In one of our prior homeschooling threads I shared my experience, both as someone who was very nearly homeschooled and the one group (two siblings) of previously home-schooled kids I associated with, so I’ll just copy/paste:
I came within about an inch, inch and a half of being home-schooled. When I was nearing elementary age, my parents moved from MASS to southern NM. They were NOT happy with the level of public education, and there was only one private school, which was Catholic based, which did not please my Jewish parents.
My parents have Masters Degrees and being (at the time) active University professors, it would not have been much of an effort, but a large investment of time for them to home school me. (and they are/were pretty damn liberal, although they have their individual quirks). During the 6 months or so prior to a decision needing to be made, some of their local friends convinced them that while the general education was indeed subpar by their standards, the Honors and Advanced options generally made up for it.
So various gifted programs and other socializing reasons kept me from getting homeschooled, and by the time I was in 2nd grade there was plenty of assistance from the school system to allow for a wider range of options. With more formal ‘gifted’ options kicking in around 5th/6th grade.
In high school (9-12), I knew a pair of homeschooled children who were probably from a household more Libertarian than liberal (and this is before Libertarian was fully co-opted by the conservatives) who would today probably be very socially liberal, but very small government/fiscal conservative moderates.
The parents in this case had a similar lack of faith in the local schools, and had the resources to do SAH parenting. The students were brilliant, especially in Math and other ‘hard’ subjects, but struggled with softer subjects and debate/argumentative instruction (My AP History classes roxxored). The parents had felt they needed to have some socialization and that HS was safe enough with the AP program, but they both struggled in adapting to a much less structured system from their POV.
The young lady of the pair also had issues with dealing with sexuality and romance/advances, but I believe that had a lot more to do with social isolation and the default assumptions of mid/late 80s open-but-shameful sexuality for teens rather than the politics of their parents.
Addition from a later post about the young lady.
Parallellines, by what do you mean by “issues”? Did she not pick up cues and ended up with the wrong boys, or nobody at all, or was she promiscuous? I’m curious.
To be honest, all of the above, although, not at the same time of course. I guess trying to be chivalrous from a near-stranger from 30 years ago is unneeded though.
At first, she was very standoffish with everyone, but especially boys. Since she was attractive, she drew a lot of attention, but didn’t seem to know what to do with it. A few months later, she ended bouncing back and forth between several of the more aggressive and confident guys (who were pushy) but (the guys) had a very bad reputation in the school. And that did not make her popular with many of the girls.
By the end of the year, she was a lot more confident, and a lot more worldly, and seemed to have embraced the 80s “slutty is cool” ethos that was big on MTV and the like. Apparently (from her brother, who I was closer with as a fellow nerdy, book carrying semi-outcast) she was in a state of constant tension with her folks, who wanted her to be ‘free’ but also not to ruin her chances at a good school and future.
And for all my concerns, she stayed in the top 5% of the school the whole time, so for all I know it was a part of a surface rebellion.