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There are multiple alternatives to the public education system we have today. You propose a false dichotomy when you say that the choice is either what we have now or "everyone home-schooling". The best answer is for parents to have options and not be forced into sending their kids to a specific public school as is now the case.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p465n3166123272m/
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161956X.2000.9681936
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161956X.2000.9681933
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED378635&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED378635

http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/homeschooled_applicants
http://www.naturemoms.com/homeschool-and-college-acceptance.html
http://www.homeschool.com/articles/College05/default.asp#

Yeah, just look at this tiny list of colleges that accept homeschoolers:

http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html

Tinny little crappy schools like Harvard, Yale, USC, West Point, Annapolis, Rennselaer, Princeton...

If you ended up in trades it's not the University's fault, nor is it the fault of homeschooling in general. You either didn't bother to look for an answer or you didn't think ahead to create the proper portfolio when you were in your last few tears of schooling. Either way, it's a personal issue, not the concept of homeschooling, that's at fault.

Ditto your socially useless brother. For every homeschooler you point to with social issues, I'll point to 100 kids in normal school who are socially inept. Can you really look at society today and say that geeks that can't talk to girls is the fault of homeschooling? Not likely. Homeschoolers are higher in civic participation, volunteerism, community involvement and other indicators. Are some of them awkward? Sure. Are some of them great socially? Sure. Just like the rest of the world.

There have been a couple studies of this. The results? Home schooled students were found to be better socialized than public schooled students ( http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html ). This is not the original source I had for this. I originally found reference to this in a non-homeschooling source. However the link I gave references a University of Florida PhD thesis (Which was published in 1992, that date would explain the paucity of references on the internet).
If you can provide more recent research indicating that this finding was wrong, please link it. I could not find anything.

http://familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,58-17910 ,00.html

http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html

http://www.pregnancy.org/article.php?sid=189

I look for some studies that showed public shooling was better, but there aren't any.

Google is your friend.

http://www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,58-1 7910,00.html
http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html
http://www.geocities.com/athens/oracle/4336/social .html
http://www.faqfarm.com/Parenting/Homeschooling/525

I know of no studies that show homeschooled kids are "socially inept" or otherwise have any social problems whatsoever. On the contrary, an awful lot of information exists that says otherwise.

...as with most things, but he is a hoot to read and makes a great deal more sense than mainstream prognosticators. If you want a wilder read, try Karl Bunday, and if you want more content-focussed stuff, try John Holt.

Here we have illustrated a key issue not often understood about schools: schools do not exist for the students. Simple enough? Schools, which are there - in theory - solely because of the students, are not for the students. When you understand why schools as they are today exist, then it all makes perfect sense.

This Sheldon Richman article, ``Horrors! Maybe the Schools are Working Just Fine'' explains it well, as does John Taylor Gatto, whom he references. Schools as we see them today were not designed for the good of students, they were designed for the good of the state, and in particular, to mass-produce good little unquestioning soldiers after Prussia's embarrassing defeat at the hands of the amateur Napoleon, which was a PR disaster for mercenary-powered Prussia near as big as Microsoft's recent demonstration of system security (-: BTW, has anyone found w2ksrc.zip 420763k on a warez site yet? ;-). Prussia, to survive as it was, thought it had to thoroughly subvert the needs of the individual to the needs of the State, and did. Schools (the regimentation, the systems of grading and competition, age segregation, large classes etc ad mauseum) were a big part of this, and we've inherited them.

That's why school seems insane if viewed as a haven for the principle of learning: they're not, it's a proletariat-worker factory which would be deserting its founding principles should it (God forbid) become a Realschulen and start actually fostering any bona fide learning.

I also commend to you Karl Bunday's site for many different reasons that school is bad for students, and you in particular.

So how about a chapter on this topic, Jon? I won't even ask for credit! <g,d,r>

As proudly hand-crafted Open Source is to selfish proprietary "production line" business models, so Home Education is to traditional faceless "production line" schooling - with comparable results.

SlashDot follows the Home Education "find out for yourself" free-for-all mentality, not the we-must-complete-module-four-first mentality. Early hackers called it "the Hands On Imperative."

While the large majority of educational problem lie within the system, many educators remain in that system because it suits them (and many don't, I'm related to some). There really are still people teaching Haeckels' recaptulation fraud as gospel, and no system requires them to do this. There are still people teaching that a Trilobite is a simple animal, and nobody tells them that they must.

Their revolution must come from within. Our contribution is to be the solution. "Do as I say, not as I do" is a hallmark of the failed education system; "live your beliefs" is what any evangelist, be they urging technology, animal rights or a religion, must do if they are not to die a failed hypocrite.

When people can see, feel, hear, smell and touch a working system and its benefits, then they will adopt it. Seldom otherwise.

I've seen this happen a lot as reporters come under pressure from thier editors to get something that none of the other papers have. In this instance rumour and conjecture equates fact and gets published, which is then referred to by other articles and so on.

Too true, but the real problem is that nobody, least of all the reporters on the spot, wanted to face the reality - every one of them was looking for a nice, simple (and preferably sensational) excuse for these people's actions.

What nobody wants to face is the faint echoes of frustration and hatred in themselves as they consider what really happened and why.

There are also a lot of disturbing implications in this and similar behaviour that significant parts of society like schools are dysfunctional. They are. Go visit the School Is Dead, Learn In Freedom website, for one example among many. Point by point, school is the single most difficult and debilitating way to learn things. Schools as a genre need not to be improved, but removed. They don't work. But few journos are brave enough to point this out with any firmness.

The problems that caused the Littleton and other shootings are the same as they've been for ages -- intolerance, parental incompetence, lack of emphasis on the importance of education.

Intolerance, yes, but why is it there? Some marks for working out, but not the correct answer.

Incompetence, yes, but why is it there? More marks for working out, but again not the correct answer.

Lack of education - oh, sure! Literacy went down and crime went up as compulsory education was phased in. This has been well documented in the USA, where pre-compulsion literacy ran to 98% in many northern states, and has never exceeded 92% since (ie 4x more illiterates). No marks at all for this one.

Now, riddle me this: if your child is whisked away to day-care, then pre-school, then school, and in each institution is regimented to some degree and dealt with always at a shallow level by a bunch of relative strangers, where and how are they to learn any principles of life?

In Oz, this soaks up 33 of their 98 waking hours each week. Bear in mind that many of the other 65 hours are spent before the idiot box or solely with others of their age, also desperate for emotional and social input.

As another poster here points out, the most impressive US school bombing was done by a member of the school board. Obviously, emphasis on the importance of education wasn't a crying need there!

[...] being a parent is a full-time responsibility, more important than your hobbies, your friends, even your career.

I can't agree more. Abdicating this responsibility to a school should be named as it is: criminal negligence.