Do high schools teach anything useful (details)?

Let me put it this way: I don't think mainstream school at any level if devoid of important lessons (social or academic). However, I have yet to come across a single important lesson that can't be learned just as well and just as easily in the homeschooling environment as in the mainstream school environment.

I learned a good deal about art history and some local historic stuff, but those were the times I cut class and went to the art museum and local historic sites with my best friend for the day. I learned how to circumvent the automated attendance phone calls. I learned that Taco Bell hot sauces will ruin the paint job on a car.

Ah, wait! I took some kind of elective where there was a book list, and got introduced to both Anne Rice and Douglas Adams, authors I never would have read otherwise. I AM grateful for that.

I learned what a dental dam is in Social Studies class. (And that they come in flavors!) I learned how to make a stained glass window. I learned some basic German. I learned a lot of Physics, very little Biology and almost no Chemistry, despite taking all three for the same period of time. (Can you say, "wildly varied teaching performance"?)

I learned that people who demand the most respect almost never deserve it. (I'm thinking here of an English teacher who wanted to be called "Dr." instead of "Mrs.," and had an IQ that matched her shoe size.)

I learned how to march in a parade. I learned that nothing magical or transformational happens on graduation day.

I learned that I sort of enjoyed the old Greek myths. That came in handier in college, though, and expanded way more.

I'm going to survey my spouse now:

My senior year my friends and all were all looking at each other saying, "Why are we were?"

What did we learn? Objectively, High School was the first place I was introduced to foreign language. I've always claimed that High School's big draw is that it is a check mark in a box that says, "I can take sh!t." It's not that they're teaching you higher learning or time management or study habits (although there's good practice for that), I think the largest thing you learn is how to deal with a large amount of STUFF coming at you all at once. It also teaches you how to excel or at least tolerate stuff that you don't care for. You also learn that there is an importance to you to do things that authority wants you to do. When the T says you'll complete this piece of homework by tomorrow, what you feel about it doesn't matter. You've been given an order and you learn to follow an order. You get an introduction on how to think, but don't really use it. You also get an introduction into what you like and don't like academically. By the time you get out it's hard not to know that you like Math over History, or English more than Art, or you're good at Sports and not Computers. I'd to say there were some academics that were useful, but chemistry in high school and chemistry in college have nothing to do with each other!

It took me starting to home school my kids to make me realize that what my public high school taught was how to pass the test. I have literally learned MORE teaching my children than what I did in school. I as a 31 year old woman finally understand Math! I finally get it! My writing and spelling have improved, I find myself less dependent on spell check as I once was.

I'm not even going to go into the blind leading the blind type of socialization that goes on in the schools.

Studying is encouraged in schools. They even teach you how to do it most effectively by giving you an hour in which to do your homework and calling it a class in which you get a half a credit for per a semester(study hall), and having you spend the rest of your 6 hours there filling out page after page of tedious notes that most students will never reread unless they are cramming for an exam.

Wow. You and the other answers here cast a very negative light on homeschooling. You seem quite arrogant and full of yourself. Do you spend your days judging others at your University? If your boyfriend or friends were to read this, I'd say they wouldn't be your boyfriend or friends for much longer. You could be spending much better time focusing on your studies. Your writing is not as good as you think it is.

But to answer your question, I don't think the choice of school or homeschool is as important as you think it is. It's what the individual makes of his or her education. Would I be very impressed by homeschooling mother who spends her days bragging on this site while her daughter is in the fourth year of Community College? No. But and that's a big but, lots of people do that, schooled and homeschooled.

Since this question is several years old, I wonder how much it says you had outside of University. Are you still feeling you're superior to others? It would surprise me if life has not humbled you just a bit

everything i learned about history i learned when i was grown and figured out that it really did matter. but i graduated in 1983 and i think i was only required to take a year. but 4 years of english because it takes half our lives to learn to communicate? now some schools require a foreign language (spanish) whereas it was elective for me in 1983

The prom, of course!

No wait...homeschoolers have proms.

All the best.

No

Hi,

There are no, I repeat, no, advantages to public high school.