For where I live and the society I’m in, I definitely prefer homeschooling. If we had half-day one-room schoolhouses where the children were with a mix of ages and could work at their own pace, I might choose that over homeschooling, but that doesn’t exist anywhere around here.

Advantages of home education:

*Students can work at their own pace. THey’re never behind the class and feeling bad or ahead of the class and getting an ego or feeling bored.

*Parents can include subjects and content they feel important that the schools may not work on.

*Students usually have time to work on things they find interesting.

*Kids have more time to be kids since they don’t need to take as much time in class to get their work done, plus other things that fill up their school day.

*Kids usually have better role models at home than in school; having same age peers as the primary social models doesn’t exactly help kids mature well. Kids are in a training ground for adulthood, not perpetual childhood.

*Less chance of suffering under things like bullying, being outcast for not wearing the right clothes; less chance of being focused on all the material things in our schools here: Nintendo DS’s, PSP’s, iPods, cell phones (even at the elementary level) and more.

*Less chance of growing up in an environment in which there are negative attitudes towards learning and doing well, where sex is encouraged at a young age, where others are partying on weekends, doing drugs and alcohol… I recently heard a story from a mom who decided she had to pull her child out of the only nearby school (they’re in a rural area): the gr. 6 elementary girls were prostituting themselves, often making deals on the school bus rides.

*If parents make social outlets an important aspect, the kids usually interact with a variety of ages, get used to meeting strangers, etc.

There’s so much more. Of course, all potential advantages depend a lot on how parents go about homeschooling. It’s like being a parent: it’s not enough to simply have the kids; how you parent them makes a difference.

Disadvantages: people who are ignorant about homeschooling and make nasty or stupid remarks; people who are actually prejudiced to the point that they’ll have a great time hanging out regularly with a homeschooler, but as soon as they find out the homeschooler IS homeschooled, then they shun the homeschooler because s/he is a “social retard”. (Happened to a girl I know.)

Public school advantages:

*Great for parents who are not willing or not able to homeschool their children.

*Great for ultra social kids.

*Might outweigh home education’s advantages if there is something you really want for your child’s education and there’s no way for you to provide it through homeschooling (for example, immersion or bilingual language programs).

Public school disadvantages:

*Many are the flip side of the home education advantages I wrote above.

*Other things: kids don’t have to ask permission to go to the bathroom, they can get help fairly quickly instead of having to wait through 10 other held up hands, assuming their parents are relatively good, they won’t undergo some of the abuses that occur under teachers (some are mildly verbally abusive and not enough to really be caught or canned; others are more abusive and administration, for whatever reason, doesn’t explore it further–I know a young woman who had the same teacher for a subject two years in a row: the teacher spent a lot of time telling the students how stupid they were and that they were the stupidest bunch he’d ever taught; another girl I know had a teacher throw a book at her). Undoubtedly other things.

What it all really boils down to is which one is the right fit? Homeschooling isn’t for everybody. Public school isn’t for everybody. Private schools aren’t for everybody. Parents need to find what’s right for their family.

Well, for one thing, Home school would help you be able to use proper spelling, capitalization and grammar.

I pulled my kids out because they where not getting an education in school other that sex, government propaganda, being disrespectful to adults, and being told when and if they could do or study anything.

This is a great article! http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html

My kids are involved in several activities and are very “socialized.” More so than most public school students we meet who really only want to interact with their own age group and “click.” My kids have friends much younger and much older than themselves and are very comfortable in any setting you put them in, even around adults. They do sports such as swimming and track, dance, community service projects, church activities, coop activities, and they just “hang out” with friends on a regular basis. When done correctly, socialization isn’t a problem.

Academically my children are far enough ahead on standardized tests that I am comfortable with the education they are getting here. If I felt uncomfortable I would seek help in the areas in which they needed it.

Home schooling your children can be mental, physically, and emotionally devastating if the child has been active in a regular school or social environment though middle school. I suffered from depression, anger increases and some pretty intense hatred towards others in the outside world, because my parent choose to homeschool me after the 6th grade.

It really depends on the person being homeschooled and the level of social integration that they are used to. Most people who are used to a lot of social interaction, often feel suffocated and cut off from their world and friends, if they are moved to homeschool from a public or private school.

Note: I was an A+ student throughout my elementary and middle school years and have never received a grade lower than a B+.

Well, I went to a public school before. I didn’t like it. The teachers I had didn’t do a very good job. They let us do DDR and play with our phones or our iPods. I had a teacher that would put the work on the board and would expect us to know it without instructions on how to do it. Mind you, this was one of the best schools in the state that I was going to. We had security gaurds that were perverts and would stop anyone that they thaught were attractive. A lot of kids spent a lot of time in in-school-suspention, what good would that do to them?! If they have to spend 3 days in a row in a room that doesn’t have a teacher, how is that kid supposed to learn anything?

I have homeschooled for two years now my son is almost 14 it was the best thing I ever did he is doing an awesome job grades levels higher people seem to think that homeschooling means isolation no way today there are many clubs outtings and homeschooling propgrams even teachers to help and motivate! kids do so much better they are pushing ahead for furture homeschooling. best for kids and parents who want a real education for there kids.

Homeschooling is great! In homeschool you learn things like capitalizing the pronoun “I”, not using the article “the” in front of phrases like “home education”, not using numbers to replace words, not using the letter “c” for the word “see”, capitalizing names, how to spell “opinions”, not using the letter “u” in the place of the word “you”, and how to spell “your”. (Sorry about that, I couldn’t resist because people are always doing that to posts by homeschoolers, but usually not to other people.)

Seriously though, I think its great, for my family homeschooling is the best. It isn’t for everyone though, so it depends on the family.

My children are grown. But I knew a lot of people that home schooled their children. All of those people that were home schooled are very shallow and don’t fit in the real world. I feel it would be a mistake to home school your kids unless you lived in a very very bad area.