And then there is the stuff they are doing instead of hanging out at home after school. Do kids really need to be in 97 extracurricular activities? Even in my little town, I was shocked to hear the elementary school counselor tell me that the major source of stress for her students is over-scheduling. And I know from researching and writing articles about over-scheduling that it's an American epidemic. Think what might happen if kids had time to do what really intrigued them and not simply what all their friends are doing or what parents think kids "need" to do to get into a swell college.

The phenomenal success that home-schooled high schoolers are having getting into great colleges suggests that many admissions officials are looking for different "right stuff" these days. Home schoolers are getting into top universities, say officials such as Stanford's Jon Reider, because they tend to be more emotionally mature (they hang out with more adults) and are inclined to be independent learners who "take responsibility for their education." This year at Stanford, home schoolers were accepted at twice the rate of schoolers.

Do critics of home schooling really believe that, in the interest of "fairness," accomplished children should either submit to an educational system that even proponents admit is flawed, or foreswear any advantages proferred by an alternative learning system?

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"Maybe we shouldn't allow people who live near libraries to participate in contests because they can spend more time at the library," jibes home school advocate Michael Moy. "Perhaps tall people shouldn't play basketball because they have an unfair advantage."

Adds Helen Hegener, who with her husband Mark publishes Home Education Magazine, "What is our real goal here? To protect a system or to raise creative, focused, passionate kids?"

Home school critics are right about one thing: Eight hours daily in the classroom puts a big dent in a kid's day. It's not like home schoolers do nothing for eight hours a day -- it's just that most kids can get the "school work" out of the way in a few focused hours, and then concentrate on what excites them.

And I am seriously sorry that most folks can't or don't want to home school. As Hegener points out, the truly unfair situation about home schooling is that every child could excel if given the same level of individual attention, freedom and support most home schoolers get.

For my part, I have to admit to being a fairly lackadaisical home teacher. I try to put in the hours that I think I should, but writing projects are constantly in the way. Our curriculum -- that motley amalgam of used texts, library books and videos, Internet stuff and whatever else I grab -- is anything but organized and rigorous. There are entire topic chunks I've avoided so far -- sorry, I'm just not excited by physical science, but I will get to it. And I've got files full of intriguing but unexplored educational Web sites as well as still dormant fabulous field trip plans.

Mostly my husband and I talk with our kids about the world and all of our interests and favorite reading. We encourage their opinions and analysis. And we see the rewards every day as they make spontaneous, cross-topic connections. We see their world expand as they have time to make friends with a fertile mixture of people of different ages, ethnicities and economic classes that they meet in our neighborhood and community, on the campus where my husband teaches and in the inclusive local home school groups we socialize with once or twice a week.

Haphazard as it may seem, this approach appears to be working -- at least by conventional school standards. We just received the results of the seventh-grade Stanford Achievement Test for our 12-year-old. My jaw dropped when I found that she "rated" PHS (post-high school) in 11 of 12 test areas.

Don't get me wrong -- we're happy to know that our eldest daughter "tests well" (and in fact home schoolers do generally score higher in standardized tests), but our goal is most definitely not to create a supercompetitor. Not that it matters. We have not gone unpunished. Upon hearing about my daughter's test scores, several friends have quickly followed their praise with scolding -- not for maintaining an unfair advantages but for depriving the local public school of such a bright, and high-scoring, student.

I guess as a home-schooling parent, you can't win -- but your kids sure can.

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