I think the primary thing that public school teaches is the importance of social hierarchy and politics. I had friends when I was homeschooled, but they were mostly the kids of my parents friends and all of them were also homeschooled (amazingly none of us were fundamentalist christians!). We acted like little adults compared to our public school peers, and we generally were quite accepting of each other. In public school kids act more like kids and there is much more competition for popularity and for social dominance. It is a culture shock to go from cooperating with your peers to ruthlessly competing with your peers, it is also a culture shock to go from having more adult like peers to having more child like peers. A simple example I can think of is how we would talk on instant messaging programs. I always typed my sentences out properly, capitalized and with punctuation marks ("What are you doing today?"). When I talked with my public school peers on instant messaging programs they were more like 'wut r u doin 2day' and I am sure they perceived me as fucking weird for writing properly. I wrote like an adult, they wrote like kids. I tried to be cooperative and they tried to be competitive. It took me a good while before I could adjust to this new environment. Now on the one hand you could argue that it is better for kids to act more mature and to come across as educated etc, but on the other hand you really miss out on having a more traditional childhood and you also don't learn the lessons of social hierarchy, social interaction and politics, and you may have a harder time to realize just how competitive the real world actually is. Another huge thing I learned from public school is the importance of your appearance in how you are perceived. Wearing the right clothes became much more important to me, prior to attending public school I mostly just considered clothing to be things to wear, in public school clothing took on a totally different role and became something that defined who you are and broadcast it to the world. And that is an important lesson too, because even in the adult world the way you present yourself plays a big role in how you are perceived. When I was home schooled nobody ever taught me that, when I went to public school nobody taught it to me but it became readily apparent. When I was home schooled I wore generic shoes and a lot of generic polo shirts and button up shirts and khaki pants. Of course that didn't blend in *at all* with what people were wearing at public school, and clothes were really important socially at the school I went to anyway. So I started wearing brand name everything, a lot more tee shirts with brand name logos on them and jeans and basketball shoes. I would probably have a better impression of home schooling if I went to public school for my earlier education and was home schooled for my later education. I would probably have a better impression of home school if I was in home school for all of my pre university education. But going from home school for my early education and then switching to public school for my later education left me overly prepared academically and under prepared socially (or perhaps I was overly prepared socially as well, depending on how you look at it. I certainly had no problems interacting with adults, but was awkward with my peers). The course work was boring (I was testing at an early high school level when I was in middle school, about three grades ahead) and I stopped doing it which led to me failing classes out of apathy rather than out of inability (I always scored high enough on tests to move up in grade levels, despite failing all of my classes due to general lack of participation), the social environment was abrasive and hard for me to navigate (and I spent most of my effort trying to navigate the social environment rather than doing course work that was below my level. Public school was almost entirely social education for me, learning how to fit in with regular kids).