Dottie,

You know, I�m really not twisting your arm trying to get you to homeschool! It would, indeed, be awfully weird if you suddenly changed all the plans you�ve worked out over the years for your kids� education just because of the opinions expressed on this board by some guy you don�t even know!

As you say,
>Honestly, if we were starting over from scratch, I might more strongly consider home schooling. But given that mine are now in 8th/5th/5th, with "smooth sailing" for the most part, I think it's a moot point for us.

Of course.

My post to which you replied was not directed to you but to Jamie � Jamie seemed to be asking for our no-holds-barred opinions and experiences and so I presented mine. It was not an attack on you. Of course, it�s great that you chose to comment on my post � I�d guess that this is the kind of discussion Jamie hoped to hear.

Before I had posted, acs had posted a message relating some negative homeschooling experiences she had observed. Again, she was responding honestly to Jamie � no one thinks acs was trying to convince Kriston, me, etc. to not homeschool.

I hope that is clear to everyone.

On the substance of the matter, I think you and I do have slightly different values we are bringing to the whole issue. You wrote earlier in the thread:

>I think you also need to consider your own goals for schooling. Is it to nurture your children to their absolute fullest potential? Then public school is probably not the best choice for any child. But if your goal is a more well-rounded approach that exposes them in areas you might not pursue at home, accepting limitations in other areas, perhaps school is the best.
>I have times where this thought gives me great pause. I know I can take my children further in the key academic subjects, but I can't give them other things they find at school.

Yeah. Clearly, no one here thinks that having friends does not matter at all, and no one thinks that academics are irrelevant either. But we all are going to give slightly different weights to those considerations.

In response to my post, you wrote:
>It does seem to boil down to the right friends/peers in many situations, and my girls at least seem off to a great start.

I think I see that as less of an issue than you do. Clearly, having horrible experiences with peers is a bad thing. But academic/intellectual issues mattered much more to me as a kid than social issues, and also matter more to me vis a vis my own kids. I�m not willing to trade off much academic quality for positive social benefits.

I taught myself Einstein�s special theory of relativity in seventh grade. To me, any adequate school has to offer relativity to seventh graders (not that everyone would choose to learn it then). I think kids can start learning calculus by sixth grade (not mastering it, but then I�ve never known anyone who had mastered calculus after their first course at any age), so my idea of an adequate school includes making that possible for its students. I have similar expectations in history, economics (I studied Keynes� �General Theory� in high school in detail and figured out what the errors were � he messed up in his use of units), etc. (Incidentally, I am not at all sure I was �gifted�: I was just really curious about a lot of stuff and did not see any reason I couldn�t learn about it.)

Obviously, there are not many schools that meet my idea of an adequate school (and I do understand why it is difficult for them to do so)! So, it makes sense that we are homeschooling.

I suspect that you, and probably most people on this board, have somewhat less demanding concepts of what counts as an adequate school than I do.

I suspect that I may also have a different conception than many people of what social experiences count as �positive�: I think that �socialization,� even with good peers, tends to boil down to learning to be like other people (which of course is one of the reasons why it is better to have �good� peers than �bad� peers). I think that is a bad thing. I want my kids to be honest, courteous, kind, etc., but I would rather they be a bit blind to all of those little social cues and pressures that cause most people to fall in line with the �group,� whether what the group is doing is good or not.

I think that for people who share my values, homeschooling probably is the wisest choice to make. But no one has identical values to another person, and everyone has to decide for himself or herself what is best based on his or her own values. I�m really not trying to convince everyone to homeschool.

All the best,

Dave