Home schooling offers hope for your country
By Tom Quiner
As many as 2 million children are being home schooled with amazing results
I love teachers.
My mom was a teacher. So were my aunt and uncle. So is my daughter-in-law. So is my niece.
I was blessed with many exceptional teachers growing up in the public school system.
Today, I am witnessing amazing passion amongst home schoolers. I received an e-mail today from a home-schooler that prompted this post. She showed me how she is using the election as a great teaching opportunity for her three children, whom she home schools.
Look at the map and chart above she created for her three children, her students. Is there any doubt that the two seven year olds and the 11 year old in the class are going to have a pretty clear understanding on how our electoral system works?
With a three-to-one student to teacher ratio, they receive concentrated instruction with lots of opportunity for interaction to accelerate their learning curve.
I have noticed something interesting about home schoolers: they are not just bright, they are amazingly well-behaved. I know a lot of home schoolers, here in Des Moines and elsewhere. They interact with adults amazingly well. They get along with their siblings amazingly well.
I sat behind three sisters at Mass one Sunday. I knew their parents and was acquainted with the girls. I watched how they interacted. It was clear that they really like each other. Their affection was obvious.
I talked with them about being home schooled, and the oldest girl, who is about 16, said, “they were the happiest days of my life!”
The kids I know who are being home schooled are going to be leaders in communities some day.
Home schooling was illegal in thirty states as recently as 1980. It wasn’t until 1993 that it became legal in all fifty states.
Something big is going on. About 950,000 kids were home schooled in 1999.
By 2009, it was up to 1.5 million.
Today, experts guess it is approaching 2 million.
Why this boom?
Some home school for religious reasons. Increasingly, more are doing it because the learning environment in public schools has declined. How many public school teachers have you heard complain that they wish they had more time for teaching, that they didn’t want to spend so much time on discipline and paperwork?
More parents are pulling their kids out of public schools to avoid violence, peer pressure, and poor academic quality.
A national study from 2007 broke it down this way:
36 percent home school so they can emphasize religious or moral instruction;
21 percent home school out of concern for their child’s learning environment;
17 percent home school out of dissatisfaction with the local academic institutions.
How does the quality of home schooling compare to public schools? Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute conducted a study of 11,739 homeschooling students and their families from all 50 states through 15 independent testing services.
The report is called the Homeschool Progress Report 2009: Academic Achievement and Demographics. It is the most comprehensive study of home schooling to date. Here is what they found:
“The results support the large existing body of research on homeschool academic achievement and show home schoolers, on average, scoring 37 percentile points above public school students on standardized achievement tests. The study also found that the achievement gaps common to public schools were practically insignificant in the homeschool community.”
A common concern voiced by some parents and educators is that students may lack sufficient socialization in the home school environment. The home schoolers I know overcome that concern by scheduling both classroom and social events with other home schoolers. The kids I know being home schooled are exceptional without exception.
Public schools have become bastions of political correctness, self-esteem mania, and the official religion of the Democratic Party, Secular Humanism. All of this comes at the detriment of our nation as evidenced by declining test scores and ignorance among our youth of American exceptionalism.
The future strength of America will be in direct proportion of the number of parents who decide to home school their children.
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I am currently being homeschooled. I can testify: these have been the best days if my life. Thank you for the encouraging words.
How old are you, Oliver? Want to share a little more of your story?
Well, I’d rather not share my exact age for privacy reasons, but we can say I’m under 16 and above 8 years old. I’ve been homeschooled for my entire school life, and I agree with your assessment that homeschooled children are often very polite. I know several children older (and younger) than me who I look up to who are homeschooled. Another thing I have noticed about other home schoolers is that often they feel more comfortable around people who are not in their age range. Because of the nature of homeschooling, naturally homeschooled children spend a lot more time around adults and kids younger than them and are cool to interact with these age ranges. Funny thing, because one of the major critisisms of homeschoolers is that they are un socialized, but on the contrary they are often extremely socialized. I like being homeschooled because I get to spend a lot of time with my mom, and I’m very close to my parents. This way, I can get the Bible’s doctrine without any added stuff directly from my parents, and I can understand their world views with a biblical perspective and no “peer pressure”from kids my own age or teachers who are atheists. My parents are controlling my education, which is what I believe God intended. That’s why He gave me to them! I am blessed to live in an area with a vibrant homeschool community and I have a lot of like minded friends. Anyway, I love this blog, and I’m always sharing your posts with my family.
Great stuff. Thanks, Oliver.
“The future strength of America will be in direct proportion of the number of parents who decide to home school their children.”
I disagree with this premise. Our public schools are doing a fine job in many areas. Is there room for improvement? Yes. But we are content experts to the extent that most parents would not have the same content knowledge. I am an upper level math teacher and I can say with sincerity that students leave my classroom with a solid background in math that will pay dividends in college or in a trade school after high school. If you have an issue with how your school is being run, the solution is to go to school board meetings and let your school board know your feelings. The #1 reason that home-schoolers are successful is the same reason that many public school students are successful: their parents are invested in their children’s education. If parents are invested, taking time to talk to their students’ teachers, holding their children accountable, 90% of the time, those students will do well academically and will do well after high school and beyond. The counter is also true, though, which is why when you AVERAGE the students, you find that they don’t do as well as those who are home-schooled.
Thanks for your feedback, Shawn. How do you respond to the teacher in yesterday’s blogpost who resigned in frustration?
We home schooled our children. Now they are doing the same. I think home schooling is one of the reasons our children are strong Catholics. I also learned a lot myself, especially about education. One size does not fit all.
Now that schools are having to allow boys to use girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, etc., I predict the number of kids (especially girls) being schooled at home will increase.
Absolutely.