>> ^spoco2:
Ok, so tell me the real reasons as to why you've chosen to homeschool? You have said it's none of the reasons I give... so, why do you do so?
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According to a survey mentioned in the wiki article on homeschooling. 85 percent of homeschooling parents cited "the social environments of other forms of schooling" (including safety, drugs, bullying and negative peer-pressure) as an important reason why they homeschool. 72 percent cited "to provide religious or moral instruction" as an important reason, and 68 percent cited "dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools." So, the vast majority of parents are doing this either because they think their children can't handle being around other children, or due to religious reasons. Neither of which I think are doing the kids any favours whatsoever.

Looking at that survey, it seems to be in the United States whereas we are in Canada. Most of those reasons/problems in the US don't exist in Canada and none of those reasons are why we homeschool.

In fact, you are assuming that homeschooling has nothing to do with public education. In Edmonton it does. We are registered with the Edmonton Public School Board and we have EPSB facilitator that we meet with once a month. We are given the choice of following the Alberta Curriculum or following our own, or a blend of both. We are members of two different homeschooling groups in town and most of the educational destinations (science center, art gallery, etc.) offer homeschool events during the day that are far more fascinating than the field trips I went on.

What is so bad about school that makes you feel that your kids won't learn there?

There is nothing bad about school and our kids would absolutely learn there. This has nothing to do with the schooling available, as the Edmonton Public School Board is renowned in many North American education circles and we have many educators that that visit and study the system in Edmonton. This isn't about trying to get away from something bad. This is just an educational choice.

Surely the longer that the kids are away from formalized education, the harder they're going to find it to actually move into it eventually (As I'm assuming you aren't accredited to hand our bachelor degrees).

Amusingly enough, my wife recently attended a homeschooling round table where that exact question always get asked. There were a number of students up there that were attending college and university that were homeschooled. Some of them decided to attend high school, others took a year of college before going into university. Some just challenged the high school finals and went into university never once attending elementary, Jr. or Sr. high. Short answer: there are no problems and its not that hard. And its worth noting that college/university education is nothing like high school.

Why do we homeschool? Because we want to.

Ok, so tell me the real reasons as to why you've chosen to homeschool? You have said it's none of the reasons I give... so, why do you do so?

[edit]
According to a survey mentioned in the wiki article on homeschooling. 85 percent of homeschooling parents cited "the social environments of other forms of schooling" (including safety, drugs, bullying and negative peer-pressure) as an important reason why they homeschool. 72 percent cited "to provide religious or moral instruction" as an important reason, and 68 percent cited "dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools." So, the vast majority of parents are doing this either because they think their children can't handle being around other children, or due to religious reasons. Neither of which I think are doing the kids any favours whatsoever.

Surely the longer that the kids are away from formalized education, the harder they're going to find it to actually move into it eventually (As I'm assuming you aren't accredited to hand our bachelor degrees).

What is so bad about school that makes you feel that your kids won't learn there?

(There are those that do so because their child has learning difficulties or other impairments which makes formal learning, or being around other children difficult, and I can definitely see the case for this. At our children's old kinder they had a few Autistic kids that were hugely disruptive to the sessions for pretty much the entire time, required their own aids to ensure they didn't hurt the other children (which they did) or destroy things (which they did)... and really, to what end? It was hard to see that they were actually benefiting from the time themselves as they seemed to spend the entire time being angry and upset and not actually doing anything in the way of learning or socializing. )

"Yeah, she was at our bachelor party two weeks ago! Her name is Naughty Nicole!"