While I admit I'm not very poilitically correct at the best of times, I have to admit that I don't understand the opposition to home schooling.
My wife and I have 3 univiersity degrees between us, etc., etc., and I think my wife is a great teacher (even our 4 1/2 years old reads in 2 languages).

The way I see it:
1) Public school is a least common denominator type situation: the kids get taught at the rate of the slowest kid in the class
2) Based on what we witnessed when we had a kid in public school, certain teachers don't necessarily know how to teach (even though that doesn't seem to cost them their jobs)
3) 'State sanctioned thinking' regarding morals, religion, and so on is a non-so subtle subtext to the whole curriculum
4) Bullying, harassment, etc., are big problems that are getting worse
5) I promise to choke the next teacher I hear blather on about attention deficit disorder. I read recently that up to 20% of children in some schools are medicated. Somehow that scares me more than dope: at least illegal drug users have a choice.

Recently my oldest came home and told me all about a neighbour who was complaining about how are kids are homeschooled. I told him everybody has a right to an opinion, they just don't have a right to share it with me.

Any comments? Why do people care how my children are being taught.

Brian

ps: Not ot brag, but our oldest child, who was mostly homeschooled, recently started univiersity. He spent the last 3 years going to high school because we figured he needed marks to get into a good university. He did: he is the only person from his high school to get into the computer science faculty at waterloo, considered one of the worlds best comp sci schools. Obviously, my wife's teaching wasn't all that bad.