I've seen the good, the bad, and the indifferent. And the flat out ugly.

The worst of the bad I ever saw was a couple who had significant *coughs* "cognitive challenges". They homeschooled thier kids, but decided to send them to the highschool I went to. I'll be blunt- the parents were clinical morons, and the kid shouldn't have been trusted with anything dangerous unless closely monitored. They figured he was going to be a brain surgeon or something, so they raised hell with the school when the formal tests showed he was less than average. Good football player, though.

The good, that's easy- one parent is literally a rocket scientist (retired becuase he didn't want to work on ICBMs), the other is poet and painter. Thier kids... wow, I rarely feel dumb around anyone.

And everything in between. The vast majority of it is indifferent, becuase there REALLY is an art to teaching, and most people (including a lot of teachers, sadly) don't have it.

The real problem with homeschooling, and this is not aimed at anyone, is how well schooled are the parents? And I don't mean just what courses you took, but did you understand it well enough to teach it? I really think that home schoolers should go to a high school with other kids, and not just for socialization reasons. I mean, how many of us remember how to work a square root (or a cube, or 4th, or nth) without useing a calculator or tables? Or know a second language well enough to teach it (this one only counts for Americans)? Or remember what a dangling participle is?

Then again, I buy used text books on ebay and albris and in yard sales becuase they are good reading, and still use a sliderule and tables. *shrugs* I might not be the best judge of normal.