[ojame]

It sounds like your experience was pretty terrible and I’m sorry that you’d spent formative and enjoyable years suffering.

We homeschool our kids and are generally quite the opposite (we’ve never been religious either). I wouldn’t say we are smarter than tertiary teachers in specific fields, but for the junior years it doesn’t really matter. Our kids are (electively) performing at higher grades than their age level requires, and we support that where they’re interested in it.

We do structured learning every day and also unstructured learning and just enjoying life. It’s a good balance that enables us to raise the happiest kids we can. My eldest has expressed an interest in going to school next year, we are fostering that interest and if he’s still keen next year we will enable that too.

People make blanket statements about homeschool, public school and private school. But after having kids one thing is certain: everyone’s experience is incredibly unique.