So here's how I answered questions 1-3 of the Homeschool Survey
Home Schooling Questionnaire
1. How were you introduced to home schooling?
I don't even remember. I've thought about it when I started college. I felt a strong impression that I would need to prepare myself to teach my children if they were to be taught the truth. There is so much bias in education. Also, my own experience in high school was very ugly. There were already a couple of homeschoolers in my husband's extended family. For example, my husband's cousin and his wife homeschool. Their children are the nicest kids you could ever meet. The older two are married now and have families of their own. Seeing their happy, polite, successful children made homeschooling very attractive.
2. Have your children ever attended another form of schooling? _____ yes _____ no
No.
a. If yes, was it: _____ a public school _____ a private school _____ a charter school
_____ some other form of schooling; what was it? _________________________
3. What are your reasons/benefits for home schooling your children?
The list is so long. Here's a few:
1) Individualized attention
2) Flexible curriculum - My children are late readers. At the end of second grade, my oldest daughter could barely read. When we tested her at the end of 4th grade, she was reading on a 12+ level. If she had been pushed to read before she was developmentally ready, she would not have wanted to read even when she was ready. I knew she was reading a lot, so I asked her to keep a reading log for a month. She was reading 60 chapter books a month when she was in the 4th grade. This is from a girl who didn't read Cat in the Hat in second grade.
My second daughter really didn't starting reading comfortably until she was almost ten years old.
School assumes that children are interchangeable widgets, all able to do the same thing at the same time. Children are stressed and frustrated when they are pushed to do things that are developmentally inappropriate.
3) Flexible calendar - We travel a lot. It is so much cheaper and less crowded to travel in the off season when everyone else's kids are in school. We went to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, twice in the last two years in the spring. The weather was comfortable (not like in the summer), the lines were short, the airfare was cheap, and the hotel room was reasonable. If we had gone during the summer, it would have been twice as expensive, miserably hot, and crowded.
We have a BLOG where we discuss these sorts of things. If you are interested, check out http://www.whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/
Looking back over the answers I sent, I see that I left out one of the most important reasons, moral development. For the most part, public education is amoral with the philosophy that all choices are the same, it's just how you feel about it. While I do want my children to be successful in an academic sense, I'm most concerned with the eternal significance of life.
I was sort of in a hurry when I answered them, but I wished I hadn't forgotten that one. While the other things I listed are nice, they are just window dressing on the core reason. I want my children to be moral, ethical and to know the truth.
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