However I’ve also worked in a facility that did truancy and I’ve seen parents who didn’t want to go to jail because they didn’t ever make their kid go to school and their kids were just left on their own during the day for the most part. These parents would “home school” but I wouldn’t say anything was actually taught.

In order for homeschooling to be effective it takes a particular kind of child and a particular kind of parent. If the child is an average teenager who has a decent social life, does okay in school and is not super motivated then it is not (usually) a good fit. My reasoning is that the student will not have the learning environment that a school offers to push them to succeed.

Also, when you are homeschooled you must supplement it with some sort of sport or club or whatever will provide the student with social interactions with other kids around their age. When the only person a child sees 24/7 is his mom, dad and brother the kid will naturally have a very sheltered childhood that will harm them once they move out.

I said it also has to be a good for for the parent. That is because some people are simply not good teachers. I don’t care if it is your kid, if you cannot effectively explain or find a way to explain logarithms to the student there is an issue. Some parents also will have a bias in what they teach. For instance, a super religious catholic who doesn’t believe in evolution. Or a conspiracy theorist who thinks the holocaust never happened. Or someone who thinks the civil war is boring, so doesn’t teach it to their child.

Sometimes homeschooling does work out, and when it does that’s great. The student can graduate early and turn out better well rounded and more committed than a peer that attended a conventional school.

Another thing- it will not end well if the student is forced into it. If your friends kids are like in middle school or something and their parents are considering the switch now, I think that it is a good idea for them to be presented with the pros and cons of both homeschooling and going to a public (or private or charter or whatever) school.

His children do not interact with peers outside his church and similar fundamentalist churches. His girls, who seem naturally intelligent and curious, are discouraged from pursuing careers. They are in a brainwashing echo chamber and it saddens me.

So yeah, I have issues with the academic rigors in some homeschooling curriculums.

But of course there are extrene families where homeschooling is an excuse to never let your kids meet anyone or leave the house. (Mostly seen as very strict and extreme religious types in my area.)

My sisters got a more widely varied education than me but i think are probably a bit weaker on math & science, though that could happen in any education system.

The same applies to humans except instead of being an asshole, the person could be nice — just so incredibly awkward that they come off as an asshole.