Guardian discussion on flexi-schooling and home education

This was an interesting discussion... Some friends posted a link to an article in the Guardian about flexi-schooling, as interesting as the article was I was really taken in by the stream of comments, here is a link if you want to follow http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/dec/05/rise-of-flexi-schooling?commentpage=1#start-of-comments I'm signed in as Franandrubi.
I usually stay away from internet forums and discussions as they can escalate into personal attacks and various other unpleasantness, I do tend to be quite outspoken and my ideas are not really mainstream so, until I learn the art of diplomacy, I better not get involved.
But this discussion was really interesting, the article was about a set of families who take their children out of school once a week and teach them at home. This prompted a lot of home educators (and home educated people) to leave comments as well as teachers (in strong disagreement) and general comments from people who don't really understand how children can learn without being formally taught, as well as lots of understanding for home education (this is the Guardian after all).
My big issue here was with comments such as most children don't have the maturity or determination for independent learning and I guess that most who have been through the system since they were a few months old probably do not have this skill well developed, but it is a case of the chicken and the egg: I cannot trust children to learn on their own so I control their learning, therefore I create children who are unable to learn independently... If children (and humans in general) were not capable of independent learning how come children learn to speak and walk quite well on their own? Have you ever watched a child try to work out how a video game works? Of the phone? Or the ipad? How come we are not still in caves hunting and gathering? You cannot argue that only adults learn independently, humans, I guess, are born very flexible indeed (as you could be born in any sort of family, culture or geographical location) and an ability to learn is essential to survival, to fitting into any given environment, I believe this is genetic, I believe that human children have an enormous capacity for independent learning. What teachers and a lot of adults worry about is that children will not learn the things WE want them to learn, therefore we have to direct their learning so they will be productive members of our society. From our experience (I have been an artist, a teacher, an academic, a counsellor, and a shop owner... and my partner is a successful businessman who did not do well at school) you make your own way in this world, it cannot be shaped for you. You gain knowledge as you need it, if my children decide to be tree surgeons then we will find a route to get there, if they want to read English at Oxford then we will go down the route for that too. They will shape their life, not us or the school system.