ARGUMENT PAPER
Home Education: Legal and Beneficial
Formal Outline
Thesis: As parents, we not only have the right to educate our own children, but it is also our responsibility.
I. Introduction
II. Legality of homeschooling
1. Amendments
a. 1st
b. 14th
c. 9th
2. Cases heard in court
3. State regulations
a. teacher certification
b. public school equivalency
c. compelling state interest
d. least restrictive means
III. Benefits
1. Emotional
2. Spiritual
3. Educational
IV. SOCIALIZATION – the main opposing argument
1. Opportunities for in homeschooling
2. Negative in public (or private) schools
3. Results of testing conducted
V. Not a new fad, back to the way we were
1. Notables who were homeschooled
2. History of current homeschool movement
VI. Conclusion
Home Education: Legal and Beneficial
While the idea of schooling children at home is not new to our country, it is new to our generation. Most parents today, including myself, are a product of the school system and rarely explore all of the options for schooling our children. Due to a lack of knowledge, we place our children in a preschool, then a kindergarten, eight years of elementary, and four years of secondary school. Fourteen or fifteen years (preschool is now beginning at age three) of our children’s lives are being spent away from us, and we’re wondering why we’ve lost touch with them. Psychologists now say that it’s not just quality time that we need with our kids, but quality and quantity time. How are we to give them a large amount of our time when they are away from us the majority of their waking hours? Homeschooling is the solution to this dilemma.
Because of the lack of knowledge about schooling options, parents have many questions about homeschooling. Some of the major questions include the following: Is it legal?; Can it provide the same breadth of education?; and, most frequently, What about socialization? The responses to these questions make it clear that we have not only the right, but also the responsibility to school our children at home.
Forty years ago, homeschooling was illegal in some places, so it is reasonable to question the legality of the homeschool. “Early homeschooling parents were legally threatened, arrested, and often brought to trial as abettors of truancy, sometimes even as child abusers”(Koetzsch 134)....
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...nments were formed, and therefore families are quite capable of managing their affairs, including education, without the help of the government” (Blumenfeld 9).
Recently, an overwhelming lack of trust in public schools has arisen. Not only is the educational rigor disappearing, but there is now also a concern for the safety of our children. Studies have even shown that many high school graduates are not prepared for life after school. Some graduates have found a way to escape notice that they cannot even read, write adequately, or perform simple mathematical functions. A study by John Goodlad “sent note takers into a thousand classrooms, and they found that less than two percent of instructional time was spent on discussions requiring students to offer an opinion about something” (Guterson 42). A child whose intellect is not developed to the point of creating opinions and discussing them cannot fully participate in the adult world. The only way to make sure that our children do not fall through the cracks is to take them by hand and lead them one by one down the path of knowledge. School your children at home; it’s your right and responsibility.
Homeschooling offers flexibility and can be a stress reliever for many. Home school gives children the opportunity to learn when they learn best, whether that be in the morning or in the afternoon. Some children prefer to work alone others with their peers. The parents will determine what their child’s learning style is. If the child need more or less time on a subject then they will have the chance to go over the subject as many time it is necessary for the student to learn it, or in the other hand if they completely comprehend the subject they can make a decision to skip it. A flexible schedule gives these options and many more to students compared to public or private schooling.
Have you ever wondered if our education system has flaws? Well in the article “Against School” written by John Taylor Gatto, Gatto once a teacher explains how public education weakens the youth. He starts off the paper by saying how he taught for 30 years, went through a termination, and personally witnessed almost all of the schooling flaws. In Gatto’s article he lists very noticeable names, such as George W. Bush, George Washington, James Bryant Conant, and H.L Mencken to name a few. Having taught children for so long Gatto believes he has the expert rule in this subject. He proposes that to bring out the best qualities in a child you have to let them make decision and let them take their own risks. Gatto’s mission in this article is to make you consider, if school is actually important.
According to Gretchen M. Wilhelm and Michael W. Firmin, in their article Historical and Contemporary Developments, the Department of Education found that over 1,700,000 students are homeschooled. That’s 3.4 percent of all school age children (304). Homeschooling is defined as an education that contains less than twenty five hours of public school teaching each week and is based out of a household. The earliest forms of education were originally taught from home, then later developed into public schools (Wilhelm and Firmin). Homeschooling not only affects the students taught, but also fellow Americans in the race to advance a nation. Homeschooling needs to be understood in order to revise education into a better and
Education critics began voicing concerns about public schools in the 1960’s (Hess, 2002). Some of the complaints against public schools included, preaching alien values, failing to adequately educate, and adopting unhealthy approaches to child development (Hess, 2002). Many parents joined the de- schooling movement based on a popular book by John Holt called How Children Learn. John Holt was a professor in Boston, who believed that children are born with the desire to learn and educate themselves. The book states that all children need the following for a successful education; materials, access to the “real world”, emotional support, freedom to explore, and time to assess idea...
