Reasons to Homeschool 51-60

51 – University degrees can be acquired by distance learning. Many home educated children continue their education past the age of eighteen, working and studying from home. Home educating families report far less of the “teenage rebellion” stage, and gently ease into the friendship stage with their adult children.

52 – Uniforms, permission slips, rushing for the bell, bag lunches, peer pressure, heavy school bags, asking permission to drink or pee … personally, I hated driving two hours a day, packing junk food lunches, and fretting about uniforms so that someone else can enjoy the company of my wonderful child all day.

53 – The important issues in regards to home schooling are not the numbers, the statistics, the grades, the finances, the qualifications. The important issues are character, morals, motivation, self-reliance, self-esteem, service, and wisdom. Our country was built on such things. The family is the foundation of our society. Parents are responsible to build such attributes into their children and to demonstrate them to the community. Institutions cannot and do not take the place of the family. Some parents are privileged to realize their opportunity and responsibility to “educate” their children, and they should be supported by society and government in this noble endeavor.

54 – Home schooling works. Socially, civilly, academically, and in general life, home schooled children excel.

54 – The schools are too overwhelmed and short staffed to provide the support and extra help your child might require. There are waiting lists for everything … and people just don’t want to give up their coffee breaks to help your child(ren).

55 – Because I don’t have to be perfect to teach my own kids!  We can learn together, make mistakes, and have fun. 

I need four more reasons!

Reasons to Homeschool 41-50

41 – Families can take their holidays during the off seasons and enjoy a real “field trip”. In fact, the planning of the trip could be a semester-long, multi-disciplinary project!

42 – Instruction aimed at teachers tells them that children learn to read best when they are regularly read to, when their teacher has a love of reading, and when both phonics and whole language is used. In other words, explicitly teach phonics, but also integrate language studies into every subject and daily life. The best way to teach vocabulary is to relate new words to what the child already experiences in daily life. Children learn science and math best when these are given practical, hands-on applications. Students do better when they are given, and held accountable to, high standards. Praise is more effective on children under age eight than performance feedback (ie., grades). All of this, while directed at a classroom teacher, is best and most naturally applied in a home setting.

43 – Parents can steer clear of faddish teaching, and make sure that children learn the basic facts of a subject before they move on to critical thinking and analysis. This applies to math, spelling, science, and all other subjects. For instance, countries with successful math programs (Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Hungary) have sequential textbooks, where new learning builds on what is already mastered. The standard, proven formula is “teach, practice, correct, apply, test, review”. Most Canadian textbooks, on the other hand, are “spiral”, recycling the same concepts briefly year after year. Some teachers, parents, and students find success with this method, but like most areas of school, one size does not fit all.

44 – Teacher certification does not make a good teacher. Lack of certification does not mean someone is a poor teacher. Studies done on this show no significant positive relationship between teacher accreditation and student performance. 5% of the studies actually found a negative impact. The “hands-on degree” that a home schooling parent receives is much more useful than four years spent in teacher’s college. Among home schooled families, there has been no difference found between children taught by teacher-certified mothers, mothers with high school education, mothers with degrees in other fields, and mothers with less than a high school diploma. Home schooled children, on average, score at or above the 80th percentile (compared to the US national average of … obviously, 50th percentile). There are fewer studies done in Canada, but ones that are available show similar findings.

45 – Actually, researchers have tried to find out what causes home scholars to excel. They could not find that the following had any impact: a teaching certification (or lack of) for either parent, family income, money spent on education, legal status of family, time spent in formal lessons (unschoolers seem to do just as well as “recreate school at home” families), and age at which formal teaching began (parents who wait until the child is eight or nine seem to do just as well). What all of these families share is a conviction to properly educate their children, consistent and constant parental involvement, and one on one tutoring. Teachers have said for a long time that a child’s achievement is directly related to the amount of parental involvement in their education. Home education is the *ultimate* in parental involvement.

46 – The one thing that researchers did find – the longer a child is schooled at home, the higher the language score.

47 – Home schooling can be done with an open mind, a commitment to your children’s education, and a library card. And the library card is optional.

48 – In 2004, 250 home schooled students have qualified as semifinalists in the US’s National Merit Scholarships. Again in the US, the national average on the ACT college admission test is 20.8, while it was 22.5 for home schooled students.

49 – Harvard University stated in 1994 that it accepted ten home schooled children for admission, and that the number seemed to be increasing each year. Stanford accepts 27% of its home schooled applicants – twice its normal acceptance rate. Yale is also accepting of home schooled children. The US Naval Academy welcomes home schooled students, as does MIT.

50 – Home schooled children have the space and freedom to develop confidence, personal interests, and the ability to soar. Home schooled children, when followed, grow into civilly-minded, responsible, hard working adults. One reason is that they are required to take responsibility for their own education and develop confidence in their own abilities. Compare this to “If you can read this, thank a teacher” which credits the teacher, not the student, for all the learning.

More to come!

Reasons to Homeschool 31-40

31 – Parents tend to learn alongside their children. Discovering a love of formerly-hated school subjects is not unusual. Parents report that their own penmanship, study skills, and general knowledge increases as they learn with their children. It is not unusual for parents to report that they learn more while teaching their children than they ever learned in school. Children who see their parents study new subjects learn again that education is a lifetime endeavor.

32 – Grade-based expectations can become meaningless in home education. These expectations are crucial when trying to manage a classroom full of children, but they are not necessary in a home based schooled. However, for the record, home educated children tend to test far above their expected grade level within three years at home. This is not to say that all the children perform well in all levels – children all have different gifts and abilities, and a child who is linguistically gifted may lag several years behind in math skills. The difference is that he can be allowed to work on “grade two” Math and “grade six” English, while all other subjects correspond to a grade four level.

33 – On standard achievement tests, the home educated students perform at or above the 76th percentile on national norms in terms of their reading, listening, language, math, science, social studies, basic battery, and complete battery scores.

34 – Home schooled children can be taught history without portraying all Dead White Europeans as evil. Conversely, they can be taught a history that includes women and non-Europeans.

35 – Only home schooling allows parents to pass along their own beliefs and values. Our school system claims to be religiously-neutral. This is a contradiction in terms. It is logically impossible for all religions to be equally true, just as it is impossible for both Darwinian evolution and Biblical creation to be equally true. There are very few ideas where a teacher does not impart his or her own worldview on children. Whether or not one or the other is true is actually moot. The question is – right or wrong, whose worldview should be taught? The parents, or the hired school teachers?

36 – A child educated at home can learn grammar and Latin, thereby understanding his own language better. He can take a month long immersion in French by visiting a French home schooled family.

37 – Sick days? These become a silly idea. A sick day can be spent cuddled up in bed reading the same books that would have been read on any other day, and if school work must be skipped for a day, or longer, the schedule can be easily adjusted (if one is even used).

38 – Parents are much more able to deal with disciplinary problems as they can figure out what the real problem is. That is, is the child being stubborn and unruly, or is he having difficulty with the material? Is the material too difficult or too easy?

39 – Home school families report that deeper relationships develop between parents and children, as well as between siblings. Children learn that they are not nuisances to be tolerated in small doses. Traditional school is a major cause of weak family relationships and weak communities. Children are separated from their parents and communities all day, which makes it impossible for a family to develop strong ties.

40 – Children can learn woodworking from Grandfather, sewing from Grandmother, and can enjoy private lessons during times when other children are busy in school.

More to come!