home schooling is not as valuable as going to a school

On what do you base this? :)

a school is an environment full of people - it teaches you about life: persecution, disappointment and rejection.

It depends entirely on the homeschooling and school in question. Homeschooling is often far better. And not getting broken by being around thugs can actually be more valuable.

I think the categorical claim is wrong. Certain instances of home schooling can be better than certain instances of institutional schooling, and vice versa. However, learning advanced topics is difficult without a mentor learned in both teaching and the topic at hand. I personally dropped out of high school, home schooled for two years, including personal study and work, and then attended college.

I have known those who were home schooled who were far better adjusted than those who attended school. They weren't isolated; they had chances for interaction with other people through the home schooling network, and other activities they participated in. The institutional school environment is often a social "school of hard knocks", which is, in my opinion, usually not the best way for young people to learn how to effectively interact with other people.

Furthermore, many institutional schools do not offer students an opportunity to learn at their own pace and in their own way, or to learn about the topics that they are interested in. As a result, school often turns the students off from learning.

I don't claim that these problems are impossible to overcome with institutional schooling. But they are much easier to overcome with home schooling, provided that the parents are willing and able to get involved with the process at the level that is required.

I basically agree with Rorek. I also want to add that a lot of schools don't do much to teach people how to learn more on their own. How to get interested in a topic and get material about it and learn it for yourself. This is easier to teach in homeschooling, in the US, because of its rarity in formal schools.

But I do think the solution is to improve schools. We specialize for a reason, and not every person should have to learn how to teach kids well. However, some homeschooled kids have parents that are educated both in various academic topics and in how to teach. Although I'm sure some simply think they can.

I think it comes down to the same basic idea: where will the child get the best teachers? And the answer will vary from comparison to comparison.

Based on what we pay public school teachers, I'm not confident that public schools are brimming with gifted teachers. To "teach kids well" in an institutional setting already makes assumptions about what teaching can do and what sorts of learners kids are, and those assumptions are not necessarily the best to promote learning, and hence the success of home schooling.

I'm very biased as school was the worst time of my life, pushed me to several suicide attempts right up until I was legally allowed to leave school in my country and at that point, government paid child psychologists told me that would be the best thing to do. Leaving school probably saved my life, and to this day the idea of even being on the grounds of a school, any school, is terrifying. School doesn't allow for individuals. It is by it's very design good at molding children in to a very specific local and national government idea of what a person should be. Kids who don't fit the mold get hurt. I was hurt by my teachers more than I ever was by my peers.

Now I bring sedatives with me everywhere I go, and for a long time took SSRI based anti-anxiety medications to try to be able to cope with the outside world and with my own terror. At least this government who destroyed my life have given me a disability pension so I can survive.

Blueberry, you went to bad schools. I went to good schools. What you say didn't apply to my schools. I was not a normal kid, yet my teachers did a great job with me. And if not for my public school education, I would not be very well educated at all. My family was bad at teaching me, but most of my teachers were good.

Being the parent of a high functioning Autistic child has made homeschooling very appealing to me. The public school system needs a lot of work.