What’s Wrong With Our Public School System?
What’s the Hype about Home Schools?
"Factory educations" — traditional schools — are said to be ruining our children’s minds.
A forced curricula, the stress of constant testing (therefore labeling) and imposing our interests over a child’s personal interests are killing our children’s natural curiosity about the world and it’s workings.
And don’t get a home schooling parent started on socialization concerns! Unless you want to hear about how children are raising each other – with all their bad habits and rudeness – in schools.
No where else in modern society does peer-to-peer interaction exist on such an extreme scale then in our grade and high schools. Look around your workplace? Is everyone else your age and struggling with the same challenges? Can you imagine the mess of your company if they were?
Schools do not prepare our children for life socially by any stretch of the imagination – they just allow our children to pick up other children’s bad habits and teach them to say "Well, Johnny’s allowed…" or "Susie did it…"
Benefits of Home Schooling Your Child
Home-schooling, on the other hand, has been proven to instill responsibility, creativity and curiosity — three traits that will serve your child well as adults and set them up for success later in life.
One Step Further Away From Traditional Schooling
To take our children further from the classroom we move into the realm of "un-schooling" or "de-schooling" – these provide the maximum benefit to raising healthy children that turn into healthy adults. Although not as popular as the home-schooling movement, de-schooling is gaining ground.
Here we benefit our children most — allowing them to study, research, explore what ‘moves them’. If you’ve heard the term "child-directed learning", and the wonders that the approach has created, you’ve been hearing about de-schooling.
Check out the home schooling resources if you want to do some more research online.
One of the best places to start your journey into learning about the effects of home schooling vs. public schooling, home schooling ideas and alternatives is through the author and pioneer in the industry – John Holt.
Laura Childs
This article was originally published on GoodByeCityLife.com in 1998
Comments feed
I have home schooled my two daughters right from the start. It has been a bumpy road at times, but at other times has made all the difference in who they are and the closeness of our family.
Not that anyone should compare one child to another, one family to another, but when I listen to my friend’s talk about their relationships with their children and the way those children think and act I know it was homeschooling that saved us from some heartaches.
My oldest, Cheyanne, just entered university this past September and her peers have no idea she was homeschooled until she tells them so.
Thank you for sharing these ideas and alternatives online! Julia