Getting Started: Your Reasons for Homeschooling
Homeschooling is a marathon, not a sprint. It is a lifestyle choice, not a school choice. It requires time, energy, patience, and much love and forgiveness. With this in mind, a family’s decision to home school should be a thoughtful one, not something whimsical or reactionary.
What exactly are your reasons for home schooling? Take a minute to write them or down right now before you finish reading this post.
Now consider the following reasons that other people choose homeschooling.
Educational: Your child is being given “busy work” at school because he/she finishes assignments quickly and must wait for classmates to finish their work. Your child is struggling in school and needs extra help. You are appalled by the amount of homework your child brings home after spending all day at school. You have been successful in teaching your child many life skills, and you view academics as an extension of that. You love reading to your child and teaching your child new things. You disagree with the philosophy of public schooling. Much time in public school is spent on classroom management instead of academics. Your child’s teacher is swamped with the demands of the classroom and is unable to spend time correcting your child’s errors. You disagree with the school’s policies. You have genuine concerns about the school or teacher which the administration is either unable or unwilling to address.
Academic: You want your child to be taught subjects that your school doesn’t offer. Your school teaches ideas that directly contradict what you have taught or desire to be taught to your children. Children learn best within a small group, not a packed classroom. You want the focus of your young child’s education to be the three R’s. Your child’s school consistently yields low test scores in math, reading, and writing. Your school encourages children to rediscover concepts rather than using direct instruction to impart these concepts to students in an efficient manner. You want to give your older child more freedom to pursue an individualized education.
Social: Your child’s peer group at school disturbs you. Your child is unhappy at school due to bullying, lack of friends, or not fitting in. Your child is being swayed negatively by peer pressure.
Familial: The school’s schedule negatively impacts your family. The school calendar prevents you from taking your child on trips. You don’t like sending your children away for eight hours each day. Your work schedule prevents you from spending much time with your children after school. Your family’s circumstances require frequent moves.
Physical: Your child is handicapped and could use some personal space and privacy during the school day. You are ill or handicapped and have come to realize that time with your child is a precious commodity. You child has medical issues such as diabetes, allergies, seizures, etc. which require frequent doctor visits, daily management, and personal adjustment.
Religious: You believe that God has placed upon parents the responsibility of educating their children. The school curriculum and culture are secular, denying the existence of God and stifling the expression of your child’s faith.
Emotional: Your child needs your love and discipline every day, not just in the evenings and on weekends. You child has experienced a loss or traumatic event that requires your attention.
Reading through this list may have caused you to rethink and refine your reasons for homeschooling. I hope so, because if you have a solid base on which to build your homeschool, the storms of life will be less likely to distract you from your purpose or shift your priorities. If you haven’t already edited the list you wrote at the beginning of this post, you should do that now. Keep it. Refer to it when in doubt of your choice or to answer questioning family members and friends. Use it as a motivator in shaky time.
Why Home School?
As I listened to Dr. Raymond Moore on the radio in 1985 so many thoughts zoomed through my head. By the end of the interview, I was convinced by his well-reasoned and supported arguments that home schooling was The Way to go. His most persuasive statement was that home schooling allows a child to learn in a way that is best suited for him or her. Formal education, especially learning to read, could wait until the child was developmentally ready. Our modern grouping of all children into grade levels based solely on their ages didn’t take into account variations in readiness and personality. Better Late Than Early became my secret motto as I encountered children who struggled unnecessarily in a classroom environment. So, as a young, 23 year old, beginning public school teacher, I chose home schooling as the future for my future children.
As the years passed, other reasons for home education became obvious. Home schoolers choose their own curriculum. They focus their children on family and learning rather than a peer group. Parents control not only what is taught but how, when, and who does it. Bullying, teasing, and peer pressure are minimized. The family is not held hostage by the public school schedule or calendar. Special talents can be nurtured. Medical issues can be privately and effectively managed.
At one point in our home schooling I realized that we had moved to four different towns in four years. Our lives were in an upheaval because of a medical diagnosis that required me to be close to doctors, but the moves barely effected our elementary age children. Our family was the center of their lives, not children from the local school. In those four years, we continued our studies as normal and explored our new surroundings, finding excitement and adventure everywhere, but having a relatively constant, calm, and peaceful home and learning environment. Had the children been in public schools, they would have had to pull up roots from each and then brave the new classrooms of strangers over and over.
When our oldest child was four years old, I visited kindergarten to observed for myself the content of the classes: tooth brushing, free play, read aloud, penmanship/coloring, beginning reading/phonics/whole language, lunch, beginning mathematics, more free play, enrichment activities, music/gym, and rest. If I had had any doubts or second thoughts about home schooling, these observations drove them away. Not only could I do all of what these teachers did, but I could do it much more efficiently while genuinely loving my child in the process.
Sadly, other important reasons for home schooling also exist. Home education allows children to avoid school violence, drugs, political correctness in the classroom, immersion in inappropriate music/language/ books/ movies, and eight hours away from home each day.
Evaluating home school from a strictly academic standpoint reveals a superior opportunity for learning. Children learn quickly with direct instruction from a parent or tutor in very small groups or one-on-one. Very little time is wasted at home, and an entire day’s worth of lessons can be completed in a fraction of the time that a classroom must spend. Also, your child’s work can be quickly evaluated so mistakes can be corrected immediately.
Our reasons for home schooling have certainly changed since we first began. Twenty years ago, I would have told any curious person that we chose home schooling because we want our children to love learning, reading, and math. Now I might answer that we home school so that our children will be wise enough to know that socialism is a failed economic system, words mean things, ideas have consequences, and vague promises of “hope and change” aren’t nearly enough to earn someone a vote for President.
The Home Scholar 