I did an MS thesis on the topic a while ago. It's fun to see an atheist capitalist, a marxist jesuit, several new-age management gurus, and some rock-ribbed calvinists all singing from the same page -- PS sux.
The reference to The Lord of the Flies was my analogy to the public school system - NOT homeschooling. The way that virtually all public schools cluster children together tends to breed an environment very similar to that described in The Lord of the Flies
Having said that, I much prefer the socialization that occurs with homeschooling. My children must learn to socialize with a large variety of children of all ages plus adults.
I liked Tom Smedley's point in his aforementioned thesis:
In the public school system, children are socialized horizontally, and temporarily, into conformity to their immediate peers. Home educators seek to socialize their children vertically, towards responsibility, service, and adulthood, with an eye on eternity.
Consider this: In the workplace, how many people spend all of their time only with people their own age? I constantly work with people both older and younger than I, and I observe this to be true of everyone else around me. If socialization is such an important thing to be learned for the "real world" of adult life, then we should be socializing children in order for them to interact with a variety of people. Public school age-clustering actually impedes this. Not only that, it creates a host of other social issues - the beginnings of which is peer pressure.
Talk to any homeschooler of 5+ years, and you will inevitably find a family that is every bit as busy as any public school counterpart - and typically busy with running kids from one activity to another.