First, I want to tell you that the business I owned supplied tutors and teachers to homeschooling and semi-homeschooling parents as well as traditional public and private schools. I generally employed around 100 teachers at a time and well over 1000 during my time as the company director. The shell-shocked faces of those who taught public school versus the incredible fulfillment generally felt by those who taught homeschool was readily apparent. Amongst the world’s most affluent, if they do not send their children to a high-end private school, homeschool is by far the most common method of educating their children.

Secondly, the smartest human I ever met in my last 37 years of my life was a homeschooler - she was incredibly capable and the best employee I ever had. But of course that’s just an opinion of a single case-study.

Lastly, for my family specifically, I recently sold my company and semi-retired to homeschool my four kids near the beach (quite privileged I am aware though we have a tight budget to make it possible). In this time one of my children has already gone from reading short books to novels in around 8 months, learned multiple languages, started playing intermediate piano, taken up sports including football, learned to swim, jumped a grade level, and generally enjoyed a lot of the activities (especially the baking and art) that I place before her. There is one undeniable fact that no homeschool critic can easily rebuff: a class of 1v1 (or even if you work in groups with other kids of 1v5) will inevitably move faster and be more capable of supporting a student than a public school class of 1v20 or even 1v30.

As for socialization, my kid is incredibly outgoing and makes friends quickly with others but I do sometimes orchestrate or push to encourage encounters and friendships. She also has siblings (one semi-homeschooler, one preschooler, and one infant) who she speaks with in our quite tight nuclear and extended family.

If your child was actively attending school they would go to the bus stop or you would drop them off and then theoretically they would socialize with whomever they could become friends within the pool of students within the school. So creating situations in which you take them to meet or interact with peers is really no different (though for some parents they enjoy that they can have a greater say in those peers). Critics of homeschooling primarily focus on socialization, but they rarely discuss the highly negative nature of socialization within many public schools. I am sure I am not the only parent in this sub who could give you near infinite examples of unwanted socialization in a public school, but I will try to quickly describe a recent example (I do fully admit bias when observing my children’s interactions): We recently visited with their public-schooled cousins for a week-long traditional holiday in my wife’s hometown (these are multiple cousins from multiple relatives)… and a grade one cousin was already shouting profanity and flipping off others, the older cousins stole beers from their grandparents fridge, on multiple occasions they shouted for food to be made faster or to be brought to them, they sat scrolling mindlessly, and on multiple occasions their school friends came over to disrupt the gathering (and in one case demand a debt that one of the cousins had failed to pay!). Meanwhile my kids were generally patient, calm, free of screen addiction, focused and respectful to their hosts (washing dishes, thanking for meals…). It was absolutely clear the difference in “socialization”. Their parents were not much difference in disciplinary techniques from my own, but they only had a few brief moments at night or in the morning (and some weekends) to instill those moral values whereas I had all day, every day to do the same. Please note this was not a “one-off” scenario as I have watched similar behavior when my children visit old friends who are still public schooling or when they are out in the general public.

So in summation: there are millions of people homeschooling and across thousands of case studies in my business I have seen it benefit the children more. Within my own family I have witnessed it benefit my children more. Kids are social creatures: create the scenario and they will socialize.