Having said that I must point out that most people I know don’t want a better education for their kids; they want stuff left out that offends their belief system. This would be fine except that the result of having an ignorant/uninformed electorate can be seen in the anti-scientific behavior of the USG over the last 8-years.

Frankly, I don’t want my life in the control of someone whose scientific knowledge is limited to intelligent design. This is esp. critical now since most of these folk don’t want us to do anything about global climate change.

What many fail to notice are the lines leading up to it, where Frost says:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:”

He doesn’t say that taking the less-traveled road made the difference… only that he realizes that he will be saying this to someone in the future. Previously in the poem, he notes that there really aren’t significant differences in the roads.

I think the same thing is true with regard to the question of homeschooling. We look at choices we’ve made, especially for our children, and want to paint them in the best possible light, even if we have to engage in revisionist history. If our children succeed, or turn out “above average” (as they do in Lake Wobegon), then it MUST be because we homeschooled them (or because we didn’t, depending on who you talk to).

Do what feels right for you and your child, and don’t expect that anyone else’s choice will automatically be “right” for you. – Tim

Our daughter loved music & the piano, so had lots of time to practice, & went on to college to get her degree in piano performance (with scholarships) & now is teaching her own 3 children at home, as well as teaching piano as an occupation. Our third child went all the way through home school, & is now an exceptional diesel mechanic. All three children are very successful in life, and have done very well.

A couple of comments. It takes discipline on the part of the parents to accomplish this. It is well worth the effort, as we all had to work out our differences & struggles. They couldn’t just get on the school bus with others who were disgruntled with their parents. Our kids were the toast of the neighborhood, because they got to study at home, and the other kids envied them. Our children are all socially well adapted, and are doing well…in fact, probably much better than if they had been in the government school system. Now our grandchildren are being educated the same way… hmmm…something worked!!

Few parents actually have the educating skills to be a good teacher to their children, regardless of academic subject (otherwise they’d all be teachers professionally!), and fewer still are polymaths to truly have the skills to teach their children all the subjects they need for a proper, well-rounded education in all possible subjects a teenager might want to study.

Also, children who are home-schooled through high school levels have a much harder time getting accepted to university for science programmes though they seem to do OK in liberal arts degrees.

Your kid may be bored in class, but is that really a good enough reason to pull them out of public education and take teh risk of giving them an inferior education? And if they are struggling, I think it’s even *more* important that they be educated by a professional who knows how to best do things.

The best option, I feel, is simply to stay engaged with your child in their education. When they are young, start a tradition of looking over their homework in the evenings. Ask them to explain it to you so you can see if they are struggling with anything. If you can help them with some problem, do that rather than having a beer and watching TV. Have regular meetings with their teachers to see how they are doing in class. Is the kid bored? Ask them what kind of school project they would find exciting, then research with them on the Internet how to do it. If they are struggling with something more than you can help them with, enroll them in Sylvan rather than taking them out of school.

Take them to museums and art galleries and music concerts and bird watching and stargazing at the local university observatory. Let them spend a Saturday helping their aunt the car mechanic or their uncle the farmer. Read to them when they are young and read with them when they are older, compare and discuss favourite books.

Simply being supportive and involved in your child’s schooling and help instill into them a desire to learn, even if they may struggle academically in some subjects, and that will be the best thing you can do for your child’s education instead of home-schooling them.