I am a big proponent of smaller government and less governmental control, and I'm glad that we as Americans can choose whether or not we want to home school our children. With that being said, it's a lot of responsibility for a parent to take on themselves.

I was home schooled, as were most of my siblings, and I think that it really depends on the parents. Some parents actually teach their kids, spend the time with them, offer some sort of direction, and I think it can really give those kids a great start to life and a positive outlook towards learning.

My parents, on the other hand, didn't really put the effort necessary into teaching us, and as a result I didn't learn to read until I was almost 12, and than only because my mother finally put me into public school. Reading, writing, basic math, history, geography, you name it, I was missing it from my education. My poor 5th and 6th grade teachers had a heck of a time trying to catch me up to the other students. That doesn't do a whole lot for a kid's confidence, when he can see that he is obviously and severely behind academically compared to his peers. I just thought I was stupid. My mom thought I had dyslexia or something. Turns out I just needed someone to sit down with me and actually teach me.

There's also a lot of social development that takes place at school, and most of the time you can tell when a kid is home schooled by the way they interact with people. Or maybe it's just me, coming from that background, I can usually tell when I'm talking to a home schooler, they often have a certain social awkwardness about them. I know I was the same way until I met my wife and she straightened me out. I often had a hard time appropriately regulating the volume of my voice ("do you realize how loudly you're talking?), or knowing when certain things were inappropriate to say under specific social circumstances. And I totally fail at Trivial Pursuit (we didn't watch a lot of TV growing up either.)

Having said all that, I finished my college degree early, graduated with honors, and am a successful software engineer and wannabe entrepreneur. I have a strong hunger to learn, a well developed sense of curiosity, and I have a knack for teaching myself new skills. I don't know if I am who I am because I was home schooled (although you could probably make a pretty good case for it due to my unstructured upbringing), and given my success in life I don't mean to sound unappreciative. It just would have been nice to be able to read a little earlier in life, that's all. And I'm still not very good at math.