I am a home schooler and have worried about many of the same things you do that are associated with American public schools. Things like seven hours a day of boring/mundane school work and a corrupt/sinful school culture.

I do have a purchased home schooling curriculum that we all really like, and we do spend a specified amount of it book learning and workbooking. Most of that is reading about biblical/true history, world cultures, the basic science knowledge of what God has made and so on and so on. If I never sat them down with a math workbook and told them to do this page please, they would never do math. One of them probably would because he likes it and math is easy for him, but my daughter has trouble with math and can find it frustrating. She is learning to like it because I’m helping her see the fun in it, but how could I possibly teach her complex geometric measurements, equations, negatives, etc. (things she may need if she wants to be a professional in some fields) with raisins? My kindergardener learns with raisins and so does my first grader. That works well and is adequate for the very young learners, but some things require a paper, pencil, book, practice (repetition) and an eraser for fixing mistakes. I have never forced them to do endless math problems, but we have sat down and patiently worked through a page of math problems that took us twice the amount of time that a usual day of home schooling math would because they were struggling with the particular math problems. That is just how is has to be so they can figure it out, with my help, so they can move on to more complex math. How am I suppose to teach them how to write a report, an outline, an essay or a graph (part of many jobs) without making them sit down and do it? How can I teach something like that while sewing with them or teaching them to mop the floor? I teach them those things, too, but I teach those homemaking/life skills in additon to the structured school learning.

My oldest, a fourth grader, spends about 2 hours a day in a schoolroom in our basement with me, his siblings, a desk and a structured curriculum that involves experiments, projects, art, music, Bible, and candid/ impromptu conversations but ALSO worksheets, work books, and very clearly defined daily assignments/ things that he must complete. He and his siblings are leaps and bounds ahead of their peers, as well.

I could never teach 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there throughout the day. I would never get anything done! I have four children, (one a preschooler), a house full of cleaning, 3 full homemade meals a day plus snacks, a work-at-home direct sale consulting business, and a gospel music ministry, in addition to homeschooling. Those additional parts of my days never overwhelm me or make me ignore my children, but require snippets of my time that require us to be DONE with our structured parts of home schooling for the day.

Those 1-3 hours a day we spend in our school room are filled with laughs, pondering, amazing projects, in-depth discussions on things they ask me about and Christian learning that centers around the Bible. We also learn throughout the day by talking about things and looking at how everyday things teach us something and why this is or why that is. True, we learn all day long, but without that 1-3 hours 4-5 days a week of structured, usually uninterrupted, school learning how would my children ever survive a day in a public school, college, a 10 hour shift at a factory or 8 hours working on paperwork in an office? If they never sit still and focus for a designated amount of time, learn to be quiet and listen to someone teaching/instructing/brainstorming with them and learn respect for an authority such as a teacher or boss who asks them to do something at work that is boring, mundane or time consuming, how are they going to function in the adult world?

P.S. If my children didn’t learn to read until age 10 and someone found out and turned me in, I would be lawfully forbidden to home school ever again, possibly have my children taken away because of unfit parenting and possibly be dragged through court while my children suffer in foster care. No I am not exaggerating. Some states have very strict home schooling guidelines and laws. It is unfair, but that is the way it is and if my children EVER slightly appeared to be insufficiently schooled at home I could be severly punished legally. Google it and you’ll find news articles all about such things happening to home schooling families.