First, an anecdote about home schoolers: I am good friends with three people who started home-schooled and did not enter the traditional school system until later on (two in high school, one in college). I don't think any of them regret it, and they are all very well off academically. There seems to be a popular conception of home schooling parents as crazy religious zealots or something, which I think has little basis in reality.
Honestly, having spent about half my pre-college years at public schools, I would much rather be home schooled than public schooled.
The primary reason is that it seemed like public school classes were always geared towards the lowest common denominator of the class. I hardly did any work (and hardly learned anything) because we spent so much time banging on the same concepts for the benefit of the slowest people in the class. When I finally went to private school, we suddenly started targeting at least the middle of the class. I finally started learning things in school!
The secondary reason is political. Even from a young age, I was very aware of the fact that the public school system didn't treat me like a human being. I'm better at articulating why I felt that way now; it's because the public school system is alarmingly close to the prison system.
As a child, you are legally required to attend school, under threat of force (directed at your parents). Since many people can't or won't do home or private schooling, this amounts to forcing many children to attend public school. Upon arriving, you are not permitted to leave of your own free will. You are subject to the arbitrary directives of non-elected officials. You are stripped of many basic human rights on campus (in particular, the right to free speech and the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures). There is a healthy judicial tradition in the USA of taking away the rights of school children. I'm sure there's a list of relevant supreme court cases around. Public schools in the US also do tons of political indoctrination, like saying the pledge of allegiance on a regular basis. Growing up in that environment was extremely deleterious to my critical thinking; by the time I was in sixth grade, I had all sorts of authoritarian leftist ideas of exactly the sort I'd been subjected to by my teachers and my schools of the last seven years.
It wasn't until I finally switched to private school, where they treated me like a human, that I realized I had been imprisoned about half the days out of every year. Finally, I was free to leave campus of my own accord. Finally, discourse, rather than blind obedience, was the norm. If private school wasn't an option, I'd much rather homeschool my children than expose them to the academic and psychological clusterfuck that is every public school I every attended.
> There seems to be a popular conception of home schooling parents as crazy religious zealots or something, which I think has little basis in reality.
Knowing nothing about you other than that you read and comment on this site I would assume that 1) you are above societal average intellectually and financially and 2) you associate with people who are similarly successful.
Given that you mostly know people roughly as successful as you, it shouldn't be a surprise that people you know who are home schooled are doing about as well as you are.
To directly address your point, I think of the home schooling population as fairly bimodal; there are many parents who choose homeschooling for religious reasons, and there are some (especially with gifted children) who homeschool because the standard curricula move to slow. Which is to say, crazy religious zealots are a large fraction of the homeschoolers, but not representative of the homeschooled people you and I meet.
Incidentally, I was briefly homeschooled with no impact on my academic career.
...you associate with people who are similarly successful.
This argument is nearly uncounterable (that's not a good thing): is anyone going to respond "no I hang out with dumbass bible-thumpers all the time"?
Since we're comparing anecdotes, some homeschoolers I know might comprise another "mode": those whose local public schools are so horrible and dangerous that they cannot subject their children, whom they love, to such an environment.
I'm not sure I understand your objection here. Most people spend their time interacting with people who are similar to them. If anything, this is an argument that anecdotal evidence is quite limited in general. But that doesn't seem controversial at all!
People that were home-schooled seem to be a little off, to me at least; granted, I was in the public education system from kindergarten on. They often seem to be blithely ignorant of the rules that most people operate by. Honestly, I typically find them insufferable, since they are so much more prone to bike-shedding, as opposed to nodding and then going and getting shit done.
> by the time I was in sixth grade, I had all sorts of authoritarian leftist ideas of exactly the sort I'd been subjected to by my teachers and my schools of the last seven years
I'm not sure i understand this correctly: you're saying that now, after having managed to un-brainwash yourself, you do not harbour leftist ideas any more? Do you consider this a good thing? (I'm clear on the authoritarian side of your story, and i agree)
Other than that, i totally agree—i experienced the public schools i went to precisely the way you describe. It's a soul-crushing experience.
Honestly, having spent about half my pre-college years at public schools, I would much rather be home schooled than public schooled.
The primary reason is that it seemed like public school classes were always geared towards the lowest common denominator of the class. I hardly did any work (and hardly learned anything) because we spent so much time banging on the same concepts for the benefit of the slowest people in the class. When I finally went to private school, we suddenly started targeting at least the middle of the class. I finally started learning things in school!
The secondary reason is political. Even from a young age, I was very aware of the fact that the public school system didn't treat me like a human being. I'm better at articulating why I felt that way now; it's because the public school system is alarmingly close to the prison system.
As a child, you are legally required to attend school, under threat of force (directed at your parents). Since many people can't or won't do home or private schooling, this amounts to forcing many children to attend public school. Upon arriving, you are not permitted to leave of your own free will. You are subject to the arbitrary directives of non-elected officials. You are stripped of many basic human rights on campus (in particular, the right to free speech and the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures). There is a healthy judicial tradition in the USA of taking away the rights of school children. I'm sure there's a list of relevant supreme court cases around. Public schools in the US also do tons of political indoctrination, like saying the pledge of allegiance on a regular basis. Growing up in that environment was extremely deleterious to my critical thinking; by the time I was in sixth grade, I had all sorts of authoritarian leftist ideas of exactly the sort I'd been subjected to by my teachers and my schools of the last seven years.
It wasn't until I finally switched to private school, where they treated me like a human, that I realized I had been imprisoned about half the days out of every year. Finally, I was free to leave campus of my own accord. Finally, discourse, rather than blind obedience, was the norm. If private school wasn't an option, I'd much rather homeschool my children than expose them to the academic and psychological clusterfuck that is every public school I every attended.