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Here is the concept I am thinking about, and I just wonder how you guys deal with it... and these are things that matter most in thinking of high-school aged kids, if you homeschool through that level.

As you know, if you are talking to someone about subjects like politics, ethics, or evolution/creation, the conversation is very different based on who you are talking to, and their point of view. Hearing and talking to opposing views can be just as important as talking to those that you agree with, both in teaching a person to be a critical thinker, but also in how to deal with opposition civally and wisely. Even if you include opposing ideas in your own cirriculum, it will be run through the filter of, "this is what they think, and we disagree. By being there you are limiting both the questions your kids will want to ask, and the kinds of conversations they could have in exploring ideas without fear of appearing to contradict or question their parent's view. In other words, I learned a lot from talking to people who had a completely different creed than my parents, and weighing it against what my parents said, deciding if it felt right or wrong based on that, without having the conversation filtered from the outset by having my parents present.

As the home-school teacher and parent, your presence, and their desire to please you, limits or at least changes the entire conversation. Do you even think that is a problem? - Perhaps not. I don't know.

As the homeschool kid, I always knew there were people who weren't like us - from early on, we got comments about how my mother was "insane" to have all those kids, and how homeschooling was no good.... that tends to give you an idea of how many different opinions there are!

One effect seems to be that I am extrodinarily stubborn and very hard to convince of anything, but this may be genetic, as my father is the same way.

By the time I was 15, I was taking math classes at community college. You have no idea how many different opinions on issues can get aired in ten-minute coffee breaks from calculus - it seems to stimulate people's debating skills. I had met people who weren't the same religion or had different politcal views before, we knew a Mormon lady who sold us books, and I took a biology class with other homeschoolers who were homeschooling for academics, not religion, and who had very different view.

Anyway, then I discovered the internet and whatever illusions I had about harmony were gone.... the result is, I know exactly what I believe, and am willing to defend it. Oddly enough for some reason I don't usually shove my believes down peoples' throats. I have a good friend who was saved around Christmas, last year. She told me that I was the first Christian she had known who didn't either completely scare her away or make her wonder if they really believed. I'm not certain my homeschooling had anything to do with that - I think it was because of my science fiction addiction. Now there's something I've had to defend to certain... fellow homeschoolers who are a little too fanatical!

Oh, and good morning, all! I almost forgot. ;-)