[mcpie]

Perhaps your idea of knowledge is limited.Communication skills? Dealing with people different from yourself? Dealing with people you actively dislike? Conflict resolution? Dealing with a power hierarchy? Learning how to navigate complex administrative systems and bureaucracies? Learning how to learn? Learning self-discipline? And then there's the fact that self-schooling really is quite ineffective when compared to being tutored properly, and utterly dependent on the student being able to grasp difficult concepts without outside help...

[baddox]

But I didn't learn a lot of those things from public school either.

I was surrounded by middle class white people very similar to myself, with a few black people here and there. No Asians, no Hispanics, etc. And yet strangely I wasn't confused or inadvertently insensitive when I eventually did encounter people of other ethnicities. What is there really to learn there, other than don't be a dick?

A few of the items in your list apparently assume that being homeschooled also means never seeing any other humans outside your immediate family, which is preposterous. There are always extracurricular events, church events, family friends, neighborhood kids, etc.

The worst item on your list is "learning how to learn." I smiled when I read that, because of the implication that doing busy work every evening is preferable to self-motivated browsing of Wikipedia and the Internet. I contend that the opposite is true.

> And then there's the fact that self-schooling really is quite ineffective when compared to being tutored properly, and utterly dependent on the student being able to grasp difficult concepts without outside help...

Of course I agree with that, but it's essentially a tautological statement due to the inclusion of the word "properly." The fact is, of the dozens of teachers I had in public schools, there were maybe 3 that actively helped me understand a difficult concept. There are easily twenty times that number of people who have actively helped me understand difficult concepts in programming, mathematics, philosophy, and computer science via my self-initiated communication on the Internet (mostly via forums and IRC).

[zanny]

Not going out of my way to defend the superposter since he worded himself into a cornere, but if someone were to be teaching oneself online that is learning to learn and learning self discipline.

Also, I don't think kids "learn" anything about communication, dealing with people, etc in public school settings. They all devolve into tribal hatemachines filled with bitterness and animosity for one another. They aren't learning how to be good people in that situation. I acquired all of my social skills after school hours with friends that lived near me, because in school every child is a vile vindictive monster if they can get away with it. That should be clear! They don't want to be there, and the vast majority were like me in hating the process.