Would you rather have been public or homeschooled?

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I have done both. I finished grade 12 by correspondence. I liked the correspondence course. Public schooling was indeed horrid experience.

I don't know, though. If 'homeschooling' involved being taught by my mother, I don't think that would have worked out well. If it happened to be a tutor coming over to the house to work with me each day, I would have liked that, yes.

I prefer public schools. I go to one now. I like getting to know new people and being in a classroom with loads of other students. For me, school is a great opportunity to start socialising and making friends, and it is the only place where I can physically meet my best friends.

I would have liked to have been homeschooled for primary school, assuming one of my parents had been capable of educating me and we had the financial capacity. However, I think being around other people for secondary school has been invaluable.

Thank you so much for all the responses. I was both home and public schooled as well, and I much, much preferred homeschooling. In college I found I preferred web classes, and I seem to learn better without the stress and distraction of people.

I have very little need for socialization though, so I wanted feedback from other people that possibly have similar impairments with socialization, but still care about that. I do like people, just more so from afar. I'm not diagnosed, but I can't recognize faces or decipher subtle social norms (I get the ones like no cannibalizing and such, lol, just not greetings and body language, and that stuff).

I'm trying to decide if I should send my son to kindergarten. All my instincts tell me it's a terrible idea, especially since his behavior is similar to the way mine was at five. But I don't want to project my own preferences onto him. I feel better seeing that so many people here would have preferred to homeschool.

Homeschooling counts as private schooling here as long as it's for religious reasons. I'm not religious, but all they want is a $50 fee a year and a statement signed from a church, and there are plenty of ones willing to do that without membership. A full high school diploma is granted in the name of the church at the end.

I'm not ready to actually make this decision yet, but the poll responses were quite helpful toward the process. Next I may spend some time exploring the local co-ops and homeschool groups to see if I could handle all the socialization taking him to such things. I really want to do what will make him the most happy and functional, but that's so hard to predict.

I selected "indifferent" because the answer is different, for different times:

I was in public school, and in retrospect, I think I ended up being better off for it--learned how to cope with social situations of all types, deal with (and detect) jerks, and grow a "thick skin" so I really don't care what most people think. (Just FYI: no diagnosis back then, so no IEP.)

However, today, the public schools have gotten MUCH worse, so I think I'd take the homeschooling option now--specifically, one of those online ones. I'd probably learn a lot more, and wouldn't have to deal with all of the distractions, etc. I'm not sure how I would have learned the "social stuff", but hopefully, given that homeschooling is more common/accepted now, my mom would probably join a homeschooling network and I'd meet other students that way.