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I hesitated for years to try homeschooling because I thought, as you do, that I wasn't qualified. I realized when our younger ones were in middle school that attitude was nonsense. I'm a smart person, and if I don't know enough to teach them a particular subject, I can find someone who is! SirKit handled the Math and basic Science and I did the other stuff. Frankly, they were self-taught for the most part. They read books, watched Science and History shows and we discussed LOTS of stuff. Our daughter decided to stay home for high school, but our son went back to school when he began high school. He's attending the same school our older sons attended and is doing fine.

As far as socialization goes, we get them together with other homeschooled kids on a regular basis, and we kept them in Scouts, and Church groups. Our daughter attends an extra-curricular Anime Club at the local high school, and she's always saying she's SO glad she didn't go to school there, or anywhere for that matter. She can't stand the typical teenage angst; she has no patience for it. For the more involved Science courses requiring labs, and for the Writing courses that I just didn't feel able to teach, she attends a Community college. This way, she gets high school as well as college credit for her work!

What might be done is to beef up the parks and recreation department of most cities. They could take over most of the "extracurricular" activities of the schools. Furthermore, if you can have Little League Baseball, and organized sports like American Legion baseball, why base any sports programs in the schools? Furthermore, they can provide physical education better than the schools, since most P.E. teachers in the schools are just coaches who seldom "work with" any students except the academically gifted. The world doesn't have to work the way it does.

I hesitated for years to try homeschooling because I thought, as you do, that I wasn't qualified.

I had (and hear of) that bias, also. One thing that snapped my brain back into place was something my mother said. "You're telling me that a 23 year old woman with no children is 'qualified' to teach 25 to 30 kids at one time, but you're too stupid to teach your two?"