Saturday, August 2, 2008

Three Cheers For Home-Schooling

From Herbert E. Meyer's article "Political Prisms":
Let's also throw our political, moral - and financial -- support behind the single most encouraging, most under-reported development in American education. I mean the home-schooling movement. Today, between two and three million American children have been withdrawn from public education and are instead being educated by their parents. Armed with curricula material that is vastly better than what our public schools are using, these parents are giving their kids a first-class education in history, economics, literature, math, and just about everything else. No wonder that so many home-schooled students are winning national spelling bees, acing college-entrance exams -- and being offered scholarships by universities that previously looked down their noses at these students.

By the way, you can spot a home-schooled kid in a second. It isn't just that he or she is so well-behaved, and so comfortable in the company of adults. It's that these home-schooled youngsters have their heads screwed on so straight; they love our country, know how lucky they are to be Americans, and have a genuine intellectual interest in learning how the world works. As these kids grow up and start their careers, they'll run circles around young Americans who were indoctrinated rather than educated.
Sure, homeschooling requires time, effort and lots of patience. But the opportunity to educate children without age segregation and peer pressure, without indoctrination and without interference from the unionized charlatans from the ministry of education - is worth the commitment.

2 comments:

Jeff said...

I agree. The homeschooled kids I have met are vastly different from the ones I used to live around, that attended public schools in Miami, where I used to live. They are worlds apart. They are smarter and more mature.

However, the homeschooled kids I have met do seem much more quiet and shy than public school kids.

I also believe that homeschooling is not for everyone. My parents would have made nightmarish homeschool teachers. My dad was emotionally oppressive, in a dictatorial way, and had a dominating personality, and believed that any way that disagreed with his way was completely wrong, and I was not allowed to express my opinion. My mom had a violent temper when I was little (the Lord has since changed her). When my dad would "help" my sister and I with our math homework at night, we would end up in tears every time, and it was a very bad experience for us. My dad could not tolerate someone who did not immediately grasp a concept. He would explain something very fast, and if we didn't get it right away, he would lose his temper and start yelling at us. So, my parents would have made very, very bad homeschool teachers.

But in general, I think homeschooling is vastly superior to public schools.

My sister just had her Grand Opening last night for a Montessori school which she just started. That is another excellent alternative to public schools. The Montessori method is vastly superior to public school methods; at least for the younger grades.

Rita Schneider said...

Many public school teachers are not fit to be teachers. I know from experience! They were insulting toward me, impatient, uninspiring, looked depressed, boring, and just did not really care personally about me. I homeschooled my own three children and, yes, they were quiet and shy--as if that was the worst thing to be. I would rather that they were God-fearing, mannerly, had character,integrity and had a Christian world view than to be popular in a pubic school and that has been indoctrinated in Marxism, Socialism, humanism and all the other isms that are shoved down the throats of the children. They should be protected from the brain-washing institutions. Incidentally, my once shy kids are now in their twenties and are very outgoing people-persons, are well adjusted and great citizens. (Seems to me there were many shy kids in the public schools that I attended, including myself. The environment of the public schools isn't necessarily the best for shy kids--they get labeled and picked on you know.)