It is whatever the parents and kids choose to make of it. For some it is a great opportunity not to be kept back and for others it is a great opportunity to fail on their own.

Betony, I can't tell you from a kids point of view, but I can tell you from a parent's point of view. I had many reasons for deciding to home school. Not the least of which was that I've taught in the public schools and I was shocked by how far they've fallen in the last thirty years or so. When I totaled up the amount of time we were actually spending on instruction in a six hour day, it was less than a third of the day. We are wasting so much of kid's time in useless busywork and using so little of it wisely. The amount of crime and bullying in the schools shocked me, and I was in one of the best schools in our state. The lack of consequences for outright crimes shocked me too. I watched a friend's kids get failed by the school system to the point where they were diagnosed with learning disabilities and then I watched her pull them out and home school them to blowing the top out of standardized tests in a year. I saw kids in college when I was there, who'd been homeschooled and were graduating college between 15 and 17. These kids weren't prodigies, they'd just used their time more wisely than what public schools were doing. So I decided to homeschool my own child. This was our first year of school, we are just finishing up kindergarten. At the beginning of the year, she didn't want to do school and we had some really rough days. Some days, she made it take all day to do a few little assignments. Just after Christmas she began to catch on that when she finished the work, she was done for the day. At that point, we began getting in a good day's work in 2 hours, after which her time was her own. This is not rinky dink work. At the end of kindergarten she is writing in cursive as well as I did by third grade. She knows all the lower case cursive letters and about half of the upper case. Her curriculum picks up the rest of the upper case next year. She has been writing 1 - 2 two sided worksheets a day. She is reading about where I was at the end of first grade. She knows coins, can tell time, knows her numbers to 100 and can do simple addition and subtraction. I'm hoping that she has her time management solidly now, so that next year we can join the homeschool organization in our area. They do field trips, foreign languages, and sometimes science experiments together weekly. Most of the homeschool kids around here are in some kind of homeschool sports activity. One of my friends kids is becoming a competitive swimmer. One rides horses. One is taking Tae Kwon Do. My child is taking Tae Kwon Do also, and is riding in a program for kids with disabilities. When I was taking my bachelor's degree, there was a kid in my school who was 15 and about to graduate with a double major in music and music composition. When I was working on my master's, there was a kid in that college who was 15 and about to graduate with a double major in math. Both of those kids were home schooled and neither was a prodigy, they just hadn't wasted time. When my daughter was having chemo for her brain tumor, there was a 17 year old homeschooler there who was a pre-med sophomore in college. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't also those families who use home schooling to escape truancy laws. But I think the majority of home schoolers are doing it to get a better education, to build a tightly knit family and to be able to worship God as they choose. It is a great way to get an education, and it was the norm until about 80 years ago. I think if you talk to most kids, they'd tell you they prefer it. I know that any time my friends kids have a bad day, all she has to do is ask them if they want to go back to public school and they straighten right up.

Just like real school except without a trained teacher, social interaction (including the ups and downs)and a glimpse of the real world. It also offers longer in the protective cacoon, time with parents and a lower chance of getting pregnant or knifed.

It sucked SO much! I did it for one semester in high school, between real schools, and I was so lonely and depressed. I didn't learn anything, I slept the whole time..