There are many great resources on the internet for those who choose to homeschool their children. One thing that is a little harder to find are definitive reasons why you should consider this option. Recently, I read a heartfelt entry at Steve Olson’s blog about how public schools crush souls. This entry was very close to my heart because of the problems that I had in school–especially in grades 3 through 8. Steve has chosen to send his children to Montessori school which is probably an equally good option. I prefer the option of schooling my children at home and I’m going to give some reasons here.
1. Debunking “The Argument”
I’m going to start my list by debunking the most widely used reason why you should not homeschool. “How will your kids learn to socialize?” is the question homeschoolers hear the most. This is really an easy question to answer. First, children in public schools don’t learn to socialize–at least not in a “real-world” sense. In public schools you socialize only with other people who are your exact same age. Where else in life does this happen? I can’t think of a single example. Are your social circles composed only of people who are the exact same age you are?
There are more than a few things wrong with this social conditioning. The biggest issue I have with it is that it turns so many kids into outcasts. If you advance more quickly or slowly than the average then you are far less likely to fit in. Everyone can remember the tall girl or slow boy who was teased. This type of social conditioning encourages youth to focus on sameness and to ostracize anyone who is different in any way.
When I was in the third grade, my family moved from Indiana to northern Minnesota. For the next five years I dreaded going to school because of the torment I knew I would face there. I was different because I had the Indiana drawl instead of the Minnesota “Yah, sure, you betcha.” There were other things that made my family and me different, but those are better saved for another time. Let’s just say that to this day, I remember being called “Bacon Man” in third and fourth grade because I smelled like woodsmoke. For that reason and others, a snow day was like a stay of execution from the governor.
If you need further convincing, just go visit your local high school. Stand in the hallway and see if you can find an example of the type of “socializing” that you want your children to experience.
2. Your curriculum isn’t someone’s agenda
A few years ago, I read a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
The bottom line here is that if you send your children to be taught by someone else, someone else will have control over what your children are learning. In private schools this is lessened by the fact that they have to compete in a free market, but it isn’t wholly eliminated. At home, your children learn what you want them to learn. Of course this is a heavy responsibility, because it requires you to know what you’re talking about. But with the multitude of resources available, this shouldn’t be such a worry.
This brings me to one of the reasons I want to homeschool which is that frankly I am smarter than 99% of public school teachers. You may not be as cocky as I am, but even so you’re probably smarter than a good number of them. This doesn’t even matter that much, though, since even the smartest teacher is constrained to teaching what the administration or board tells them.
3. Your child will never be molested, murdered, assaulted… at homeschool
Go to Google and type in one of the following: school assault, school murder, school shooting, or teacher molestation. You may be surprised at all you find. Or maybe you won’t be since this stuff is in the news all the time.
4. Time
My wife (Alena) and I really, really wanted to have our sons because we want to spend time with them. Life is short and childhood is even shorter. So why in the hell would we want to give our kids to someone else for 7 hours per day, 180+ days per year? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I have a 20 year old daughter, so I know how fast the time flies by. I regret every moment that I didn’t spend with her that I could have. Every one of those moments is a moment that we can never get back.
I’m selfish and I want to watch my baby grow into a toddler, my toddler become a child, my child turn into an adolescent, my adolescent blossom into a teen, and my teen transform into a man. And I want my wife and me to be the ones who give him guidance along the way. She’s great at that–that’s one of the reasons I chose her.
We want to instill our values in him. If we send him away, whose values will he be receiving? Who knows?
5. One (or two) on one (or two)
Ok, this varies largely depending on where you live, but average class sizes range from 25 to well over 50 in public schools. Private schools boast slightly smaller class sizes. But neither of these can come close to comparing to the class size of home schools. Alena and I can focus all of our energy onto our sons. If one of them is struggling with something, we can find ways to make that topic easier. The museum, zoo, park, historic site can become classrooms. We can customize our lessons without taking anything away from the other students–because there are no other students.
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I could probably come up with a few more good reasons to homeschool, but the most basic reason is that these are our kids. They don’t exist to serve the state. They live to have good and happy lives. Alena and I love them unlike anyone else–who better can help them achieve this goal?
***Update - Related entry***
26 responses so far ↓
1 Sarah // Feb 20, 2007 at 12:59 pm
It’s refreshing to hear someone admit that one of the reasons they homeschool is because they are smarter than 99% of the teachers! It’s one of those things many of us believe but never admit.
2 Ed Snyder // Feb 20, 2007 at 2:59 pm
From Carnival of Homeschooling #60: Presidential Trivia: […] We’ll start this week with Flada Blog’s Five Reasons You Should Homeschool. He may be preaching to the choir here, but this post is a great read if you happen to be questioning your decision to homeschool, or if you’re just having a bad day. […]
3 Mel // Feb 20, 2007 at 4:59 pm
If it were me, I would want to do more research on #3 before I included it. Yes, this stuff is in the news all the time, but the news is notorious for focusing disproportionately on the things that bring in viewers. I would want to know: exactly what is the risk of my child being abused/killed at school? What is that same risk outside of the school environment? Are any of these risks really worth mentioning if you only have five bullet points with which to “convince” someone of the worthiness of homeschooling?
