I am going back to college after being out of school for over 25 years. There are homeschooled children in some of my classes and there are public schooled children.
The public schooled children cannot begin to compare with the children schooled at home. The homeschooled children are polite, articulate, confident and way at the top of every class I’m in with them. They don’t seem to be influenced by peer pressure at all.
The public schooled children, for the most part - seem to care more about how fashionably they are dressed, if they have the latest cell phone, what kind of car they drive, etc. They skip classes more and don’t seem to care about their grades, “as long as they pass”. Not all are like that, but definitely most of them are. They don’t seem to be able to spell or speak very well either, not to mention that I don’t think any of them have ever read a book from cover to cover.
Having been out of school for so long - I was really shocked at how the system has “dumbed down”. My teachers seem more concerned that I pass the tests that they are mandated to give (by teaching us ways to pass a test) than they are about us actually learning the subject we are taking. At the end of the semesters, they start giving us ways to get extra credit that have nothing to do with the class - like carving a jack-o-lantern or something - because most of the students are doing so badly that they will not pass the class otherwise.
In college?!?
Good grief, what are you studying? I found college to be not that dissimilar to what you’re saying (graduated in 2004, then took graduate courses) but once you’re two years in to a hard science program things get better. I was homeschooled and definitely saw what you see. But I never got extra credit for anything unrelated.