Why Should You Home School?

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”- Albert Einstein 

The public school environment educates students to achieve a certain level of knowledge specified by boards and bureaucracies. It does not educate the individual on moral obligations or responsibilities, such as empathy or concern for peers and our communities. Nor does the school endow the student with any sense of personal values, instead often demoralizing the individual. These students learn how to function only when given explicit instructions on what they must learn and how they should think. If concerned about the effectiveness of learning, look no further than how much more an un-schooled or homeschooled student can learn by focusing on specific learning goals, then following up and applying lessons learned to the real world.

In school, test scores trump everything else and dominate all other goals, surpassing more meaningful ideals. Public schools educate students through a system of testing, measuring knowledge via arduous test booklets and assessments. Public schools teach students how to conform and determine their self-worth based on arbitrary numbers and letter grades. First and foremost public schools educate children about either hopelessness or hopefulness. Should the student fall into the hopeless category, he or she will learn to fear education because education taught them that learning sets up a slippery slope that can carry them upwards and swiftly roll them back down. Further, they will often decide not to trust, enjoy, or explore learning any more than necessary to pass required tests. 

Everyone knows that life challenges us. Parents who want their children around, who want to facilitate learning because they enjoy learning themselves, could change the future of education, invention, and imagination, offering hope for a brighter future. I'll be honest,  I've felt like I'm never doing enough. I should be doing this or that; I should have accomplished more by now; sound familiar? Life can screw with your head, and even a completely emotionally stable, successful, and happy child can feel like there's a fail sign stamped on his or her forehead. Even a home educated student can feel at odds with his or her education. Nothing is perfect. 

Surely those in school have felt many of the same things I've felt. I can't imagine feeling like this while walking through cold, institutional hallways in school, surrounded by my peers, who are more likely to judge than console or consider others. Have you felt like a failure, or are you a parent who has a child who has felt like this? Maybe you've heard in the news about the bullying and teen suicide rate, and wonder what the schools are doing about it. Or are you the sort of person who considers that to be lame or wimpy? Maybe you survived your school days fine, despite being teased, tormented, and taunted. If you survived all right, then why can't your kid? I'm no expert on the topic, but I'm pretty sure that the Internet, cell phones, social networking, etc., have exaggerated every possible tease, taunt, and humiliation to unbearable degrees. Does "sexting" sound familiar to anyone? The public school landscape can trip up the best students with its veritable minefield of potential verbal, emotional, or physical attacks.

    When I was a kid, the worst thing I endured was some bratty kid who called me "curly buck-teeth." Honestly, who wants children to hear that kind of comment about themselves every day that they walk into a school building? The entire school structure fosters alienation, abuse, anger, and frustration. To create change, parents must embrace a better approach to education. However, that demands more work, time, and energy than simply dropping their kids off in front of a school building. Home education requires sacrifice and dedication. Not every family will be able to educate at home. I'll be honest in saying home education is not for everyone. But despite that, everyone can extract from this book the understanding that with home education, learning can exist well beyond the classroom. Everyone can actively participate, can teach, even if only by example.

Before compulsory schooling, children were taught at home and learned from experience, from their parents, siblings, and extended families. Every house was the school; every field, every room, and every day brought new lessons. And I could be wrong, but I think that system worked pretty well. History yields many famous home educated figures: Albert Einstein, President Abraham Lincoln, Leonardo da Vinci, John Quincy Adams, George Washington, Moses, Joan of Arc, Booker T. Washington, C.S. Lewis, Hans Christian Anderson, Leo Tolstoy, Ansel Adams, Florance Nightingale, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie. Do I need to keep going? 

In today's society, the successful, wealthy, and philanthropic people, for the most part, attend private, highly exclusive preparatory schools before going on to become the successes they are today—some systems of education work better than others. Consider home education as another form of learning that can foster high-level intellectual and creative development in students. 

The real problem with public education stems from a lack of responsibility. When did parents start feeling incapable of educating their own children or providing supplemental resources and support? Too many parents have stopped wanting to be responsible for the children they have given life, the tender souls they have chosen to bring into this world. Mothers and fathers stick a backpack on the child's back, stuff some food in their lunch pail, and say, "Hey, you, stranger; yeah, you in the big building, you will now teach my kid everything that he or she needs to know."

Everything each child needs to know can not be taught in a classroom with 20-30, or more, other students. Everything that can be learned and taught will never fit within the limited selection of books available in too many underfunded schools. Deep wells of knowledge exist in our communities, in the experiences of a nation and the world's cultures. Learning builds the foundation for survival and success. Finding the education needed comes from surprising and not so surprising places, like the color of the flowers in a garden, colors created through evolutionary processes to attract pollinators better, or for the flower to attract sources of food, like the carnivorous Venus flytrap, for example.  

Knowledge populates the shelves of libraries, Internet web resources, kitchens, and stores. Think of shopping trips that involve calculating how much an item costs using unit pricing on store shelves, or how much a 20% discount will save you. Everything each individual needs to know awaits the excitement of discovery every day. Someone only needs to guide or nudge the student toward the information, and then allow the student to apply it, allowing the student to learn. 

-Merridith