I'm sorry that I'm too tired to perhaps argue my points with enough solid proof or many links and statistics. So excuse me.

I don't believe in the superiority of homeschooling compared to public schools.

Naturally it depends a lot on the country that is being observed. E.g. in my home country the public shcool system works very good and we have no need whatsoever for homeschooling, and I would be willing to compare the students from our public school system to the ones in your homeschools any time. We have only a few, small private schools and they are mostly run by religious people wanting to educate the children in a "healthy" environment. But enough of them, point is that because of the size of the US and the state of your public education system you may have a need for homeschooling. So while it may apply to your country it shouldn't be considered an universal truth. We have very equal learning possibilities in Finland no matter where you live and the teaching is good quality, while in the US (please correct me if I'm wrong) there are e.g. great differences between the quality (and safety) of schools in different areas. These kinds of things create the need for private schools and homeschooling.

Like it has been said in the earlier posts, the main responsibility for raising a child should be held by the parents, not the school. The school educates, while parents and friends make the child the adult he/she is going to become.

Some of what you talk about souds really strange to me, e.g.:

Do the parents in the US really have a say in what is thought in schools?

I think yankeefan made some good comments on these.

They don't where I went to school. But I would assume that in a country that flips its wig over one breast the sexual education would be telling about bees and honey... And if the parents and children talk about these issues with their right names and naturally, some false information from school wouldn't change the child's mind. Parents are a much stronger influence in a child's life than school.

Again, this may apply to the US but not to other countries, at least not to my home country. And I would like to see the research you base this on.

I'm not convinced that it is the healthiest thing for a child's growth process to spend every day all day with his parents. Children need to learn stuff they cannot learn by staying home with their parents. They need to be able to do the stupid things teens do and then learn from their mistakes. You can't raise your child in a bubble. I just don't believe anyone who claims that a child will learn and experience the same social aspects at home that he could learn in a public school. I agree with yankeefan here also.
Fatboy, you say public schools are cruel. For a very few they can be, but not in general. Although I'm of course speaking only about my own experience and Finland.

I have a feeling that your experience of public schools differs quite dramatically from mine. Prison? A 5-day negativity trip? Sounds like a pretty strange concept to me.

The point is, and I think this is what yankeefan was saying also, that they have to leave home sometime. And they can't be wearing pyjamas when they do. Even if you teach them that they don't have to follow the trends and they can just use overalls all the time, the rest of the society doesn't change. Their friends will be wearing the "trend" clothing and when your highly educated kids go to apply for a job in a big law firm or whatever, they will have to get in the suit just as everyone else.

I think vacation planning is not a good reason to change to homeschooling. The kids have a long summer vacation almost everywhere I think. Here the parents have a 4 week vacation in the summer, so the planning is not a problem to us.


You state this as an undisputed fact. Doesn't sound that reliable.
According to me I'm better looking than Brad Pitt and smarter than Stephen Hawking...

I can't help it, but when I think of a homeschooled, "highly educated" person living in a rewarding relationship and participating actively in his community, I see this elitist guy walking around in his tweed jacket surrounded by his upper class friends and laughing with a brit accent at the common people and their stupidity. "Hey chaps, anyone down for a game of tennis? Right ho!"

Only Jeeves is missing...

The kids going to public schools also socialize with their friends outside school. But the time they spend in school with their peers, the homeschool kids spend mostly with their parents.

It's hard for me to believe that a parent with no education for theaching any subject could know as much as, say 20 teachers, who have all studied to become qualified teachers of their subjects. You'd have to know of course all the basics like math, English, biology, geography, history etc. but also foreign languages (though this is not perhaps a problem for Americans since they don't need to learn other languages... ;) ), music, painting, physical exercises and so on. It would take a long time for someone to master all of these in such a manner that he would be able to teach them efficiently to someone.

