I have two solid life long friends from High school. I was the best man for one, that is how close we are. Two of us are planning a future business venture. The three of us get together at least two or three times a year even though we live far apart.

In shop class I impressed my teacher who was a master electrician and businessman. He pressured the school to move a $250k (1994, USD) robotic manufacturing system to our shop and I was given full reign of it. That introduced me to an intersection of computers and electronics which pivoted me from becoming an electrician to an EE. My shop teacher also became my electrician and I hired his son to perform two commercial service installations.

Sorry you missed out on such amazing opportunities.

For a differing opinion, I was homeschooled for six years during and it was damaging. There is plenty I missed out on and I wish my childhood was just a bit more normal.

I'm sure a lot has to do with home life though.

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There are legitimate reasons to homeschool, but the article itself is garbage.

> You're not qualified to teach your own children > You know what does predict outcomes? Whether someone cares.

Fundamentally not true. Caring doesn't make you qualified. I care that my car runs well but that doesn't mean I can replace the transmission. My mom with a basic high school education had no business being a teacher. It's bad enough that standards for _real_ teachers have been lowered over the last few decades.

> outperform an indifferent professional

Some teachers (and professors) are mids. Others will change your life. Some care an incredible amount. It can also expose you to a variety worldviews. This could be due to malice (my kid won't learn about sex!) or simply because people are different. Getting a variety of inputs is so vital to receiving a solid education.

> What about socialization?

My last two years of high school were public after a long debate with my parents. The level of change in socialization was immense. Sure, only during lunch did we get to socialize without guidance. Inside the classroom it still happens though. Pretending like a classroom of 20 kids has no socialization going on is silly.

> Second assumption: homeschooled children can't socialize elsewhere. But of course they can. ...church groups...

In my experience, church is the absolute worst place to socialize. If the author thinks the classroom doesn't encourage socialization (I need another word) I'm not sure how they could possibly argue that church does, which behaves much more as a dictatorship than the classroom.

The author does list other activities that are solid imo. But those didn't happen for me. If I went to public school there would've at least been some baseline socialization going on.

> Now ask the opposite question: where are the studies on the system we already have? Those exist.

Fails to cite studies.

> You have no credentials.

And back to point 1.

True, American public schools are absolutely failing while spending more money per student than most other countries. The solution isn't to chuck out the whole thing, have your mom teach your kid with AI, and entertain them with church.

These days, I don't really have friends. And I never really had them growing up either. My entire life was in my parent's home. A good bit of that can be attributed to home-schooling.