"The real purpose of all this formal schooling is to get the kids out of the house and train them to stand in line and follow instructions while mommy and daddy get back to their ultra-important lives as economic production units."
Oh great. Paranoia and anti-establishment all in one.
"Ordinary schools tend to socialize children by way of enclosed, age-homogeneous pods, while home schooling tends to socialize children through a wide range of interactions with older kids, younger kids and adults, as well as peers."
That would be great if at all true. If all the other kids are in school learning how to be good little robots, how the hell are your kids interacting with anyone? Show me the scientific paper supporting your view. Oh right. It doesn't exist.
I'm all for some of the happier, shinier aspects of home-schooling. Schools pretty much teach nothing. Worksheets are useless, most teachers up to high-school border on vegetative, and the efficacy of the whole damned thing is pretty debateable.
But that's not what school does. School lets us learn to socialize in an environment with very few real-world consequences. That's all that's important. In first and second grade, I went to a hyper-exclusive local school that gave me hours of free time to write books, paint, hang out, and do puzzles. My parents couldn't afford to send me after second (the price went up with year), and I went to a local public school for third. I am incredibly happy that I did.
I'm glad because the world is not full of rich white kids. It's full of blacks, and poor people, and assholes, and everything else you can imagine. Home schooling can not prepare you for these things, no matter how much the parents would like to think.
I have forgotten nearly everything I learned in elementary school, middle school, and only vaguely remember high school, but I'm glad I went.
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