I totally agree also. It seems nowadays parents are all the time in such a rush to build their careers or attend to their hobbies or something else, that they don't have any time for their children. Then they buy their kids a Playstation and GTA for christmas, that should keep them happy....

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Definitely.
Absolutely not. Even in America I wouldn't consider it the best decision for ALL parents.
Absolutely. School boards are elected officials and school boards routinely have public meetings to determine the curriculum. Additionally, some parents are very vocal in what their kids should be taught (as they should be). Unfortunately, these "recommendations" are adopted without regard to the children's broader educational needs.

Some of these whiners have effectively eliminated the teaching of evolution, classic works in literature, and geological history. Not to mention personal responsibility.

To be fair, many homeschoolers cite the existence of these disciplines in the curriculum as their reason for homeshooling.
It's pretty close to that. Sex education is a hot issue. Many school systems won't even allow the discussion of contraceptives. Drugs get the same attention; we're still living in the Barbara Bush era of "Just Say No".
Adolescence is a difficult and confusing time. Information from your well-meaning parents and your uninformed friends gets pooled into an amalgam of conflicting data that ends up causing more confusion.
It's more common sense than research, but perhaps a few names off the top of my head will help you understand where I'm coming from:
Grover Cleveland, James Garfield, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Eli Whitney, Michael Faraday, William Lear, John James Audubon, Wilbur and Orville Wright, John Moses, Peter Cooper, Oliver Heaviside, Elias Howe, Cyrus McCormick, Guglielmo Marconi, Sir Frank Whittle, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Robert Frost, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Willa Cather, Agatha Christie, William Buckley Jr, Margaret Atwood, Noel Coward, Alex Haley, Sean O'Casey, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louis Armstrong, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yehudi Menuhin, Irving Berlin, William Blake, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Andrew Wyeth, Ansel Adams, Frank Loyd Wright, George Patton, John Paul Jones, General Douglas MacArthur, John Barry, Matthew Perry, John Pershing, David Dixon, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, Benjamin Franklin, David Crockett, Thomas Paine, William Jennings, Henry Clay, Alexander Hamilton, Sam Houston, Charles Evan Hughes, Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Mary Wallker, Mary D. Leakey, Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jill Ker Conway, Gloria Steinem, Frances E. C. Willard, Sandra Day O'conner.

That's just in the last few centuries. We could go further back and talk about Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, etc. The point is, "homeschooling" used to be the norm. Public education is the "new" thing that, as yet, hasn't really proven to be more effective than the original.
Your operating on a myth that I tried to dispel above. Homeschool children do not live in a bubble. In fact, they have a great many more opportunities for education than public school children. For example: one woman I know will be sending her 11 year-old to courses at a local community college next year; our science classes are supplemented with not just everything you would do in a normal science classroom but with lectures and workshops at the museum and local university (Big 10); they have activities and sports groups - if they want to join the neighborhood school's various sports teams or various musical/drama/whatever groups they are free to do that (my kids aren't old enough yet).

Most people have this impression that homeschooled children sit in a lit room with no windows and study all day by themselves. This simply isn't true for the vast majority of homeschooled kids. Lit rooms with no windows are in public schools.
I agree that kids need to make mistakes. But I don't want one mistake to be their last. You should take a walk down the hallway of a typical American public school. Then decide if that's the best place to learn social skills.

By nature, children have a need to imitate and to identify with others. When a child is put into an age-segregated classroom, he begins to develop identity based on the feedback from the group of peers he's been placed with. He is constantly getting feedback about his appearance, behavior and values and is strongly influenced to adopt the beliefs and behaviors of the peer group. Children who don't "fit in" are likely to be ridiculed, ostracized or worse. People become like whom they are around - and the pressure to conform is intense. The sense of identity these groups provide can be so strong that the child may be forced to choose between the values of the group and your values - all in the name of "positive socialization".

