Homeschool, private, or public education?

I was looking for a new topic to write on the last day or so and one finally fell into my lap while checking up on the news this morning: What are your plans for your kids' education? Have you considered homeschooling or do you plan to enroll them in a public or private school?

This topic stemmed from an article talking about how a California appeals court ruled that parents without teaching credentials could no longer homeschool their children. Parents that continue to homeschool their children without proper credentials could be subject to "truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect." Now, why am I not surprised that of all our 50 states, this happened in California?

I hadn't really thought much about it myself until we moved back to Texas and I began talking to a lot of moms in the Spring/Woodlands area who are homeschooling or plan to homeschool their kids for various reasons. That got me to thinking about Jack and what kind of education experience I'd like him to have. Like any other parent I want the best for him in terms of learning what he needs to know to be a productive citizen and the extracurricular opportunities to develop an athletic or musical talent (or underwater basket weaving). It's just all the other junk in public schools that makes me see why so many moms have decided to go the homeschooling route (and private school isn't cheap). That being said, I went to a great public high school and seemed to turn out ok, and Jack's going to have to figure out we're living in a fallen world sometime.

While I do enjoy teaching, I don't think I could homeschool myself because of one subject: history. Please know I have no intention of offending you history buffs out there, it's just that I don't find treaties and wars particularly interesting and would find it tough to teach that subject with any kind of enthusiasm to my child(ren). I much prefer science and math to history, after all we meteorologists live in the future world of weather prediction. Some might argue we don't live very well in that future realm and we'd be well served to live in the past to learn from our mistakes, but that's another (long) topic for a different post. :)

In all seriousness though, have you thought much about what education route you'd like your kids to take (assuming you don't live in CA)?