Reply #244: My assertion is that being locked away for 6-7 hours a day with only your same

[sense]

age peers is limiting. Nowhere did I say that regular schoolers didn't have other activities. I was simply trying to counter your assertion that home schooled children don't get out. Nowhere else in life will people encounter being required to spend 6-7 hours, 5 days per week with only their same age peers. It's a completely artificial environment and doesn't provide experience for anything other than that specific experience. Who wants their 5 year old "socialized" by 30 other 5 year olds? So much better to be around people of all ages and learn to cope by interacting in the real world. sHome schooling is a term, not a description of what happens when you don't attend regular school. It's an alternative approach. There certainly are home schooler who are fanatical about hiding their children away from the real world, but they don't represent the majority and they really don't represent the majority of children who's parents home school them for academic reasons as these parents do and as we do. We're never home! We are out in the community interacting with all. Micromanaging? Yes that's what occurs in school. You can't even pee without permission! We encounter good and bad people and teachers too. We learn to deal with that in the normal course of every day activities. Your entire argument is based on what the NEA says about home schooling to argue that kids need to be publicly school or something awful will happen and they won't know how to cope. Public school isn't about education. It's about conforming behavior, control, learning to stand in line, endless waiting for the teacher to get the class under control and accepting a worker bee position in life and not complaining about it.

You're absolutely wrong about studies indicating that home schooled kids don't do better than the average regular schooled students. Studies prove the opposite and colleges accept home schooled children at higher rates than private or publicly schooled children.

Have you read anything in this thread that actual home schoolers have written? People who actual live the life and walk the walk? How totally bizarre for you to continue to repeat propaganda instead of researching to find out the truth. You don't even have to research, you can read it here. Check out the website hoagiesgifted.org You just have to open your mind and allow in a new concept. Yes, I'm sure that was a snarky comment and irritates. I've been hearing the garbage you're spouting for years and biting my tongue. We do not sit around the kitchen table with a bible and never let our kids out of the house. People who do that are not educating, they're abusing. They and their methods have nothing to do with this topic. This topic is about gifted children and education. Mom and Dad are not the sole sources of input any more than they are in any other child's life. We attend classes taught by actual teachers and experts in their fields. My son speaks 6 languages. I speak one. How could that be if I'm his only resource? We've encountered some great teachers and some not so great. We discard what doesn't work for us and move on. There are so many resources out there we couldn't possible use them all.

This isn't about ego or control. This is about education and not wishing the dumbed down life my children and this 13 year old found in school. Schools are not equipped, in most instances, to educate kids at either end of the spectrum without additional education for their teachers and differentiated programs. Most fail the gifted miserably by relegating them to mini teacher status, alienating them from the very age peers they're forced to spend their days with and providing no actual learning for that child.

There are no infallible parents. You got that one right. I don't claim to be and I know only a few who are so foolish.

"If I've read about home schooled children"? You need to read, because you clearly have no experience. I have read voraciously on the subject. I've had my children in public school and been forced to home school. I just wish I'd done it sooner before my son suffered so much bullying and abuse... by teachers and age peers. My son is now attending one of the most academic colleges in the nation. Many gifted home schoolers do. Read the statistics about SAT scores. Gifted home schoolers do extremely well.

Why are you so convinced that someone who makes choices different from the norm must have some odd agenda? That's not a remotely liberal or progressive view. Like all good parents we want an education for our children. If they cannot get one in school it would be abusive to leave them there. It took my son almost a year to recover from 4 years of public school. We put in a sweet, eager, polite and engaged child and got back a snarling, angry person we didn't recognize. He told me at 8 years old that everything I'd taught him about getting along with others was a lie. Being nice, considerate and kind got him nowhere. The other kids only liked him when he was mean like them were. We tried to fight the system to get him what he needed and at some point you simply have to move on and admit that you're not going to achieve change in time for it to be of any use to your child. I was told by the district that if I wanted the education that the law mandated I'd have to sue to get it and they'd fight it until my child was out of school and beyond. I was told that by the asst. superintendent and the director of instruction. I finally believed them and there has been no forward movement since we left the system. I think my time was much better spent facilitating my children's education than being in court for years to no avail.

Home schooling isn't for everyone, but it's a completely reasonable and usually well thought out decision that many choose to make and others are forced to make.