There is also a bit of difference whether people are hired out to do something (hence hair-dressing licenses) or just do it for the love of family, and there are diffence rules that apply to each role. Private schools, which by the way score higher in general on national tests than public schools, are NOT required to have certified teachers, although they often do. We all know NEA won’t stand for their members being expelled any more than the bar or AMA does.

Homeschoolers do deal and interact with other kids (siblings and kids in other families and structured groups/classes) and parents and instructors. Most conscientious homeschoolers do not teach their own children chemistry or music, unless they have had higher education, but co-op with other families or hire teachers. Don’t forget, usually homeschoolers have TWO parents in a family, and they take turns teaching specific areas of knowledge and encourage independent study — called lifelong learning.

Let’s face it - there are bad parents and bad teachers, and we all hope they will quit. Encourage the kids in those families to seek education where they can find it, just like we should do in some of the worst classrooms.

FYI - a couple things my kids learned when they returned to school in grades 9 10: 1) it is not cool to be too smart, study so hard or answer questions in class; 2) kids make out and smoke cigarettes and pot right in school with paid teachers’ knowledge; 3) some parents don’t care what their kids do sexually or legally; 4) most kids and teachers liked them and thought they were smart, cool enough, and well-adjusted, though rather polite.

Why shouldn’t a parent who has spent the first 4-5 years watching a child grow and develop be able to decide what form of education is best for that child when they reach what the state says is an appropriate school age?

Who says that a homeschool child has to be a shut-in that doesn’t interract with other children or that their wider variety of social interaction is inferior to the limited socialization found in public schools?

I think these are more important questions than the ones you asked, especially since you agree that homeschooled kids can turn out just fine or more prepared for the real world than their public schooled counterparts.

There have been plenty of very reasonable answers provided here–most states require regular testing, a lot of states require a family be registered with an established school and their curriculum checked and progress notes submitted.

As for socialization, there are home-school co-ops where hundreds of families (such as the STAR program in southern California) come together and actually have classes together in what appears to be a Charter school setting maybe 2 or 3 days a week.
Further, some private schools offer an umbrella program–homeschooled students are able to participate in the sports, music, and other activities with other private schooled kids.

I’ll agree with you–you get the odd strange family that needs to be stopped and the kids need to be helped.
But compare that with the hundreds of legitimate, successful families in California alone? Include the other families in other states?

It’s not as big of an issue as people would like to make it out to be.

Would you say that all the wealthy (and sometimes not-so-wealthy) people of the past who were educated at home by their parents or private tutors (who had no special training, I might add) lacked appropriate social skills? How about Thomas Edison? His mom pulled him out of school after a few months and homeschooled him the rest. Was he lacking in education and social skills, unable to become a productive member of society? What about the Roosevelts? They didn’t go to school. Benjamin Franklin? Had a whole two years in school.

Think about it more clearly: for how long, in the whole history of mankind, have children been lumped together in large buildings, in classes full of children the same age as they are, forced to follow a certain sequence at a certain rate? Even 100 or so years ago, most schools were one-room school houses, where the students didn’t usually start attending until the age of 8 or 9, they progressed at their own rate through the different levels, exposed to all the things the bigger kids were learning…

It is ludicrous to think that the current model of public education is the only thing that constitutes a proper education and development of a person. If anything, it’s creating serious problems. Kids have other kids their age as role models. How is that beneficial to a good development? It used to be there were other kids around to keep them in line, older kids with mature behaviour to emulate, but now there are just more immature kids to impress and try to be like.

Furthermore, the whole thought that kids will not interact with other kids because they are homeschooled is simply ridiculous. We don’t live in little boxes, sheltering our kids from others. Most homeschooling families have more than one child, so there is natural interaction there on a daily basis. Do you know Little House on the Prairie? Do you think that Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up to be a dysfunctional person? They lived in a little log house in the woods for years, just the 5 of them. No other masses of kids around them on a daily basis. They learned quite well from their parents how to interact with other kids (aka, siblings and cousins when family get-togethers happened.)

It’s time naysayers opened their eyes to a larger picture to see where the current model of education really fits.

P.S. While there are undoubtedly backwoods parents homeschooling, not every teacher is so great. I’ve known people who have had teachers tell the class repeatedly that they were the stupidest class the teacher had ever had (and complaints to the administration didn’t help at all), one girl I know had a book thrown at her by her teacher because she had corrected an error he made, other kids who were in a class where the teacher was bordering on abusive, and she’s still teaching. This is all in one city. And I have other stories I could share. There are bad eggs everywhere; there is no way to ensure that everybody will do as they should at all times.

The VAST majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens who keep their guns for either recreational use (hunting) or personal protection. In the same way, MOST homeschool parents choose to homeschool in order to give their children a better education than the public school system and do very well. The studies that have been done of homeschoolers academic achievement show they are (on average) YEARS ahead of their age-group peers. Apparently, MOST homeschool parents know what they are doing, even without the teaching certificate.

As for socialization, I don’t use playground politics in my life today and don’t believe it is a necessary part of life. My kids have learned how to handle themselves in a variety of different situations with age-group peers as well as adults. THAT is the real world, not who’s going to be the prom queen because she’s the most popular (richest) girl in school.

I have CHOSEN to homeschool my kids because I want what is best for them. I know people who have chosen NOT to homeschool for the exact same reason. If you have decided not to homeschool your kids, that is your choice and I have no problems with that.

Now for my opinion, which would you rather have. A group of other parents that allow their children to interact and get social skills and have control over what their children do learn or would you rather have your child in a school where kids are getting pregnant in elementary school and bringing guns to school and doing drugs.

Many homeschool families also have a lot of children and are involved in many extra-curricular church activities … so there are a multitude of opportunities for socialization. while minimizing some of the negative aspects of peer pressure found in public schools.