So, yeah. I would swap out #3 for something else.
4 Ed Snyder // Feb 20, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Mel,
I appreciate your perspective, and you’re probably right that #3 in itself isn’t very convincing. These five bullet points were simply my top five reasons. I used a 2nd person title because that is supposed to personalize the content for the reader rather than focusing on me, the author. I don’t know if it does or not, and maybe in the future I’ll stick with titles that I like rather than trying to find ones to “suck in readers.” It would be more true to myself that way which would probably in turn be a big plus for my readers.
I’m sure that without too much effort I could come up with at least a dozen more reasons why homeschooling is a good option, but it would require a very lengthy blog entry.
In any case, I have read literally hundreds of news articles about violence and threats of violence in public schools as well as many personal accounts–not to mention my own first hand observations. Is that anecdotal evidence? I suppose. But when is a quantity of anecdotal evidence enough to become convincing?
5 Dana // Feb 23, 2007 at 12:41 am
Thanks for sharing…and I agree!
I think one of the greatest things is to watch children learn and apply what they have learned. My three year old has learned some interesting things for a boy of his age just because a variety of topics are normal conversation around our house. Like anticlines and sinclines.
6 Summer M. // Feb 24, 2007 at 6:16 pm
This is a great post! There are so many different reasons that parents choose to homeschool, but these are usually the basic ones.
7 Lydia // Feb 24, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Don’t forget the lack of lines at museums/zoos/Disneyworld/etc during school times! :D
About that socializing argument — I like to respond by asking them in what school children are encouraged to talk to each other and socialize. In mine, they told us to sit down and be quiet. Am I really expected to send them to school all day for the few minutes of recess or lunch???
8 katharine // Apr 6, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Number 4! I have so much trouble explaning this to people. They think I’m selfish for wanting to spend all my time with my kids and stopping them from going out into the world on their own but my kids are so independent. They know they always have us. They know they’ll never be alone for hours waiting until they’re allowed to see us again. They go gladly to lessons and activities knowing we love them and would like nothing more than to be with them, loving them and making them the priority in our lives.
9 Steph // May 12, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I agree with Mel that #3 is less than convincing. My thought as I was reading it was that it’s much more likely, statistically speaking, that I child will experience one or more of these at *home* than at school!! Get rid of #3 or rewrite it to make your point, IMO.
10 Ed Snyder // May 12, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Steph,
I guess the point of this article is to outline a few reasons why I think people who care about their kids should keep them at home. Those who truly care about the welfare of their kids are unlikely to commit any of the offenses listed in #3 against their own children. So, I’d have to say that the odds of any of these happening at home to that set of children is, statistically speaking, 0%.
To any readers who are fearful that they themselves will molest, murder, or assault their child should they keep the child at home: by all means, disregard this entire entry and please send your kids to school while having yourself committed–and definitely don’t have any more kids.
11 Johnna // May 14, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Man, if only I’d stumbled upon this last year, it would have been a lot easier convincing my mother into home schooling. Number three is actually a very good point, if anyone doubts it. At my high school there were countless number of police officers, and yet still bomb threats, guns found on campus, and the bathroom was probably the most dangerous place. Luckily teachers don’t let students use the rest room anyway ;)
12 Ruth MacCarthaigh // Jun 15, 2007 at 2:42 pm
I just love the 5 reasons you give for teaching your children yourselves and not putting them into school. I am teaching my son. I just love it and NOBODY that I meet understand this! However you explain it very well. Good luck and God bless. Ruth
13 5 Reasons To Homeschool | The At Homer // Jun 16, 2007 at 2:37 pm
[…] http://blog.flada.com/2007/02/18/reasons_homeschool/ […]
14 B Magnatta // Jun 24, 2007 at 7:26 pm
My home school kids wanted a wider circle of friends their own age. The school had previously asked me how my kids will ever get any socialization at home so I thought that it was a good idea to let them go make friends at school so they could have a more social life for a while. Well they got into trouble for socializing. Go figure. It seems the public system contradicts itself a lot!
15 Julia // Jun 30, 2007 at 3:00 am
“There were other things that made my family and I different, but…”
It should be ..”made my family and ME..” not “I”
16 Ed Snyder // Jun 30, 2007 at 9:09 am
Julia,
Thanks, it’s been edited to fix my grammatical error.
17 Eric // Jul 13, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I almost agree with everything. I am a public school teacher. I went to public school all of my life. For both of those reasons I am choosing to home school my own child for all five of these reasons and more. But, I wonder how you measure that you are smarter than 99% of public school teachers? I would agree that you may be wiser than 99% of them, but if you would state your reasons for thinking this than I may not be tempted to write it of as cocky or proud. When you say ’smarter’ are you equating it to intelligence? I know a number of people who I am at complete odds with concerning many things in life, but I can admit that they are more intelligent than I. I ask all of this sincerely and respectfully, as I truly desire to know what you think. Thank you for your blog.
