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The importance of formal structure in the learning environment isn't necessarily self-evident. When schools become day care centers for warehousing unmotivated and undisciplined children whose parents are disengaged from their children's education, the "structure" is only superficially beneficial and can actually be destructive.

I wasn't home-schooled, but I was largely self-schooled.

I was an autodidact even before I ever started formal schooling, a learning preference that stayed with me and served me well through and beyond graduate school. I read encyclopedias, fine literature, science and history books, anything I could get my hands on. I was usually way ahead of the other students in my public school. I hated to diagram sentences, which seemed to be the preferred method of English instruction at that time. But my reading comprehension was first-rate, and I tended to write well because I generally read well.

Math was about the only area of study in which I had to rely on teachers and I wasn't particularly well taught. It seemed to me that my friends and acquaintances who did well in math all had at least one parent who was willing and able to tutor them in math. Because of my weakness in math I have not been much involved in that aspect of my children's educations.

Now, my youngest son is the best math student in his middle school. Why? Because we live near one of my nephews, a college student minoring in math, who is willing to tutor my son outside the formal structure of the public school. The middle school math teacher does her best, but babysitting the disruptive problem children takes up valuable time she might otherwise be using to teach math to the children who want to learn.

Math is the are in which my daughters were seriously NOT educated within the Los Angeles school-system. My girls had the same out-look as you. They are better educated because of their own motivation. These math teachers were protected by tenure. They were not teaching because they lacked the skills or just didn't care anymore. They were often rude and didn't even both to show up for parent nights...They didn't have to.) What an offensive situation! We and many other parents were doing the math tutor as well but isn't that ridiculous?