I disagree with vivekd on many points, but I don't think that schools offer many more unstructured opportunities for socialization than their examples. They get a few minutes in the hallway, and then maybe lunch, and then extracurricular activities - which he's already suggesting anyway.

I.e., if you rule out all unstructured socializing, then avoiding school might be an effective way to avoid "bullying, sex, drugs, weapons". But if you don't rule out unstructured socializing, then ruling out school isn't going to help much.

Yes giving kids alone time is fine, but leaving a large group of kids together under the supervision of very few adults and repeating this 5 days a week for several years is going to have some effect.

For example this study shows that home schooled children are significantly less likely to drink or do drugs

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4652803/

but I will admit that studies comparing home school children to public school children are too few and far between to draw meaningful scientific conclusions. Also the large numbers of religious homeschoolers throws the numbers off.

I'm just relying on reasoning. A child who spends most of their time being raised by their parents is in a much better position to avoid negative outcomes than those raised by a paid supervisor, no matter how well qualified. Love makes a difference, parents love their children, teachers, while no doubt caring, don't have the same love and definitely lack the resources to provide the same individualized attention.

Further, public school, due to powerful teachers unions and parent counsels are anything but meritocracies. The good teachers are not always the ones that thrive and rise to the top.

2 is particularly important. We tend to think of drugs as "bad" when talking about kids, and then turn around and have a beer, smoke a cigarette, drink way too much coffee/caffeine/sugar, or in some jurisdictions consume cannabis. So our goal shouldn't be adolescent abstinence -- rather, the goal should be setting kids up for a life of healthy interactions with drugs. In a few rare cases that will be actualized in the form of abstinence, but in most cases it will take some other form. For this reason, I tend to ignore data that doesn't distinguish between "healthy" and various forms of "unhealthy" drug use.

Interpreting this data is extremely difficult.

Your interpretation is that schools are causing increased substance abuse.

But an equally reasonable (which is to say, not at all reasonable) interpretation is that home schooled students are more likely to have a flat, legalistic, and ultimately unhelpful understanding of drug use that will come back to bite them in the ass later in life.

For example:

* homeschoolers are more strongly disapproving of any alcohol consumption, but there's no difference in opinion about smoking 1+ packs a day. Even though the former can be non-harmful or even healthy, while the latter is pretty uniformly incredibly unhealthy. Perhaps this is because they're more concerned with following laws than healthy drug use patterns?

* Late adolescent home schooled students and early adolescent home schooled students are equally disapproving of peer alcohol consumption. To me it's weird/creepy that a 13 y/o and 18 y/o would have the same attitudes toward peer alcohol consumption, and indicates that maybe the 18 y/o's opinion is more indicative of ignorance or blind rule-following than any sort of healthy attitude about drug use per se. There is absolutely nothing unhealthy about an 18 y/o occasionally consuming alcohol (or anyways, no more unhealthy than a 21 y/o).

* A lot of the questions refer to any drug use, as opposed to abuse or modes of unhealthy use. And home schooled kids tend to be equally disapproving, or in some cases more disapproving of healthy use of stigmatized drugs than of unhealthy use of less stigmatized drugs.

* Some of the related work suggests that "homeschooled adolescents engage in less substance use than non-homeschooled adolescents, although religious ties was an important moderator in this relationship". Which makes a lot of sense, given that the overall range of opinions tends to be more indicative of unscientific moralization of drug use than of health-conscious substance use patterns.

(There's also some weird effects in this data, like home schooled kids having a harder time getting alcohol but not having a harder time getting LSD...)

To be clear, I don't think this interpretation is particularly reasonable. But I also think it's about as reasonable an extrapolation from the data as your interpretation that schools are causing the gap in the data.

> public school... are anything but meritocracies

I largely agree with criticism of educational quality provided by our schools.

I don't think it's correct to blame unions and tenure though, because non-elite private schools tend to be pretty crap as well. In both cases, the solution is probably a combination of high social status and (much) higher pay for teachers. This can be paired with eliminating tenure and unions, but doing that without significant improvements to pay will only make the job less attractive and thereby decrease quality.

The equal LSD availability, combined with reduced alcohol availability, suggests that "turn around and have a beer" isn't happening in these homes. LSD use is rare everywhere, but alcohol is only rare in the homeschooling homes.

All of the cancer risks are linked to heavy drinking (usually 3+ drinks a day over a prolonged period of time), and there's absolutely no evidence that occasional moderate alcohol consumption poses a health risk greater than any number of other extremely low risk activities. Certainly not greater than a pack a day of cigarettes. (Furthermore, some studies have indicated that moderate alcohol consumption can even have positive health benefits, including decreased risks for some cancers.)

Similarly, alcohol in moderation causes none of the "indirect" things you mention.

You are free to assert an arbitrary moral superiority for abstention, but don't pretend like you have a rational basis for your opinions on the effect of moderate alcohol consumption. Pretending like all use is unhealthy is just as ignorant as the opposite extreme.

Some people lose control of their consumption. How do you justify any confidence that you won't be one of these people?

It's not as if the typical alcoholic just decided one day to be an alcoholic. For most it just... sort of happened. That could be you. Maybe not, perhaps probably not, but why would you take that risk? For little gain, you risk throwing away your life.

Tons and tons of people manage to drink without going am addiction.

And regarding risks, the same could be said for lots of things that are sometimes psychologically addictive -- internet, video games, shopping, etc.

Mass shooters, yes. Two kids exchanging fire in the parking lot? Not so much.

Note well: When I was in school, we never had a shooting, so my statement is unsupported by firsthand evidence.

Uh, no. Discharging fire arms at or around a school is taken incredibly seriously pretty much universally. Doing something like this would be more than enough for hard jail time.

This happened at my school while I was in high school (late at night, and had nothing to do with school -- it was just a shooting that by pure chance happened to take place right next to the school -- neither of the people involved were from the community or even school aged). There was a huge police investigation and the shooter was caught within days of the shooting.

e: If you think "two kids exchanging fire in the parking lot" is an example of tolerated behavior at schools, you should take it as an indication that you have a wildly inaccurate mental model of what schools are like.