why we homeschool (while my anxiety level creeps up, I drink tea and listen to the Amelie soundtrack, kids bicker and scream alternately in pain and glee and I think, what's wrong with the public school again?)

Its not that the particular school is so bad, as that the idea of a one-size fits all education is stifling. Its the way young kids learn there that its them against the adults and the way so many of them won't look you in the eye. Their learned shyness. Their misconceptions about the importance of fitting into an available group. I don't believe in teaching to the test. I don't like the lord of the flies social structure that everyone knows secretly thrives behind the teachers' backs. It takes years for some people to get over the bullying they experience in school. Always proving themselves beyond the point where they can be happy, proving to people they don't know anymore, how great they are now. Some teachers try really hard and are wonderful at their jobs, but so many shouldn't be teaching anymore or at all or only can understand the sort of school-loving type of learner that they were as kids. Sometimes the teacher is the bully. I can't leave it up to such a bureaucratic institution to get my particular child in a good class. Sometimes the material is watered down to make it possible to feed to so many kids at once. Sometimes the material is so arbitrary or abstract that its just beating a love for learning out of the kids and boring them to death. At home, we can be hands-on all day. At school, that's too hard with the number of kids. How much of childhood obesity has to do with making them sit still at desks and computers all day, organizing their running around time into sports that only some of them like, and boring them or working them to tears so that when they come home they just crash in front of the TV instead of play or go off to discover? Stress is unhealthy for us and its wrong to stress our kids beyond what they can handle in order to meet these fairly arbitrary standards. Everybody's different; of course they learn at different rates and have different interests. What justifies a boy having suicidal thoughts because he's failing algebra when he will NEVER need algebra in his chosen field? We can't treat them like adults and make demands of them as such because they're not adults. Expecting your children to behave like adults is the number one cause of child abuse. School as it is now asks for children to behave too much like adults. The rush to learn certain things by a certain time is invented. Kids need to play and discover and preserve their innate love for learning. These become passionate adults that can move their choice of mountain. I make my kids study the 3 R's right now, but the extent to which a well-rounded education is forced on kids in schools can do more harm than good. I don't remember where I read this, but children are not vessels to be filled, but flowers we help to bloom. They have what they need already, they just need to be nurtured.

Mine aren't screaming anymore and I remember again why I don't send them to the state-mandated free babysitting down the street.