So the question is: Which one is the correct way to do school?
Here's the answer: Neither.
It may shock you, but I have experience in both places, so I do know what I'm talking about. So let's go through the advantages and disadvantages of the two.
For a start, you can get more sleep when you're homeschooled. I'll go further on that in another post, but face it, *you need your sleep.* Especially when you're in high school. Even if you're not doing any late-night-partying nightly and what not--even if you have no nocturnal activities--it's still hard to get a good night's sleep when you're in public school. So if you're in public school, I recommend canceling all the lasting-til-midnight parties (except for the Friday and Saturday ones, of course) and getting some extra sleep. You may thank me later when you're able to focus more during class and/or sports practice and your grades and performance go higher.
With homeschooling, your schedule is extremely flexible. You can pretty much drop the homeschooling for a few days anytime if you need to go out of town for a funeral or a family visit or whatever, and *still* finish everything in time. What it means is you still have school in summer, but basically all the time you get off from school during the year due to cross-country outings and what not, that will fill in for summer.
In my experience, with homeschooling... yes, it's true. People in homeschooling are generally brought up far better than in public school. But that doesn't mean that every public school student will turn out to be all messed up. It may depend on what school you go to. Some schools have more nastiness than others, and all of them have their problems. But there will usually be some kid in there who has been brought up well. So this argument goes both ways.
What I've just said about homeschooling may make it seem pretty sweet, but there are a couple things as well about public school worth bringing up. No. 1: sports. That is the one big sour spot in homeschooling that led me to want to leave it behind, because unfortunately the words "sports team" are not in homeschooling's vocabulary. In my area, all they had was soccer (I think), and my inability to play soccer plus them only having that led to a pure hatred for soccer.
Public school has that. They have sports teams. That is the standout of all standouts about public school.
Now that's not the only thing. Public school does have a very stable schedule, which is an advantage in its own right. Although it does mean you have to deal with missing school if you go out of town for any reason, it also means there is almost never any uncertainty. The time is set; the time is final. I'm beginning to find that I work well around a stable schedule.
The other advantage to it (in the long run) is that if you at least go through high school in public school, you're in for much less of a culture shock when you go to college if you would if you were homeschooled all the way through senior year. Unless your homeschool circle included a lot of messed up people, that is.
The fact is, there is no right or wrong way to do it. You just gotta do what seems to be best at this point, and what's best for the kid. I know that I wouldn't have lasted 10 seconds in public school the first seven or eight grades, so doing them both during a kid's lifetime also works. I'm living proof.
Now, when it comes to homeschoolers vs. public schoolers in terms of smarts? ...That's an argument for another day.
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