When children spend time with their parents in a nurturing, accepting environment, they usually learn to enjoy being with all age groups, including their own. As children are allowed to associate closely with their parents in daily routines of work, play, rest, and conversation, they learn to share responsibility and to feel that they are an integral part of the family team. They feel a sense of self-worth, of being needed, wanted, and depended upon. By watching and imitating others, children learn politeness and to express themselves confidently with good conversational skills. Before the child is forced to deal with the effects of peer pressure, he is able to develop confidence and independence in his thinking and values. This leads to children who are both productive and self-directed in their activities.

In a blind study of both homeschooled and public schooled children (Self-Confidence in Home-Schooling Children - John Wesley Taylor, Ph.D.) homeschooled children scored significantly higher on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale (a widely accepted measure of self-esteem) than did their public schooled counterparts. Larry Edward Shyers, Ph.D., reported in his 1992 dissertation, Comparison of Social Adjustment Between Home and Traditionally Schooled Students, that homeschooled children display fewer problem behaviors than their public schooled counterparts when playing with mixed groups of children from both educational backgrounds. Other researchers concur with these conclusions. Among them are M.M. Delahooke, in a 1986 doctoral dissertation, Home educated children's social/emotional adjustment and academic achievement: a comparative study and L. Montgomery, in the study,The effect of home schooling on the leadership skills of home schooled students.
I don't say that public schools are cruel, I loved school. But it's not the best place to learn.
I'm glad you were educated somewhere else, but the fact is that American schools are prisons, some even have gates, guards, and metal detectors.
I say again, you create the dress code. If you want your kid to do his school work in a coat and tie, make him wear a coat and tie. Once you send your child to public school, his dress code will be dictated by the latest MTV video.

Also, nobody homeschools through college. Do you believe homeschool children will continue to believe they can wear pajamas anywhere they want? The business community is starting to take note of the decline in the quality of high-school and college graduates. Not just their poor reading, writing, and speaking skills but also their apparent lack of interest in their own hygiene.
And everyone is off at the same time. Florida in the summer is brutal, and even more so when you're standing in line with 1,500 other sweating, whining, fat, rude, obnoxious people whose (largely public schooled) kids are demanding this or that, and their overworked, overstressed parents are caving in just to get the spoiled brats off their backs.
I say "according to them" because the study was not an observational study but a questionnaire. I could have just as rightly said, "according to public schooled children, they are not as civicly minded and happy in their relationships". Here's the study I'm quoting: http://www.nheri.org/modules.php?nam...howpage&pid=27

You don't have to buy the report to see the findings. Here are some excerpts:
- 76 percent of homeschool graduates aged 18 to 24 voted in the last 5 years, compared to only 29 percent of the U.S population in that bracket in older age brackets the percentage of voters is 95 percent or higher for the homeschoolers, compared to 53 percent for the relevant U.S. populace
-71 percent of the homeschool graduates participate in ongoing community service activities compared to 37 percent of U.S. adults
- 88 percent of the homeschoolers were members of community groups, churches or synagogues, unions, or professional organizations compared to 50 percent of U.S. adults
- Taking all things into consideration, 59% of the subjects reported that they were “very happy” with life, while 27.6% of the general U.S. population is “very happy” with life.
Well, first of all, it doesn't take all that much to become a public school teacher. Most get their degrees in 2 years. There is little requirement for maintaining your education in your particular field and there is little to no accountability for being able to actually teach what you know.

To answer your question, you do not need to know everything that 20 teachers would know. If there's a subject you don't feel comfortable teaching you could:
- Send you child to a specialist who teaches this subject. If he wants to learn about quantum math, you send him to the best quantum math guy you can find.
- Find a homeschool teacher in your group who knows a lot about the subject and organize a trade - you teach their kids something you know a lot about and they teach your kids quantum physics.
- Learn along with your kid. My kids and I are doing this for German, we're both learning together. (They're 6 and 7, BTW - six years younger than they would be before the state believes they're old enough to learn another language).

