the problems that plague the society you live in, you are very likely to either shield your children, or unknowingly only expose them to the bubble in which you live. Both things are bad for the children and even worse for society as a whole.

Regarding your last point: There should normally be enough time out of school to improve on the education that the children receive in the fields that you deem more important. It might well be that through public education we lose some outcome in one potential "megabrain" or two, but the overall gain for society that comes from improvement "at the bottom" IMO far outweighs that. Also, the smart kids usually find a way to dig into what interests them, even if you can push them along only a little.

1. A chance but a good one? What promise do you have that bad families want to keep their children home anyway? Even making that choice suggests a lot of love for their children-it is a sacrifice after all.

2. How? Students in the US routinely score poorly and the system continues, teachers aren't fired, nothing changes really.

3. Why is this necessarily a good thing? Just having a degree doesn't make you qualified to do anything useful. I've interviewed enough software engineers with degrees from great schools who can't seem to program at all to say this is true.

4. On what basis? Also shouldn't parents be more aware of than you?

5. Parents can expose their children to that in any number of ways.

I don't homeschool but these arguments are naive at best. My guess is that in Germany the average school is better than in the US but freedom means people potentially make choices that you don't like. That's part of the package.

However, one thing I would point out is that your country (Germany) is much more culturally homogeneous than the United States. For example, I don't think there is a significant portion of the population who are religious fundamentalists and don't believe the theory of evolution. So it's much easier to come up with a standardized list of basic information that everyone can agree is worth teaching all children, without getting into endless political and legal wrangles like those that occur in the US over what material should be taught in public schools.

... Permit me to express a measure of doubt on a variety of levels. The overall desirability, the extent to which that can work, the hubris involved, et cetera...

I believe that people should be free to have those thoughts, but I also think they're detrimental to moving society forwards, which is how I read the OP's comment, it just uses a more absolute phrasing.

I think I have a good case that they're a far more direct threat as well, as well. I could even make the case that it's a fundamental contradiction, maybe even a lie, to pursue a "free" society by suppressing freedom. :P

But they're not an unmitigated blessing whose opinions should supplant those of parents in all cases either. So I think that it's really good that people have the option to send their children somewhere that isn't a public school system (including a private school or homeschool, possibly even with vouchers). That's a simple, useful check on its power -- and explicitly seeking to remove that check with the goal of changing the way children think is Kinda Creepy or worse. We don't need no thought control...

I know you haven't; that's why I took the trouble to point out the implications of taking freedom of thought to its logical conclusion. Most people (including you, it appears) don't like that conclusion; but that necessarily implies that freedom of thought must have limitations. Any system of public schooling must violate freedom of thought in some respects.

Personally, I would be fine with abolishing the existing system of public schooling altogether, and replacing it with something like this: take the money that used to be spent on public schools and divide up among parents as vouchers. The parents can use the vouchers to send their kids to private schools, religious schools, whatever, or they can use them to acquire the resources to enable home schooling. (For example, the voucher money could eliminate the need for both parents to work, so one of them could stay home to home school the children.) But I don't see any realistic chance of a system like this happening in the US.

Also, to be fair, there are arguments on the other side as well. For example, someone upthread pointed out that public schools can help to equalize opportunities for children whose parents simply don't care about whether they get a good education.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1989/3/16/homeschoolers-ar...

My nieces were/are homeschooled. Unlike their peers, they aren't ignorant, pregnant and don't have to run a gauntlet of savages in the public schools in their area. In addition to getting a much better education, they are better equipped to handle modern life. From financial wellness, to physical fitness, social integration to self dependence, they are score in the top decile.

Citation badly needed.

There are certain things you pick when you go to school, just by being among other people.

For the record, I've seen a lot more naive, odd, or strange people who did go to public school.

However, the point I take issue with is the "knowledge" thing. Considering we have standardized tests, parent commenter was talking out their ass.

These were all extremely common things in the school district where I grew up, which is why my parents, (and the parents of many others in the area) chose to homeschool their children. I never learned those things by "just being among other people" and I think I'm better for it. (My state-required yearly standardized testing scores growing up, that I started college at 16, and the leadership positions in social organizations I’ve held most of my life seem to bear this out.)

Being "around people" is not exclusive to public school kids, nor is it some sort of magical indicator for life success. In addition, homeschooling isn’t exclusively the domain of religious zealotry and terrible people. There are plenty of us who you've met who are perefectly "normal", and may even lack some of the usual bad habits. Please update your stereotype database. :-)

There are certain things you pick when you study liberal arts, just by being among other English majors.

I have a family member in Texas with a home schooled child. They attend group teaching sessions, sit in on other classes, and use the many reference books that are provided for home school teachers. Home schooled does not mean "taught only what the parent wants to teach", nor does it mean "taught only what the parent knows". There's a legal definition surrounding home schooling.

Can you provide some of these studies? I've never seen one that was written by someone who understood why its important to control for race/financial status/etc, which makes them fairly meaningless.

What are the consequences of not meeting these standards?

Please slow down and use some "common sense" and reasoning before allowing your emotional ranting about how other people (religious folks in this case) lack reasoning and logic.

