Thoughts on Home Schooling

I recently got the 5394th comment from someone that good parents homeschool their kids, and don't I want to be a good parent? I don't have time to write the really big rant that I'm tempted to write, but I have to put in my two cents: kids aren't identical. Kids aren't made from cookie cutters. Home schooling is good for some kids. Home schooling is inappropriate for other kids.

Sean would dearly love to be home schooled--anything that would keep him away from other people. Anything that would let him avoid having to deal with his peers. Anything that would keep him from having to do the same homework that the other (slower) kids have to do to learn the same info.

But I've told him that there are two (and imo, only two) important lessons to learn from any schooling (home, private, or public): first, how to get along with your peers, and secondly, how to deal with make-work. Those are both important lessons and have big payoffs in the long run and in the real world. No one ever told me that that was what was important about school, and it's had major effects on the way I've never learned how to deal well with typical work situations.

Anything else, a bright kid can learn by themselves, from asking questions, paying attention, and reading books.

The error that parents make is they think that kids are going to get fundamental knowledge from public schooling. That's a mistake, but one that's (in our case, with our kid) easily remedied. Sean spends a lot of time outside of school learning about how and why things work. He learns what he's interested in, and I have fun pointing him in directions that I think that he'd appreciate.

But I want Sean, when he grows up, to be able to choose whether he wants to be a part of the system or to work outside it. Public schooling is necessary and appropriate for him.