Home schooling is a rather odd concept to me. makes me think about religious sects and isolation. but that's probably because it's so uncommon here in sweden..

 

There's a line of thought in economics that high school and college education are flags, basically identifying people who are willing to go through the system, set a goal, and do enough work to accomplish it. I'm not sure how much good job training I got in college, but I got the piece of paper to wave as a flag to future employers.

Home schooling is becoming more of a popular trend, which is understandable given what public education offers to most people. A friend of mine's wife teaches 8th grade science in an Indianapolis public school, and she estimates that 40% of her class are ready for 8th grade when she gets them. That blew my mind when she told me. It's...well let's just say very poor.

 

If you're worried about the experience your kids will have in high school, then there is one good alternative that is available to many SF Bay Area students. Most community colleges in the Bay Area offer something called "middle college", which allows students to go to that community college for their junior and senior years and take high-school-level courses in a college atmosphere. This means that high schoolers who are looking for something different can experience the class structure and freedom that you enjoyed in community college. When I was in high school, I had a lot of friends who hated the regimentation of regular school, and enjoyed middle college much better.

 

We have a college like that here too. They take people 15+ (AFAIK) who want to do high school. Its a much more mature environment, with people in their 20s attending etc. People who dropped out of high school because they thought it was crappy or whatever but later want to come back and finish the qualification.

Also good for troubled teens, victims of abuse, bullying, drugs, pregnancy etc because its a much more supportive environment and much more flexible. You can set 4 day weeks or regular 5 days with late starts (10 am) to suit your circumstances.

I think it tends towards high schools much more than colleges, but its a lot different from a regular high school.

 

The line of thought in high school is that if you can't take this level of bullshit when you don't have any other responsibilities, how are you going to take even MORE bullshit when you have something to lose? I don't like it one bit, but I can definately see the reasoning behind it.

As for college, it's just a farse. The more classes they require you to take, the more money they make. So they add this "general ed" crap to every degree. Hell, I'm taking two different - and required - courses that are teaching me the EXACT same thing. But it's mostly the state's money anyways (yay for scholarships!), so what the hell, right?

What I'd really like to see is less of a "Renaissance Man" education system in which people are force-fed everything but the kitchen sink, and more of a specialized type system, in which people aren't heavily schooled (some general ed, just for exposure) until their late teens, or even early twenties. Then they would have to choose a specialized field to learn, minus all of the extraneous fluff.

 

If you're after specialised schooling, like in the UK. This may not be feasable, but anyway...

At A-Level (16-18 yrs) we choose three or four subjects in any combination we want, and we don't have to know anything about the subjects we don't do.

At university, we choose a single specialised course (Im my case, electronioc engineering) and don't study _anything_ not related to that course.

This is the main reason I went to university in the Uk and nut the USA.

 

Ick! I really should prrofread my comments before posting them...