Homeschooling: A Hippie Exclusive?

With Pixie's recent surge in comprehension and rapid learning, I've been entertaining the notion of some kind of homeschooling in her future. The satisfaction I derive from teaching her is immense and it makes me sad to think that I'll miss out on a lot of that once she packs off to school at age 5. Granted, she's only 1 1/2 so this is quite a projection into the future, but I'm not convinced that traditional public school is the only way to go. Homeschooling has come very far in the past few decades and there many resources available to provide an excellent, custom tailored education with the added benefit of maintaining the parent/child relationship of trust and mentorship. Parents seem more and more willing to hand over aspects of their children's education to public schools but it seems to cross line of responsible parenting at times. I am nothing if not a lazy parent and so the easy way would be to put my children in public schools at age 5 and be reclaim my days. But easy in this case may not be the best way to develop kids' full potential so I'm curious.

It seems like the most common ammunition critics use against homeschooling is that the kids will be "weird." Parents fear their children may not fit in or have difficulty adjusting to life post-homeschool. For those homeschooled children who's parents keep them home because of their fear the world or mistrust of society, this is probably true. Early homeschoolers may have fit more into this category but the stereotype has persisted even though this is no longer the case in most instances. If parents are reclusive and mistrustful, the children will probably be as well. But the more common reason parents choose to homeschool is to provide a custom, quality education as well as more supervision over the social interactions that their children do have while integrating their values and principles which often are tiptoed around in public schools. These parents appreciate the value of "socializing" their children and take advantage of the many opportunities to do so through extracurricular activities such as sports, music, church and regular activities with other homeschooled children. There is consistent proof that homeschooling produces outstanding academic achievement, fewer behavioral problems, healthy relationships with family and above-average performance in the students' communities and careers once reaching adulthood (see NHERI study results).

There endless options for homeschooling. You could:
1) Go the extreme route and create your own curriculum, have no involvement with public schools and be the only teacher
2) Buy a curriculum from a homeschool organization with a full teaching plan and materials included
3) Go through your local schools and arrange with them to teach their exact curriculum at home with periodic visits from teachers to your home
4) Only homeschool your child in select subjects while having them also attend public school on a limited schedule.

I had always secretly looked forward to Pixie reaching elementary school age so I could pack her off each day for 8 hours and have more time to concentrate on any other babies or myself. But now I'm not so sure that is what will be best for us. Who knows if I'll end up homeschooling or not, but I'm definitely a big fan of any parent brave enough to kick the system and take their child's education into their own hands. It's a huge leap of faith, but seems to produce happier kids and parents in the long run.

Here are a few interesting places on the web with homeschooling information:
The National Home Education Research Institute
Academic Statistics on Homeschooling
A Great Homeschooling Blog
Homeschooling Basics (101)