Strange?

Are homeschoolers strange and is homeschooling as a practice strange to the human race as a whole?.  You'd think so if you were judging by the way people sometimes look at me when I say I homeschool.  The truth is, that government run schooling has just been done for the last couple hundred years and at first it was not compulsory.  Parents educated their children at home and if there was a free public school in their area, the parents decided whether to send their kids or not.  I remember reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, Farmer Boy and wondering at how few days he actually attended school.  The parents were able to decide if something was important enough to miss school for, or if he'd learn more at home or if they just needed him for farm work that day.  My point is that people have homeschooled their children since the dawn of time and organized education is the newcomer, not homeschooling.  Whether we are strange or not, I'll leave that up to you.  :-P