I wanted to teach, I went to school to teach art. I wanted to change how the system worked. I saw so many things wrong with my experience, which was demonstrabl

I wanted to teach, I went to school to teach art. I wanted to change how the system worked. I saw so many things wrong with my experience, which was demonstrably well above average. In the end I found out I'm horrible at classroom management and great at programming and design. So I became a programmer and not a teacher. I have huge respect for the professional educators that can manage a classroom and raise the bar for the entire room every day. Now as a parent my wife and I decided, given my decent salary, that we would forego her income to focus on other aspects of our quality of life. Part of that is homeschooling our children. One way I frame homeschooling is a simple question. From your experience weigh the value of even a single day sitting under a tree reading a great book vs the value of a week in in an english classroom. Personally this captures the difference they are fundamental, qualitative differences. Homeschooling is an unfair advantage in a lot of ways. Not everyone can afford to do it. Society needs to provide universal education and when almost every family needs dual incomes schooling provides a secondary (arguably primary) service of child care. That however does not represent the only or best option for your kids. When I'm in a more negative mood I call schooling, of any sort, is a kind of institutionalization. That does not make it all bad, there are great social outcomes for submitting to that institutionalization. However there are other paths to just as good or better outcomes just not in a societally blanketing kind of way.