Comments are ALWAYS welcome!
I guess we're "out of the closet" now, eh?
Thanks! It is nice to have some positive coverage now and again!
I think there's a perception that the problem is that homeschooling isn't accepted or taken seriously, and I think that's a straw man. The only problem with home schooling is that it can't solve the larger problems we have with our educational systems across the country; and it is touted, by supporters like Sousa, as some panacea for educational ills. And it can't be. Like Jonah Goldberg's op-ed this week with the fanciful notion that we could somehow abandon public education, there's a denial of some over-arching realities: that 90% of kids are in public school, that given our large number of dual income earners, stay at home schooling is unrealistic... and on and on. If there's an educational problem to be solved - and I'd agree there is - we have to start with where we are, not deny it. I'm not opposed to home schooling; I know few liberals who really are (there may be questions about socialization, etc, but they're really rather minor). But I think home schooling will always represent a very small subset of the overall makeup of how kids get educated. And I think that's where the argument starts - when conservatives suggest that home schooling can somehow solve our larger educational ills.
PS I wrote about this last year on my blog. But I didn't know about you then. 
Nice article in The Washington Post this week, too,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...1001351_pf.html
I wish you could have met my parents when we told them we were homeschooling - another voice suggesting we weren't off our rockers would have come in handy
Really more people ARE accepting it as a viable alternative, so that is less of a problem - although there are still people out there who don't accept it, they seem to be more on the fringe. Now the issue isn't so much that we are weird as that we are either taking on too big a task, providing an inferior education or trying in some way to be reclusive. Luckily, simple examples from a typical day usually dispel all those pretty quickly.
As far as the "public school problem" - I actually understand that homeschooling most likely won't be the the entire solution. I wrote an article a fairly long time ago stating that homeschooling would be a minority solution even in a fully libertarian society (it still gets a fair number of hits from Google - it's here). More than homeschooling, I believe that CHOICE and more private sector involvement will be the big factor in improving U.S. education. Many of the issues with school - poor quality, inefficiency, unresponsiveniss to change, out of control costs (in tax dollars and bonds, but still real) and so on - are problems associated with monopolies and bureaucracies.
Homeschooling will be a choice - I believe it will be a rather popular choice overall - but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the only choice or even the best choice for everyone. I think again, we agree on the big picture - I probably see homeschooling as a bigger factor than you, but that may just be a matter of perspective.
Thanks Becky, it IS a nice article.
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