I'm surprised no comment so far mentioned four important aspects of traditional schooling that I believe should be repeated here:
1. More than just teaching the curriculum, schools are great for socializing with other children your age, learning how to share, how to deal with drama and to grow some empathy. Not to mention the benefits of getting used to rules, authorities and schedules.
2. Getting in contact with how other people live and with what others think, specially outside your family, can be enlightening sometimes. The handful of successful anecdotes shared here, besides falling as survival bias, don't represent cases of disfunctional families or families crazy towards subjects like religion, science, violence, racism or politics. For every happy family there is at least another one potentially raising sociopaths.
3. Many cases of child abuse are committed by family members, frequently by parents at their own home. Allowing children to miss school takes off from them the chance of a teacher noticing such abuses or at least teaching them the limits on their bodies and well being.
4. In some cases, and I'm not sure this applies to the US, schools are the best source of food for poor children (assuming it's free).
I understand that people in favor of home schooling are not saying that home schooling should be mandatory for everyone. So in this sense, only families able to provide a positive experience to children would try it. I'm afraid that when this rationale is even an option, families could wrongfully choose home schooling, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not so much. And in the long run I'm afraid it could leat to less public funding for schools when people are pressured or at least influenced to try home schooling their kids.
1. More than just teaching the curriculum, schools are great for socializing with other children your age, learning how to share, how to deal with drama and to grow some empathy. Not to mention the benefits of getting used to rules, authorities and schedules.
2. Getting in contact with how other people live and with what others think, specially outside your family, can be enlightening sometimes. The handful of successful anecdotes shared here, besides falling as survival bias, don't represent cases of disfunctional families or families crazy towards subjects like religion, science, violence, racism or politics. For every happy family there is at least another one potentially raising sociopaths.
3. Many cases of child abuse are committed by family members, frequently by parents at their own home. Allowing children to miss school takes off from them the chance of a teacher noticing such abuses or at least teaching them the limits on their bodies and well being.
4. In some cases, and I'm not sure this applies to the US, schools are the best source of food for poor children (assuming it's free).
I understand that people in favor of home schooling are not saying that home schooling should be mandatory for everyone. So in this sense, only families able to provide a positive experience to children would try it. I'm afraid that when this rationale is even an option, families could wrongfully choose home schooling, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not so much. And in the long run I'm afraid it could leat to less public funding for schools when people are pressured or at least influenced to try home schooling their kids.