Absolutely. I tell my kids that if they want a secure well paying job, become a tool and die maker, or a plumber.

The original post maintained that he entered the trades because he couldn't get into university, which he blamed on homeschooling. I wasn't trying to denigrate the trades, just disagree with his point.

So then your post is really "I didn't use a curriculum 20 years ago, but I was part of a radical movement that is totally not mainstream." rather than "Most homeschoolers don't use a curriculum."

See, I wasn't saying you didn't have those things. I was saying that your brutally broad generalization of your personal experience to include "most homeschoolers" was absurd, and in fact, incorrect.

So you've got a very strong opinion on this matter, enough to post it publicly, and you've never heard of Christian curriculum?

Never heard of Apologia Science ("Apologia provides fun and challenging K-12 creation-based science curriculum...")?

Never heard of incredibly popular "Student of the Word" bible-based curriculum that bases all subjects (math, geography, history, science) on scripture?

Never actually typed "bible-based curriculum" into google and seen the quarter million hits?

And yet you still feel confident enough in your knowledge of the topic to publicly say "homeschoolers rarely follow a curriculum"? Wow.

Do they follow the normal government approved curriculum? No, some don't. Do they follow a curriculum? Definitely.

(There's a tiny (less than 10) percentage of people who identify as "un-schoolers" who don't actually use curriculum as a matter of philosophy, but the true unschooler philosophy is to guide your children to learn on their own, and most are quite serious about it.)

Of course I see a problem with people who do what you said to their kids. But that's not most homeschoolers. That's not even a barely significant percentage of homeschoolers.

There are people who abuse their kids who go to school too. Be mad at child abusers, not homeschoolers.

Sounds like you have a personal axe to grind with your parents and you're transferring it on to the homeschool movement as a whole.

You are sadly under-informed and your opinions are based on your personal experience and not the real statistics or experience of the actual national homeschool community.

Home schoolers rarely follow a curriculum

BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

Okay, that's enough. No, really. Stop it, you're killing me here.

Do you realize how HUGE the homeschool curriculum market is? Many folks order a big box from some place like Abeka or Saxon Textbooks or some other "school in a box" company and hand out the books. Just like "real school". The trade shows and conferences for curriculum are massive. Look on homeschool forums, and 90% of what you find is "Which curriculum should I get for [x subject]?" Online schooling, and satellite school are increasing every year.

It's a running joke that the first thing homeschoolers say when they meet is "What curriculum do you use?"

Seriously, read something about your subject before you post again.

In such an environment, a homeschooling ban may not be ideal, but it makes some sense and opens up opportunities to children who would get only very limited education otherwise.

So why not solve the problem you have rather than using a massive blanket that sort-of addresses the problem but affects others too? If children aren't being given the opportunity for an education, then deal with that.
 
If a homeschooler isn't providing a basic education, then deal with that.
 
Banning homeschooling to deal with a few people who don't educate their kids is absurd, especially when those people will resist educating their children if government school is mandatory too.
 
    It doesn't solve the problem. Has very little to do with the problem, actually.

Yeah, just look at this tiny list of colleges that accept homeschoolers:

http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html

Tinny little crappy schools like Harvard, Yale, USC, West Point, Annapolis, Rennselaer, Princeton...

If you ended up in trades it's not the University's fault, nor is it the fault of homeschooling in general. You either didn't bother to look for an answer or you didn't think ahead to create the proper portfolio when you were in your last few tears of schooling. Either way, it's a personal issue, not the concept of homeschooling, that's at fault.

Ditto your socially useless brother. For every homeschooler you point to with social issues, I'll point to 100 kids in normal school who are socially inept. Can you really look at society today and say that geeks that can't talk to girls is the fault of homeschooling? Not likely. Homeschoolers are higher in civic participation, volunteerism, community involvement and other indicators. Are some of them awkward? Sure. Are some of them great socially? Sure. Just like the rest of the world.

As an indicator of what they've become... I was in "The Source" (the Canadian re-branding of Radio Shack) a few days ago looking for a headphone adapter, and when I entered the store, the clerk and the sole other customer were having a conversation about the merits of a motorized barbeque brush. It's one of those "Look, it's a cheap crappy gift already packaged in a box for you to give someone!" things that RadShack carries, but this guy was looking at it for himself. It's a rotating treadmill thing with a handle and steel wool on the treadmill so when you press the trigger it scrubs the barbeque for you. It takes 6 (six!) D cells. The guy asked if it was any good, and the clerk replied "Yeah, it has lots of power, it worked really well.". A motorized barbeque brush. Ooooohkay then. Oh, Radioshack, what have you become?