Look, I'm not saying this is a Panacea. In fact, I've stated just the opposite. However, arguments against homeschooling rested first upon the question of whether a homeschooled child would get as good an education as a public school child. That myth has been proved wrong time and again as homeschooled children continue to outperform their public school counterparts on standardized tests.

The next attack was made on this theory of "socialization". This too has be laid to rest with studies that only recently have come to fruition (due to the long time necessary to see the effects).

Now, is it because the parents of children who have a predilection toward a homeschool environment are more likely to be homeschooled? I don't know. I do know that it works for me. Academically, my children are 2 and 3 years ahead of where they would be in public school. Socially, they are as comfortable around adults as they are around other children. They are responsible, caring, happy individuals who understand far more of their world and its inhabitants than many adults.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

In here parents can also help in the making of the curriculum, but the basis for it (ensuring the fulfillment of the education objectives) comes from the state. And I believe each curriculum has to be approved by the National Board of Education. I think it's very stupid to let parents influence the curriculum very heavily since, as you pointed out, parents can have a very narrow view. And they can be pretty stupid too...

This I understand perfectly. If the only school in your area is a creationist school, I would encourage you to homeschool your child.

There seriously is something wrong with the US. You can't talk about sex in school but you have metal detectors in fear of guns. Not right....

True, but I don't agree with your point of public schools bombarding the kids with false information. But again, I'm talking about Finland.

Nice list. But what's it supposed to tell us? I can also produce thousands of names of succesfull/wise/famous/etc. people that have gone to public schools. And many of those names on your list are pretty old (e.g. Mozart) and the education system and public schools have changed since. Besides, Mozart wasn't actually a social wonder according to history books. Should we say that homeschooled kids do after all lack the proper social skills? Your list proves nothing. Talented and succesfull people come from public schools as well as from homeschool environments.

Effective in what sense? Education-wise, for the economy or what?
And so what if homeschooling used to be the norm. The society has changed a little bit from the time of Aristotle, so I would leave him alone.

Ok, it may be that in the US if you want to get a proper (and safe) education for your kids you have to teach them yourself. But this does paint a pretty gloom picture of the American society. The lack of proper education would also explain why so many voted for Bush.....

The pressure can be pretty intense, that I'll admit. But I believe that if you have raised your child properly, he will have nice values and will be smart enough to choose his friends carefully. The basic values are, after all, quite hard to change. This is of course a generalisation, but still more or less true imo.

And this does not apply to children going to public schools? Sounds like the myths travel both ways...

This can all be achieved also without homeschooling. The above described situation should exist in every home. And what has a sense of being needed has to do with what school the kid goes to? Do homeschool homes have also more love in them?

Ok, there are a few studies. So let's say the results of those studies are accurate (that homeschooled kids are more succesfull than publicly schooled kids). Does the studies take into account the difference in the amount of pupils in public/homeschools? And do they exclude the possibility that there may be many other variables affecting these kids. Maybe the families choosing homeschooling are more wealthy, live in better areas, have healthier values to begin with etc. Maybe the kid from a homeschool environment would've done exactly as well in life had he gone to a public school?

This is sad, that's all I can say. And maybe if I lived where you do my views on this issue would be very different.

Shouldn't children be able to create their own dress code? Do you also determine the type of music they are allowed to listen to?

And whether you want to decide about their clothing or not, they still live in the society with MTV and all the trends. They will see them in the streets, in tv etc. and make opinions based on this.

Of course I don't believe that they will continue to believe that.

Here the vacations are distributed throughout the summer.

You make the public school kids and their parents sound like some mythological monsters

Brian D. Ray, the author of the book is the President of NHERI (National Home Education Reseearch Institute), so I wouldn't call this study very objective. That's a bit like me doing a research on my amazingly good looks. You do know that studies can be manipulated in many ways to show the desired results?

It takes 4 years in Finland. One more thing to explain the differences between our public schools systems.

