There's a lot of success stories, in my own family while I was not homeschooled my younger siblings were all way behind where they were supposed to be academically when my parents adopted them and they got caught up via homeschooling. I also knew some people in the military who were homeschooled who had good things to say about it.

The problem is that a lot of homeschooling in the US isn't done because the kid has special needs that the public system isn't accounting for. In fact most of it is done strictly for reactionary reasons. Usually religious, sometimes secular, always batshit. Extremely controlling parents will choose homeschooling to limit their child's exposure to outside influences, and that's where a lot of the horror stories come from.

From my limited knowledge it seems like the secret to success is having a network of parents working together, forming a kind of school district of their own, and for the kids to be enrolled in outside activities so that they interact regularly with their peers. As with everything it helps if you have money, good luck homeschooling if you need every working hour you can get to make rent.

Found out recently that the late great Michael Brooks was homeschooled.

One of the brightest and most promising Leftists of recent times.

I think there's a lot of overlap with homeschooling and completely bonkers evangelicals. Or anti-vaccine hippies. Or Scientologists. Or any number of odd reasons a parent would want to keep their kids away from public schooling. So that probably has a lot to do with why the kids come out strange or traumatized. It probably can't turn out well for your teacher to be the same person telling you public schools are full of Satanic gay witches who will drink adrenochrome out of your blood.

There are probably a lot of pretty normal parents who homeschool their kids, probably works out pretty well in some cases. Homeschooling is often the only option for kids who are disabled or neurodivergent in some way. I know someone who was homeschooled because she had really severe ADHD and her parents felt the school system wasn't treating it well. She's actually normal and cool. Another I know simply lived way out in a rural area and it was easier to homeschool than to drive them out 35 miles to the nearest school every morning, although he's incredibly weird and once told me there are homosexual hypnosis messages in Hollywood movies. His parents also told him the south won the civil war.

I personally know several. They are all well rounded and eventually went to some high school.

But they aren't raised by crazy evangelicals. Even the non home schooled evangelicals are fucked up

I was homeschooled, it fucked me up. My parents didn’t even do the worst job of actually educating me, and I went to college and graduated at a normal time. The big problem was the lack of social interaction. I really struggled with how to talk to people and had to really figure it out myself in college, and i still feel pretty stunted on it several years later.

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My friends kid is currently homeschooled, he's 10 but makes friends where they live no problem. Like he socializes, gets bullied sometimes too, has plenty of friends, crushes, all that stuff.

Smart too. They're doing it because the schools are becoming pretty deeply reactionary here and they, and me too, all had really terrible public schools experiences that still fuck us up.

I didn't go to school for a year b/c of an illness and was homeschooled. A tutor came in once a week and I just sort of hung out otherwise. I did a few worksheets and watched a lot of The Price is Right. When I went back to school, I wasn't behind at all and I remained in the accelerated classes. IMO, I think homeschooling is fine but some parents use it as a proxy for abuse.

I was homeschooled for one year and I resent the socialization I missed out on

I suspect it does in at least a small percentage of the cases. My lazy ass hereby invokes the toupée fallacy...

Toupée fallacy - RationalWiki

The toupée fallacy is an informal logical fallacy regarding silent evidence and the problem of induction. It is a type of selection bias (and of survivorship bias) that is most readily summed up by the following phrase: '

"All toupées look fake; I've never seen one that I couldn't tell was fake."

It should be obvious that such a phrase can only be said about bad toupées — ones that look fake — and not actually all toupées. If the person uttering this phrase saw a convincing toupée, they wouldn't have noticed it at all! Hence it is a fallacy to draw such a conclusion from a horrendously limited evidence base.

But a toupée is only cosmetically ugly. Homeschooling seems to lead to a lot of really bad choices by parents and it makes a significant percentage of the kids significantly fucked up adults.

I was homeschooled, and the only part of it that I dislike was the Evangelical shit. The education itself was - except for science and health - pretty solid

None of my friends liked their time in the schools around here - public or private - and I had a pretty decent experience studying at home and pirating everything I heard about. Compared to the cop/nurse/prisoner sorting facilities local schooling options, I had a good experience with it.

Billie Eyelash seems unironically well adjusted but her and her brother were homeshooled to become musicians not just like accountants or whatever.

One of my partners was homesxhooled, and did very well at uni and got a stable job before the end of their degree. Lots of healthy relationships, some unhealthy ones.

I know some people who did Unschooling and it worked out fine enough for them. The only people I know who were homeschooled are relatives of mine and...ehhhhhhh.

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