As far as the home school socializing argument, really? Still holding onto that one? Home schooled kids spend more of their day out in the world, among people of many ages and walks of lives. Public school children, on the other hand, live in an artificial social situation where all the other kids are the same age and generally live in the same neighborhood. This isn’t realistic–as soon as they are out of school, they will be forced to live, work, and socialize with people of all different ages and backgrounds. And yet, for some reason, people still try to argue that it’s the home schooled children who are missing out socially. I’ll never comprehend that argument. My 3 year old takes swim lessons along side 10 year olds. My 5 year old is on a cheer squad with kids of all ages and dances with kids from all different schools–seriously, in her class of 10, not any two kids attend the same school. My kids also participate in activities alongside adults and can carry on a decent conversation with a 45 year old woman. But if you say it’s my kids that are lacking socially, I’ll let you keep on believing it.

Thanks for weighing in honestly. Glaring and mean-spirited generalizations aside, I’d like to address some of your points for clarification, though, as you’re missing the point of the article. First of all, this article isn’t about public school vs. homeschool. The purpose of this post (and this blog) is to share ideas about child-led, project-based learning. This article reminds homeschool parents that they have much greater flexibility and autonomy about learning methods that simply aren’t available to public schools due to scale and safety issues. I think it would be fabulous if public schools adopted this approach!

We’re proponents of child-led, project based learning and believe that children who have the benefit of one-on-one attention will embrace lifelong learning through a non-curriculum system. By the way, many great scientists (Einstein and Edison) were told by the school system that they weren’t fit for school so they dropped out! In Edison’s case, he was homeschooled after being rejected by the public education system. Einstein later wrote about how the education ‘system’ destroys creative thinking.

Many homeschoolers actually participate in public schools for portions of their education and aren’t the arrogent social delinquents you imagine. I’m sorry you have so much hostility toward such an open-minded idea!

p.s. I think it’s a good idea to take an honest look at yourselves when you start being so arrogant.

Although the state may require grade level reporting, students can still interact with learning materials below and above the reported grade. Once you adopt the learning approach instead of the teaching approach, grade level becomes irrelevant (to the learning process) in spite of the grade-level label required by the state. Children who become deeply engaged in learning will learn well beyond state requirements.