I was homeschooled through high school, am now in college (I think I'm the youngest in the whole campus!) and I think I'm plenty street smart. I mean, I can protect myself and have my share of common sense. Being homeschooled doesn't mean sheltered from the world.
My elder brother, a kindergarten drop-out, was pulled from mainstream school when his seatmate on the bus had a gun pointed at his head. Granted, we grew up in what even the residents referred to as a ghetto, but still, the fact that me and my broher are both still alive and moral says something.
You'd be amazed at how many people have asked my mom to a) teach them how to homeschool or b) homeschool their kids. A friend of mine was being sexually harrassed, reported it to the principal at her school, and was told to "deal with it". Does that strike you as healthy?
I believe that homeschooling is more of a protective than an academic measure, seeing as every homeschooling family I've met has chosen that path for moral or protective reasons first and educational reasons second.
Socialization-- the #1 question. I'm naturally shy in person (not in writing, as you can see!), and I'm quite certain that my shyness is not a by-product of homeschooling. Neither of my brothers are one bit shy. In fact, my kid brother doesn't know a stranger. Extra curricular activities for all of us involve heavily social environments. We all know how to protect ourselves should we be attacked, we all learn things the hard way, etc. Though I'll admit to a certain degree of naivete in the past semester of college, by no means does this mean I learned everything out of a book.
Example:
Discussing Native American stereotypes in Poetry/Short Stories this April, I mentioned peyote beadwork, referring to it as "peyote". My experience with the word "peyote" has always been limited to a group of Native American dancers, all of whom made their own costumes and beadwork. Peyote, as far as I was concerned, was a style of beadwork, as opposed to applique or loom beading. I was embarrassed to learn, in that very class, that peyote is a hallucinogen. The memory still makes me feel naive and wet behind the ears, but I learned a valuable lesson: Open mouth insert foot; Remove foot, insert other foot. Oh well.
Not all of my education as come from the curricula my mom has pieced together, but I confess a lot of the things I learned comes from books. "The Blue Girl" by Charles DeLint, "The Moorchild" by Eloise McGraw, "Dreadnought!" and "Battlestations!" by Diane Carey, (Star Trek novels are my guilty pleasure) and numerous other novels, ranging from science fiction and fantasy to mysteries and romances.
So, to conclude, homeschooling doesn't, by definition, mean sheltered from the world.
I think Bruce Tinsley said it best, though be worned that the following quote can be described as rude and unkind: "Contary to popular belief, homeschooled kids are not less socialized than other kids. They just have to use smaller words and shorter sentences."
I never said I was a saint.