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Disagree completely.

Learning doesn't have to occur in a classroom. What little learning does occur in classrooms could be achieved in a fraction of the time it takes in formal schooling.

Here's a hypothetical for you:

Child A is taught to be inquisitive about everything around him. As he encounters things in his daily life he figures out how they work, rather than accepting them as magical black boxes.

Child B sits in a classroom with 40 other students doing multiplication tables until he has them all memorized.

Who do you think is going to be a better engineer someday?

Obviously, Child A needs to learn his multiplication tables too.

But I seem remember that about 80%-90% of my time spent in public school I was bored out my mind to damn near the point of insanity after 15 years of it. Granted, I am in the top 1 percentile intelligence-wise. But a school system that sacrifices the very best students in an effort to cater to the very worst - that isn't a good strategy for any society.

Hmm, odd. I don't remember it being like that at all. If anything, I had a lot more time to learn things than I do now at college.

As a kid, my mom read all sorts of great books to me, and when I was older she could literally just leave library books on the kitchen table. I had learned that books are interesting, so of course I read them. Besides fiction, I loved books about science and history. I even tried to read some Platonic dialogues in 4th grade. I was really into spy stuff for a while, so we also did a lot of codes and ciphers, which quickly translated into the fun parts of math. I knew I wanted to go to college, so we did some formal curriculum for a couple hours every morning in middle school. It was mostly lame, but it was helpful with math at least. I also joined the "Homeschool Film Club". I learned Adobe After Effects and did a lot of camera work for the local public access channel.

In ninth grade I decided to try a fairly rigorous Christian private school in the area. It was fine, I got straight As, but it was boring. The kids had no motivation to learn, and I could progress in most subjects on my own faster than at the school. (Math was again the exception, I had a fantastic math teacher.) So I went back to unschooling in tenth grade. I was really into popular science books at this point, and I read a lot about theoretical physics and evolutionary biology. I was also reconsidering a lot of the religious ideas I had, so I was reading a lot of hardcore theology.

I discovered UC Berkeley's online lectures around this time, and listened to a bunch of college-level psychology. Eventually I became interested in the philosophical side of psychology, and started investigating philosophy. Fortuitously, UC Berkeley has a philosophy professor who likes podcasting, so I listened to a few of his series of lectures. I went through the first half of Heidegger's "Being and Time" this way. It's a hideously difficult book, even for philosophy, but I had a lot of free time!

During this same period I was working with a professional theatre in a neighboring town, as well as a couple local community theatres. Since I didn't have set hours for school, I was able to be there whenever they needed me. I acted in several shows, and worked on lighting and general tech work.

Oh, almost forgot. I also took a couple community college classes, in physics and writing. They were both absurdly easy and I didn't learn anything, but it looked good on my transcript to have some formal classes at the college level.

I decided I wanted to go to the University of Chicago, if I could. It's ranked 8th in the country, but in my opinion it's academically better than the Ivies and other colleges ranked above it. (MIT and Caltech are the exceptions, but they are also more narrowly focused.) I applied, got in, and am currently attending. It's awesome being around other academically engaged people, but I kinda miss the chance to learn on my own. Luckily, I have the summer to do that!

I admit I'm a bit of an outlier, and I probably would have done fine in the public schools. Not everyone who is unschooled will have a natural passion for academics. However, if anything, unschooling is even better for people who don't want to become academics. My younger sister has some minor learning disabilities, and is far more into the arts than the sciences. She spent her high school years learning about theatre and music, and has become a fantastic actress. She spent the summer working with the professional theatre company I mentioned, but in a much more intensive way than I ever did. However, while it's not her focus, she still loves learning intellectual things as well. She's currently doing some pretty substantial research into psychology and counseling. She's trying to decide between theatre and counseling as possible careers. Either way, I'm convinced she's in a better position than she would be at the public schools, where she'd likely be forced into special LD classes and not allowed to explore the things that actually interest her.

It's entirely possible to do unschooling badly, but that doesn't mean it's inherently a bad idea.

You know what old-fashioned good parenting is? Doing all that stuff you just said AND making sure your kid goes to school, helping him with his homework from school, and making sure getting a good education (including school) is an important value instilled on him from the very beginning.

The public schools just about everywhere are just fine at teaching the basic skills that serve as a foundation for higher education (reading, writing, arithmetic, the sciences, etc), but they simply don't have the resources or the time to give each child the individualized attention they need to make sure they truly understand what's being taught. This is why ultimately your child's success in school is up to you as a parent. You need to constantly reinforce the importance of school, and you need to be ready willing and able to help and encourage them when they're not in school.

Too many parents today are dumping their kids off on the schools, doing nothing to promote education or learning during the times the kids are not in school, and just expecting that the school system will somehow be able to turn their neglected children into Rhodes scholars. Then, when that doesn't happen, they blame the school system.

My kids attend a public school that serves kids from all economic and social backgrounds. They do very well in school because we maintain clear communication with their teachers, we make sure they do homework every single day, we help them with what they don't understand, and we attend any and all parent-teacher conferences available to us. Meanwhile, the kids whose parents just dump them off every day, never talk to the teacher, never ask about their homework, and don't seem to care if their kids are educated or not, struggle. Then, when the kid comes home with poor grades, they blame the teacher and the school, despite the fact that the teacher may have been begging them to come in and talk about their child for months and months, and they never showed up.

We already do plenty (some would say too much) to try and hold schools accountable for student performance. It's time to start holding parents accountable too.

Got a citation to support this? From what I see, homeschooled kids tend to be better-prepared academically than their public-schooled counterparts.

what Mark Twain said - "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".

Schools theses days are about indoctrinating and conforming to useless standards, not about learning. If you want to learn, you have to do it outside of school.