Again I wonder if the possibly better social skills of homeschooled kids any way related to the actual homeschooling part, or just the general healthy upbringing. I'd think that certain kinds of families choose homeschooling and that it could be one thing distorting the results of these studies.

And when you talk about social skills remember Mozart.... ;)

I didn't say homeschooling couldn't work for anyone. Did I? Well, didn't mean to. But you make it sound that homeschooled kids are absolutely smarter, more talented, have better social skills, are more active, have better manners etc. That I don't buy. It may work for some but I don't believe that it's a miracle factory from which every kid comes out as a potential nobel prize winner. But since I don't have any first hand experience of American schools this is a bit difficult discussion, because our views are apparently based on quite different experiences.

So maybe you're right. Maybe the public education in the US really is so bad that the parents need to refer to homeschooling or private schools to get their children educated to the same level as children from other countries. And in that case there should be lot more crucial problems for the government to be worried about than Saddam or gay marriages.

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As I said, public school in America has only been around for the past 100 years or so. In the end, I think my list would be much larger than yours simply because I've got a longer time-span to draw from. My point with the list is to show that these people who have really built our society certainly didn't suffer intellectually, educationally, or socially from being homeschooled.
Quality of education.
Again, I'm illustrating that homeschooling is not a new idea. Rather than answer attacks from the teachers' unions, school administrators, and every other vested bureaucrat in this leviathon of a government funded waste, the public school system should have to be answering questions about why Johnny can't read and why Billy finds it necessary to gun down his entire school. Certainly these point to problems in education and socialization?
Couldn't agree more.
To be sure, most do. Still, I'm betting that it's harder to do (haven't gotten to that point with my kids yet). Children here enter school at about 5 or 6 years old, so you get 5 years with them to teach them how to make decisions. Then you're sharing their attention with their teachers and other students for the next 13 years. Before they get a chance to be comfortable making their own decisions and confident in who they are they are sent off to "group-think".
No, it doesn't apply to public schooled children. They are segregated into their own age group from the get go. The majority of their waking hours are spent with, and trying to fit in with, children their own age. At work, do you work with only people your own age? Are your friends all the same age? Why would you expect children who have been cooped up with kids the same age to be more socially adept than children who have interacted with ALL age groups?
Of course it can, and there isn't necessarily any more love in a homeschool home than a public school home. But we were talking about whether a homeschooled child gets the proper socialization. My point was to show that they do and how they do. Adult interaction can and does occur in a public school child's life. How often, and what quality is really the question.

Consider this, I can't recall the last time a homeschool child murdered his entire family. And if he did, I'd question the homeschool environment (if his parents weren't astute enough to see that coming then they probably weren't doing a very good job teaching). But not a day goes by where a public school child doesn't beat-up another public school kid. Not a week goes by where a public school kid doesn't manage to get a gun or a knife into school intending to use it. Not a year goes by where a public school kid isn't murdered by another public school kid, sometimes these attacks are mass murders. You see, in a public school system, you don't have to worry whether your child is getting enough love at home, or whether your child is properly socialized - you have to worry that every other parent in that district is doing their job. And how realistic is it that they ALL are?
How do you mean? Every one of these studies estimate between 800,000 and 1.2 million homeschooled children or about 1% of the school age population. Why would that matter?
There are two different kinds of studies. The questionnaires did gather demographic data from the respondents. Most were white and conservative (the Bible thumpers were the first to start homeschooling). The average income was nearly equal to the public school average.
Maybe. Certainly we will never know. But again, I'm in a position of defending whether or not children in a homeschooled environment have the same educational and social prospects that a public school child does. Though my bias comes out in my replies, I'm not here to say that homeschool is better than public school.
I think they should pick their own clothes. No, I don't determine the type of music they play, the video games they play, or the movies they watch (except graphic sex, not ready for that conversation yet). The only condition is that they watch the movies, listen to the music, and play the games with me.
Sure, but by the time it's important to them they'll be comfortable making their own decisions about it (and they'll be paying for it).
Well, there's nothing I can say to counter that. You can accept the findings or not.
They score better on standardized tests than public school children.
Well, I never said that (I think).
They score better on accepted socialization tests than public school children.
You asserted that they didn't have the same socialization opportunities that public school children have. I countered with all of the options that they have.
Don't think I said that. Grisu did, and I would tend to believe his first hand experience.
And I didn't say this. In fact, I said just the opposite.