* Inability of Junior to survive outdoors (or indoors) for any length of time without assistance?

Yep, not much better than the stereotypical conservative politician in that regard.

There is no one proper pedagogy. Teachers use a lot of different methods, as do parents, whether they have an education background, a science background, or are just using well-reviewed curricula.

The ability to give a child a customized, one-on-one education is an advantage over the classroom model. The parents have time because one parent does not work or does not work very much; they are a full-time educator and put in a lot of work to be good at it.

Regarding your earlier remark about abuse: abuse does not really happen. The safest place for a child is in a home with intact parents, and most homeschooling families are intact.

I mean this kindly when I say you are completely ignorant of what homeschooling is like. I encourage you to acquaint yourself with actual homeschoolers. There are probably several communities in your area and you would be invited to observe some of the co-operative activities and talk to the parents.

I'm not sure why it's a reason to avoid home schooling. Schools are not great at spotting and reporting abuse.

For a source on the uneven distribution of abuse by family members, I would suggest to start with this HHS report: [1]

"Children living with their married biological parents universally had the lowest rate, whereas those living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner in the household had the highest rate in all maltreatment categories. Compared to children living with married biological parents, those whose single parent had a live-in partner had more than 8 times the rate of maltreatment overall, over 10 times the rate of abuse, and nearly 8 times the rate of neglect."

[0] http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/NCANationalStatisti...

[1] http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_report_...

For one, a quick look at Wikipedia gives list of references indicating the opposite -- homeschooled studends tend to sligtly outpeform school-schooled students [1] [2].

For another, there's been plenty of stories in press, and specifically on HN, indicating that giving students a lot of freedom in picking both subjects and methodology yields better results than highly uniform, mass schooling.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Homeschooling_and... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Test_results

>You as a parent have neither the time

This part is true. Even if it weren't, I probably wouldn't pursue home-schooling my children. Neither proves the point that no person/family is up to the task.

> nor the knowledge of all the various subjects

I may be deluding myself, but I feel confident that I have mastered all of the elements of "basic high school curriculum." I expect that is true for many people. As far as any of that goes, home-schooling does not necessarily require that one person does all of the instruction, nor that the curriculum is confined to that which is within the bounds of what the parent(s) knows. In fact the parent(s) could outsource nearly all of the instruction, and merely act in a supervisory role.

This entire discussion is an awful bag of anecdotes, with this "common sense" thing right at the bottom of the pack.

Let's base our discussion on actual facts and statistics, shall we?

If homeschooling is worse, the statistics will bear this out. If the statistics don't bear it out, then it's not worse. This "don't bother to look for facts, just think about it" business is reprehensible.

I was homeschooled all the way through high school, and while I may not be the founder of Dropbox, I scored pretty high on the SATs and do very well for myself. So, [citation needed.]

While students in a public school are vying for the attention of a teacher amongst a group of 20 other students, I had the almost exclusive attention of a teacher very invested in my success for more than a decade. I'm not saying it's perfect, but there can be distinct advantages.

This is balanced by the governments right to the quality of education a child is receiving and potentially serve a school attendance order.

Case in point: I was given Christian-themed workbooks and presented anti-evolution texts. Today, I don't belong in either camp. However, who knows how I would have turned out if not for unfettered Internet access and a degree of laxness in the indoctrination efforts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Research

I'm still anti-homeschooling, but I have to accept that these students do better... probably benefiting from having one-on-one personalized education from the parents while public school students are mostly lectured and ignored by teachers working with 30-plus students.

What is your reasoning for being anti-homeschooling then?

I agree in principle, but what if Christian religious ideals were compulsorily taught in Texas public schools?

>Not to mention the fact that home-schooled kids are far, far behind "ordinary schooled" kids in terms of knowledge. How should they be other, after all?

I am an instructor at a small College in Texas, and I have had a few home-schooled students (and perhaps there were some that I did not recognize). After my experience with them I can say the following: One performed significantly better than public school students in at least one subject (math in one memorable case). Most performed worse or seemed deficient in at least one subject. All seemed to lack social skills to some degree. As an example, the student who was so good at math had no idea of the existence of the civil rights movement of the 1960's. There were other gaps in his knowledge of recent history, but that one stuck out the most to me.

But more interestingly, I have absolutely no recollection of being taught about the civil rights movement in school. Certainly I have learned about it, but if I learned anything about it in school, I don't remember it.

Seymour Papert asked a rhetorical question in his book The Children's Machine:

On my reckoning, the fraction of human knowledge that is in the [school] curriculum is well under a millionth and diminishing fast. I simply cannot escape from the question: Why that millionth in particular?

If you believe that the political biases, rote memorization, rigorous examination, strict discipline, regimentation and social control that comes with public schooling is superior to the intellectual freedom of homeschooling and alternative education, you are deluded.

In fact, a structured homeschooling curriculum outweighs public schooling: http://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html

People will be biased, but for open-minded families, it's an excellent bet.

Then you underestimate just how apt children are at learning and absorbing information if given their own pace and room to heighten their interests. It's better to be well versed in a few fields and know minutiae about others, rather than merely know minutiae about many fields.

Please read the works of John Holt, John Taylor Gatto and Ivan Illich for further information.