socialization? at school?

This is a ranting post, so beware.
The number one question asked by those whose do not homeschool, but find out I do, is "But what about socialization?"
This question shows just how little most people know about socialization in an institutional setting. The unfortunate fact is that most kids learn to socialize in spite of institutional schooling (I will refer to "institutional school" as IS from here on out).
From what I know of the Lord, He is very natural. Organic if you will.
We are adaptable. Humans were not made to do anything in an institution, but we can because we are adaptable.
It seems like being in the world each day, running errands, going to the library, taking classes at different educational centers, and the time we spend with our church in community life is a much more normal way to learn socialization.
I remember being in high school, both "regular" and "alternative". The alternative high school was a lot like home school, only at the community college. We had a whole floor of the college for us,about 30 students and 4 teachers. We had no assignments other than those we gave ourselves. If we wanted to sit in the college lobby and talk with others all day, we were given the freedom to. I graduated from high school, alternative high school, with a 4.0 gpa, with exceptional work done in English. I also became very comfortable with talking to people of all ages.
Regular high school was fun, too much fun. But from what I remember there is nothing from that whole experience that I can remember worthy of imitating. Absolutely nothing that I want my child copying or learning from. The popular kids were snobs and got into a lot of trouble and the unpopular kids were terribly shy. Sometimes it looked like the unpopular ones were afraid of their own shadows. Decent human beings that were probably great people outside of IS, but they were behaving like timid little turtles while in IS.
IS is not meant to bring out the best in kids. It's meant to mass produce good test scores (not even knowledge), but good scores. IS's are not set up to or meant to "teach" socialization. In fact, most social kids get in trouble for being social in class.
At IS it's all the extra activities that promote teamwork and homeschool kids DO those extra activities! Most homeschooled kids I know do more social activities than the ones in IS.
Another major point I want to make is that I have very needy kids. Two have diagnosable problems that affect the mind and behaviour. Chris and I work VERY hard on teaching them self control and manners. It would be counterproductive to teach them anything about those two traits and then send them off to a place that encourages the opposite. People with kids who don't have ADHD and autism may not have to deal with this issue, but I do. Once a week I let my boys be with the other kids in our church for a few hours while Chris and I go to the meetings. In that short amount of time, Thing One(name for my kid) usually manages to do something that he knows he's not allowed to do. Not small things either, but very strict convictions that we enforce- no video games. He is punished severely for playing these, but he does it anyway. This happens in only in a few hours so I can't imagine what it would be like if he were in IS all day with one teacher to every 20 students. The Lord gave us clear guidelines on raising our kids. Right now, bringing them up in the ways of the Lord means homeschooling, for US, right now. This could change, who knows? If our kids needed to be in an institution, the Lord would have instructed Chris and I to delegate their teaching. Even Christians sometimes don't get this. I could let them know that it's the Lord's direction for our family and we'll still get the stupid "But what about socialization?" question.
Like I wrote in the beginning, this is a rant after hearing about an ex-husband taking the mother of his kids to court because he didn't want them to miss out on the socialization of school. He won. Judges are very, very anti homeschooling. Visit the HSLDA website to read story after story of judges making ignorant and wrong comments about hs'ing.
Institution does not = better. I believe it for church and I believe it for school. I think that Christians can have community life without the 5-fold ministry and bible studies and I think kids can learn to socialize without sitting next to god-knows-who all day being taught by god-knows-who.
End of rant.
Love,
Jackie