HOME-EDUCATION part 1

Home-education is possible from birth. It is legal to home-educate in a number of countries: United Kingdom, Austria, France, Ireland, Slovenia, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. For a map of the legality of home-education in the world click here (look further down the page)
There are nearly as many different methods as there are home-educated people, the methods range from complete unschoolers (complete freedom is given to the child), through more moderate methods, all the way to extreme home schooling (or school at home) where the child is taught exactly what children in school are taught, using school textbooks.
There are many examples where home-education is successful: Abraham Lincoln (16th president of the U.S. Taught himself mathematics, writing and reading), Leonardo Da Vinci (scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer), Felix Mendelssohn (composer, pianist and conductor), George S. Patton (U.S. Army officer), Robert E. Lee (U.S. Army officer, engineer and general), Alexander Graham Bell (scientist, inventor and innovator), Che Guevara (left-wing guerilla leader in Cuba, Africa and Bolivia; prison commandant and national bank president in Cuba; he was taught by his mother until age 13), Thomas Edison (inventor and businessman; he spent three months in school; he was taught reading, writing and arithmetic by his mother; the rest of his education he received by reading books), Woodrow Wilson (28th president of the U.S. Was home-educated by his father because of the Civil War; at 19 he entered Princeton University), others included: John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, John Tyler, George Washington, Moses, Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, William Cary, Jonathan Edwards, Brigham Young, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Bret Harte, C.S. Lewis, Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Charles Chaplin, Florence Nightingale, Leo Tolstoy, and myself.
A big reason for parents wanting to home-educate their child is because they think that they can provide a better education than the school. Which I think is very possible these days, what with the level of education being lowered in most countries. Another big reason for home-education poor learning environment at school. According to the U.S. DOE's "Homeschooling in the United States: 2003", "the social environments of other forms of schooling" (including safety, drugs, bullying and negative peer-pressure) is cited by 85% of parents as an important reason why they homeschool.