People talk about homeschooling as if it's one single concept, but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things.
There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations.
Likewise, there are people who "unschool," people who use very formal curricula, people who make use of co-ops and traditional classroom settings, people who use a lot of remote learning, people who value social interactions and have their kids involved in lots of activities with other kids, and people who are more focused on academic achievement. These are all very different methods of education.
Beyond that, there are parents who are well equipped to homeschool and parents who are not. And there is a small but hard-to-ignore percentage who claim to homeschool but really neglect their kids.
Treating all these scenarios as a single thing that you can hold a single, consistent opinion about suggests to me a lack of familiarity with its wide spectrums along multiple dimensions. It's like passing a judgment on a person based on their race, country of origin, gender, etc.
Disclaimer: Our family homeschools. Both my wife (previously a public- and private-school teacher) and I were biased against it prior to having kids, but we came to find that a lot of our biases and concerns were unfounded.
There are people who homeschool because they don't agree with the government's viewpoints, people who homeschool because the public school system has failed their kids, people who homeschool because it just happens to fit their lifestyle. Those are all very different motivations.
Likewise, there are people who "unschool," people who use very formal curricula, people who make use of co-ops and traditional classroom settings, people who use a lot of remote learning, people who value social interactions and have their kids involved in lots of activities with other kids, and people who are more focused on academic achievement. These are all very different methods of education.
Beyond that, there are parents who are well equipped to homeschool and parents who are not. And there is a small but hard-to-ignore percentage who claim to homeschool but really neglect their kids.
Treating all these scenarios as a single thing that you can hold a single, consistent opinion about suggests to me a lack of familiarity with its wide spectrums along multiple dimensions. It's like passing a judgment on a person based on their race, country of origin, gender, etc.
Disclaimer: Our family homeschools. Both my wife (previously a public- and private-school teacher) and I were biased against it prior to having kids, but we came to find that a lot of our biases and concerns were unfounded.