Home Schooling Children

I have noticed that there are some people who seem to have a negative opinion of "home-schooled" children. They make derogatory comments, which I believe are unfounded, and based on ignorance. I would like to provide a little bit of insight, and hopefully enlighten some of these people to the benefits of home schooling.

First, I would like to point out that public schools are a relatively new concept. The first one was opened in 1844, so it has been less than 200 years since we started letting the government manage our children's education. Many times since then, the quality of their education has been affected by politics and budget deficits. The priorities have shifted away from educating children.

An example of this is what happened to the school in our community. For many years, our children were provided with a top quality education here. The school was small, and the teachers were able to provide one-on-one instruction. The school was financially stable, and was even able to provide all the paper, pencils, and other supplies for the students. The children learned to read in Kindergarten, and were doing very well in all their subjects. However, there was another school in the district, in a community several miles away, that wasn't doing so well. It was a larger school, but they were having financial trouble, and the district was trying to fix it. The solution they came up with was to close our school and bus our students on a freeway, to the other school. They held several meetings in our community to get our input. Every meeting they held was filled with parents who were outraged, and protesting the idea. The residents of our community fought this every step of the way, but our school was still closed.

When our students started going to the new school, the teachers there were amazed at the difference in the students from our school. They said that without knowing where a student lived, they could tell by their academic abilities and their behavior. The students from our school had received a much better education, and were very advanced. However, as the quality of the education declined, so did the students' abilities. In the fourteen years that have gone by since, they have never re-opened our school, and our students have suffered the consequences.

However, not all of the children in our community have suffered from this bureaucratic mess. In fact, over half of the children in our district are home schooled, and are doing very well. Those parents who were able, have chosen to provide their children with a quality education that will not be interfered with by money-hungry government officials. The children who are being educated at home are turning out to be successful members of the community. They are very fortunate that their parents were able to do this for them.

In spite of what some ignorant people may think, home schooling does provide children with a superior education. They are taught by someone who understands their individual needs, and has their best interests at heart. They are also provided with opportunities that many children in public schools are not offered, due to "budget cuts". Programs such as Music, Art, and Foreign Languages have been cut out or seriously cut back, due to lack of funding in public schools.

I hope that this article may help some of those who have mistakenly thought that children in home schools are somehow deprived of a decent education. They seem to think that parents are not capable of educating their children. Apparently they don't realize that it is only recently that we have been leaving it up to our government officials. There is a tremendous amount of information available regarding this subject, and those who don't understand the situation may benefit from learning about it, before they criticize. I have a lot of respect for parents who are so devoted to their children's success that they are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure they receive a superior education.