I started the whole thing with carefully hedged pros and cons. You chose to debate those opinions.

Homeschooled kids have performed better at standardized tests and just as well, if not better, on social skills tests. Whatever arguments you want to make about bias in the tests can also be made from the other side.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

Here are some good articles on the state of education in America:

Part I: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/w...20040310.shtml
Part 2: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/w...20040519.shtml

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

But the list doesn't prove that they benefitted something extra from homeschooling either.

In the US I believe this may be true. But e.g. economically speaking its very inefficient. So it has its pros and cons like most issues.

The reason why Billy finds it necessary to shoot his classmates is not in my opinion the public education (or at least not only public education). I would blame the parents first, then media, gun control laws, the whole American society in general etc.

I have gone to a public school and I don't consider myself a "group-thinker". But perhaps you were talking only about American public schools again?

You make it sound like the kids going to public schools live in a bubble with their classmates. I have always thought myself as being socially adept, even though I "only" went to a public school.

This is an US specific issue.

And for the murdering part:
Along the lines of what I stated in my earlier post, I believe this has more to do with the families who choose homeschooling, not the homeschooling itself. I'd assume the people who choose homeschooling are generally pretty intelligent, have a healthy home etc. How many ghetto kids have been homeschooled? Not many I'd guess, so I wouldn't say that homeschooling makes better human beings, but rather that the environment the kids are raised in make better (or worse) human beings. The environment and circumstances cannot be blamed or thanked in every case, that's a given, but I think it has a lot more to do with the murders than education.

I meant do they take into account the fact that there are so much more children that go to public schools that there naturally is more variation just because of environment factors. And the homeschooled children are a much more homogenous group. How do they pick the sample? And are the results of these studies reliable?

I'd think they would be more reliable if they compared homeschooled children to children who go to better public schools in better areas. This way the weight of the environment factor could be reduced since everyone would have a "good" environment.

You say this, but still you claim homeschooled kids to be smarter, socially more adept etc.

But if you really think so I wish you would've said so in the beginning. That would've perhaps shortened the posts a bit

So do you create their dress code or not? :confused:

And I agree that parents should be there when their kids watch tv, play video games and so on. So good for you and your kids if you implement this.

You really believe that children will start to form their opinions about e.g. fashion only when they are 18 or so?

But wouldn't you suspect at least a little bit e.g. a research made by the Bush administration saying that things in Iraq are going as planned and everything is peachy?

I don't know if you did, I just put it in the list to make a point.

Are we speaking again of the research of the earlier mentioned Ron L. Hubbard of Homeschoolers? (just kidding ;) )

Ok. I may still disagree a bit but not that much. This issue isn't that important to me anyway, I just like a good argument.

Your cons were mainly related to the parents and society, not the kids. For them you found only pros, and I think this is not 100% true.

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But I never had to prove that. I was tasked to prove that great people have come from homeschool environs. I gave the list as an example of my belief that more great people have been homeschooled than public schooled.
Perhaps in your country. In America we spend approximately $7,000 per student per year (more than any other country, I believe). Even private education averages out to only about $4,000/student/year. You may be right when considering the opportunity cost of the family's lost income due to the fact that one parent must give up their career, but in strict monetary terms I would bet homeschoolers do a much more efficient job of teaching children (speaking from first hand experience and anecdotal evidence only).
I would agree that it's not just the public school system's fault, though Billy usually chooses to assault his classmates rather than society at large.

