Hi JP,

Thanks for informing me in an instructive and useful way.

I'm sure there are many benefits, and that's why I asked. Because people obviously wouldn't do it if there weren't benefits.

I remain intransigent however. It's all very well your daughter meeting with a coop every monday afternoon, but what about the rest of the week? And what about when she's 14 and needs to be taught the 3 german genders and all the pronouns etc.? Or what will you do if she's interested in science and you know nothing about it and are not capable of teaching her (and why should you be - you're not a science teacher after all?)

When I started high school, some of the kids in my class knew f'all about f'all - they'd spent their whole primary school time feeding rabbits and mucking about. However, this did not prevent them going on to do degrees, and it did mean that they had high levels of socialisation. The background I came from was way too academic and I'd lost some of that socialisation stuff.

If I had kids, I would want balance. I don't believe that being at home brings that balance. Whilst we might hypothesise that most parents can teach primary school kids (and most of them can't), I'd venture to guess that most are not capable of teaching high school kids.

There may be advantages in terms of watching over kids and controlling them, but I'd rather see them do their own thing. As I said before, being in school teaches a lot more than the academic curriculum, including socialisation, becoming robust, sports, arts, science etc. that can't be taught at home.

Anyway, as you know, I don't argue with results and if your little girl is growing up happy and healthy, then I won't argue with that.

So, put it down to experience. As a European, I find the concept of home schooling very weird.

Jane