Hi Allyn,
You asked:
My question is then what is the root reason that someone on this forum wants to home school?
I'll take a crack at your question.
A little background:
We home-schooled our son (and only child) for the most part. He is now 19 and well on his way towards a double-major in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Washington. He then plans to enroll in medical school and become a surgeon.
My wife has a degree in Music Education and worked as a public school teacher for a few years after college. She now works a couple of days a week as a substitute teacher in the local public school district.
I am a product of the public school system in Colorado. I received an abysmal education. In fact, my education really began after I dropped out of high school and became an autodidact. There are still huge gaps in my knowledge; for example my math skills are rudimentary at best.
The overarching reason behind our decision to homeschool our son was quality.
When we lived in Colorado we were part of a charter school, which was a wonderful environment. Parents were
required to participate and spend a certain number of hours each month volunteering at the school. Homework was rigorous. Discipline was firm. The kids loved it and flourished.
When we moved to Washington, which doesn't allow charter schools, we put our son into an upper middle-class suburban public school and he hated it. He wanted to learn, but the atmosphere was so chaotic that he was constantly frustrated. The ratio of students to teacher was ridiculously high, the lessons were often mindless busywork, individual attention from the beleaguered teacher was minimal, homework was nonexistant (don't want to be cutting into that precious TV time!) and discipline was a joke. The final straw was when his teacher admitted to us that she sent her own kids to a private school.
We next tried a private Christian school (at $5,000.00 a year) but found that although the atmosphere was more orderly, the quality of instruction was poor; probably due to the low salaries they paid their teachers. I was also troubled by some of the fundamentalist bias in the instruction.
So, we reluctantly took the leap into home-schooling. It was scary but fortunately we found great support from other parents. There was a wonderful sense of community. One example: We discovered that our son's soccer coach was a laser physicist, so we asked him if he would tutor our son. He began coming over once a week to teach our son Euclid's Elements. Before long, we had a whole group of home-schooled kids attending the lessons. These classes continued for a couple of years. We even found a public school district that opened a "school for home-schoolers" (they call it a "resource center"), which was sort of an approximation of a charter school. This allowed the kids to have a sense of place and more interaction with one-another. That school is constantly battling for survival against the school board.
I would estimate, from first-hand experience, that 80% of home-schooled kids get an education that is better than what they would get in a public school. They benefit from individual attention and tailored instruction. They are also more likely to retain the values of their parents and be less susceptible to peer pressure. Obviously, it comes down to how dedicated the parents are and the sacrifices they are willing to make in terms of time, energy and money (i.e., one parent not working in order to home-school).
Home-schooling particularly works great up to middle-school (junior high). It gets a little bit more dicy in the high school years, not only because of the advanced material (such as college preparatory stuff) but also the social aspects. Our son got into college and felt like he was a bit out of place socially, since he hadn't been through the "high school experience" (for better or worse) of his peers.
Let's face it, the government-run (i.e., public) school system is a wreck. My wife could tell you stories of what she encounters as a sub that will make you despair for the next generation. I heard an interview the other day with Bill Gates where he talked about the difficulty Microsoft is having finding enough qualified computer engineers coming out of U.S. colleges. This is because of the low number of qualified students coming into the Computer Science departments at colleges. On the other hand, India, China and other countries are rapidly improving the quality of their schools. I think we're setting our kids up for a fall by not giving them a quality education. Just look at how literate past generations of Americans were compared to the last fifty years or so.
My hope is that when my son marries and has kids, he will not send them to public school. My wife and I hope to be able to participate in the education of our grandkids, whatever form of school they attend.