Though off topic, I don't know how gun control laws contribute to Billy's desire to murder his classmates. Seems to me Billy isn't too concerned about laws.
Maybe you do a better job of instilling free thought and independent thinking in your schools. In our schools we often have kids writing letters to the president to protest the war; writing letters to CEOs to protest their use of various chemicals; writing letters to the school board about the level of teacher pay - all at the behest of their "impartial" teachers.

Still, I wonder how your system discourages the normal human desire to just fit in and get along with the group, regardless of personal opinions?
Of course, you're the norm. I'm not stating that ALL kids who attend public schools are menaces to society, I'm just stating the facts. In public school (at least in America) you are segregated into classes by age and you stay that way until you graduate high-school. Do public school children get the same level of interaction with children in different age groups than homeschoolers? I'm not sure how they could when the majority of their educational hours are spent in segregated classrooms.

The studies I pointed to show that children in a homeschool environment are much more comfortable dealing with children outside their age group than children in a public school setting.

We just had a case here where an older kid beat the shit out of a younger kid on a bus. Surely, he has no concept of how to deal with kids outside his age group. Is he the norm? No. Could he be saved with homeschool? Who knows? But it's clear he doesn't belong in a public school setting.
Really? You don't think there is school violence in European schools? Even Finland has its share of assaults:

http://www.gold.ac.uk/connect/reportfinland.html

(Guess you'd better ban arms, legs, hands, baseball bats, spades, electric cord, knives.)
I wouldn't disagree.
Then why have standardized tests at all? Shouldn't we have tests that account for one parent families, lower income, skin color, emotional well being, etc.? Thankfully, no. You see, once you get out of your primary education, the world doesn't care that your daddy didn't hug you enough, or that you didn't get enough toys when you were a baby. The world only cares that you can do the job you're in and that you can get along with others. And rightfully so.
I'm telling you the results of the tests show that. I've also given (and so have other posters) personal experiences. If you choose not to accept these arguments there's nothing more I can do.
Well, I wish I would've been more clear since my fingers are also quite tired. But if you follow my posts I think you'll find I've mentioned several times that homeschooling is not an option everyone should take. My position is that homeschooling does not suffer from the two biggest arguments against it: quality of education and quality of socialization.
No, I do not. They do.
No, I said when it becomes important to them they will be in a position to form their own opinions about it without overt peer pressure. That may come at any age.
Of course, but he has a Presidency to sell. What does this author have to sell except a report? He doesn't gain from misinterpreting these results. If more parents choose to homeschool based on his report, they won't be going to his school - he doesn't have one.
I presented, I believe, four reports, all pointing to the same conclusion. One of which could be deemed biased, you're fixating on this.
That's your job !

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

Yes, I was taking into consideration the loss to the national economy that results from one parent staying home.

Maybe if every 14 year old didn't have his own gun Billy also would've had to reconsider his plan?

Almost everyone in Finland have gone to public school and still there exists opinions from the right to the left and everything between in here. According to you we should be pretty unanimous since we have been all molded together in school. And all people, even homeschooled ones, are a part of different groups all their life: family, work, hobbies etc. So can we say everyone is just a group-thinker?

There are lots of sick and stupid people out there. Still, I wouldn't blame it all on public education. I would blaim the parents, environment and circumstances more.

No, I don't think there's no school violence at all in Europe.

The last homicide in a Finnish school happened 25 years ago and there are approximately 2-3 more serious incidents of violence a year. I wouldn't call that a lot. We have no need to install metal detectors and hire armed guards.

If the groups of homeschooled children would include children from all ethnic/income etc. groups and all areas just as the groups of publicly shooled children, then the results would be comparable. In order to isolate the contribution of homeschooling compared to public shooling all other factors should be excluded or the results won't be reliable.

My fingers and brain are starting to ache over this thread. I'm beginning to feel I will resign any moment now...

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Me too. Let's call it quits.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

Suits me.

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