18 Ed Snyder // Jul 14, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Eric,
I guess it’s partially cockiness and pride. On the other hand, I did score a 34 composite on my ACT as well as having a 3.8+ GPA in college. Also, I’ve had my IQ professionally tested and scored over 160.
However, I’ll admit that none of those things would necessarily make me a “better” teacher than any professional public school teachers and it really wasn’t meant to disparage the majority of teachers who are quite competent but have the cards stacked against them.
It may be a point that should have been left off of this list since neither my intelligence nor my “smarts” have anything to do with why someone else should choose to homeschool.
19 a // Jul 14, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Home schooling is awesome, because it forces us not to waste our lives at work..
Once you have enough money to live, hang out with your kids!
who else will teach psychology to them at a young age?
20 Simeon // Jul 18, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Whatever Steve says, I don’t see any reason why you should edit your article. It is how you have percieved the education systems and there are arguments on both sides. In this era of oppression (since that is essentially what is happening - oppression of the public by the nanny state), I think there is much more to be said for home-schooling, where the curriculum of your child is, although perhaps not greater or more diverse, more accountable, i.e. to the home-schooler and those he brings in to help, as opposed to schools where no one really knows who is deciding on what is taught. Plus, many teachers these days have only just come out of college, making them totally unsuitable as teachers because of their general lack of world experience, and yet the government love it because they are cheap and easy to manipulate.
God knows where my kids are going to get their education (luckily I don’t have to think about it for a long while yet), but if i had kids now, I would think very carefully about where they were getting their “education”.
Peace!
21 Ed Snyder // Jul 18, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Simeon,
I don’t intend to edit my article. I only posted Steve’s counterpoints as a separate entry because initially having these types of debates was one of the goals of my website. Steve is actually the only reader who has used my discussion board and I’m aware that few readers have even looked at it, so it seemed unlikely that many people would ever read what he had to say if it stayed there. Plus, it is now in a location where I can more easily link to it when I write another entry backing up my arguments of this entry.
I actually encourage all of my readers to wander over to the discussion board and debate your hearts out–or do it here in the comments. It’s all good.
22 Amie // Jul 26, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I agree with all of these points. As a person who was severely beaten by other students as school, I think #3 is a very valid point. The argument that it’s a statistically unlikely event is like saying you’re going to send your child to walk down a dark alley alone. Yeah sure, it’s a rare occasion that someone will harm them in a dark alley, but that’s not a risk I’m willing to take. There are countless other dangers that we really should expose our children to (as part of the growing up process) without adding the completely unnecessary ones.
And I agree with the posters who’ve commented on socialization. The few minutes a day that we were allowed to socialize in school were spent in unhealthy social activity (bullying, establishing hierarchies, etc).
If people feel that homeschool kids are sheltered, I challenge them to go to the post office on a weekday and observe how the school aged children there treat the other adults in the building. I have already begun teaching my 3yo how to order is own food at a restaurant, seek answers from a store employee about a product he wanted, and other social behaviors. My boys get far more socialization minutes each week from activities like Sunday School and gymnastics than they would in a classroom.
23 Michelle // Aug 8, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Regarding the “socialization” point: when I am asked that question, I answer that for literally hundreds of years, children were not “socialized” outside the family. Going to school and being “socialized” is a relatively new concept. (As is forcing an infant to sleep alone in a separate room, but that is a different subject.)
My smark aleck response to the question of “socialization” is: I’ll take him to Petsmart just like the dog.
24 obsteve // Aug 16, 2007 at 10:30 am
Hi Ed, I still believe that this article is misleading, both about teachers and about teaching.
Essentially, I feel that 5 different reasons to homeschool could and should be proffered; I do not believe your following reasons stand up to much scrutiny-
“children in public schools don’t learn to socialize at least not in a real-world sense”;
“many of the things that are taught in public schools that are simply wrong”;
“This brings me to one of the reasons I want to homeschool which is that frankly I am smarter than 99% of public school teachers”;
“Your child will never be molested, murdered, assaulted at homeschool”;
“We want to instill our values… If we send him away, whose values will he be receiving? Who knows?”
In an otherwise persuasive blog entry these comments, ranging from the misguided to the scaremongering, need to be addressed. It is a month since I have posted my objections on the discussion board; I am hoping the lack of response indicates deep consideration of the issues, rather than heads in the sand.
25 obsteve // Aug 16, 2007 at 10:34 am
Hi Michelle, you say
“Regarding the “socialization” point: when I am asked that question, I answer that for literally hundreds of years, children were not “socialized” outside the family.”
In the UK for a literally hundreds of years before state education, children were ’socialized’ in the fields, at the loom or down the pit.
Gioing to school and being ’socialized’ is a made up concept
26 MommyVee // Apr 8, 2008 at 7:01 am
You didnt even mention the drugs..
im only 24 and i remember every day seeing drug deals on school grounds and the PRINCIPAL seeing it and turning his head!
The fact that students get pummeled by others and they didnt even care about that either! the only ones that stood up for the unpopular students were other unpopular students…
That is why i want to home school my child when it gets to that point..
i dont want her introduced to boys trying to push themselves on her(which happened to me in grade school!!) or drugs or just learning to not look when things are wrong when you could have done something about it!
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