The debate over home schooling has been a hot topic for many over the past few years. Home schooling can be defined as, “to teach school subjects to one’s children at home” (Merriam-Webster Online, 2003). However, the main debate is not over whether or not children should be taught at home; rather, the question debated is if home-schooled children are as prepared socially as those children who are traditionally schooled.
Just as a caterpillar changes into a complex and beautiful butterfly over time, education too is evolving and changing into something completely different than the “3 R’s” of the past. How education should evolve is a highly disputed topic. Although there appear to be many solutions these solutions often have many flaws. There has yet to be a single solution to solve this dilemma. Even though their perspectives on education differ, Brian D. Ray and Rachel S. Cox seek to tackle this issue in their respective articles, “Does Home Schooling Promote the Public Good?” and “The Home School Debate.” Ray is biased toward home-schooling being the solution to the ails of public education and believes that education issues can be resolved by encouraging
Homeschooling offers students a more time efficient education that allows the student to focus on education in which is the sole purpose for school. Homeschooling also gives the teacher a thorough evaluation of a student’s strengths and weaknesses by visually seeing what subjects they excel in and what subjects they are weak in. At this point students can increase their individual progression in each subject. Homeschooling permits control of the environment a student learns in to retain the focus of the student. This will reduce the chances of drug usage, bullying, and violence. Samuel Blumenfeld said this on the importance of homeschooling “The home is a safe haven for the children in a world awash with drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, violence, and moral corruption” (Cindy Mur et al.76). When parents come to realize that the home is the safest place for their children, then will they act as Blumenfeld concludes “I look forward to the day when the public schools will be virtually empty not because we have abolished public education but because the parents will have abandoned it” (Cindy Mur et al.
According to Mary Griffith, author of the book The Homeschooling Handbook, the concept of homeschooling is nothing new to society. It is only in the past 150 years that public school system as we know it came into effect (Griffith, 1999). Prior to that, “…the family was the basis for social life…the home was where children learned what was necessary to function in their community” (1999). By the mid-1970s, there were barely any people practicing homeschooling (Ray, 2004). However, over the past twenty years there has been a resurgence in people choosing homeschooling (2004). There has been a 500 percent increase in homeschooling from the 1990-1991 school year to the 2002-2003 school year (2004). The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) estimates “that between 1.7 and 2.1 million students were being homeschooled in the U.S., in every grade level from kindergarten through twelfth grade…Indications are that the growth rate is between 7 percent and 15 percent per year ” (2004).
An estimated 4 million children are currently home schooled with a 15-20% yearly growth rate. According to a California study by researcher Dr. Brian [D.] Ray, 92 percent of school superintendents believe that home learners are emotionally unstable, deprived of proper social development and too judgmental of the world around them. The latest claim against home schooling suggests that home schoolers are potential child abusers. Mr. Ron Barnard, a Holly High School teacher says that he would prefer public schooling for his children because of the peer socialization, extra curricular, and mandated curriculum. Public schooling is more efficient in educating our youth than traditional home schooling.
In the recent times, home schooling has been the most sought mode of learning by the American parents. In fact, it estimated that over 1 million children in America are now undergoing home schooling (Cooper, 2005). Although this form of learning is legally acceptable, parents are entrusted with teaching and coaching their children in all subjects. In addition, parents can also hire private tutors for their children as part of home schooling. This form of learning is aimed at ensuring that parents commit themselves in ensuring their children are able to learn like other kids in public schools.
“Is getting a good education important to you?” Most people when asked this question would answer, “Yes.” This is because it teaches us valuable life skills and prepares us to communicate and engage with others in the world. Education has taken on many forms over the years, and one of the more successful components of education has been homeschooling. Once considered a criminal act of defiance, homeschooling is now legally an option in all fifty states for parents to consider, and it has a substantial
Today, many parents are homeschooling their children. A U.S. Department of Education’s report shows that approximately 1.5 million children were being homeschooled in 2007 (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). This is almost 3 percent of all school age children (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). A private researcher, the National Home Education Research Institute, estimates 2.5 million children were being homeschooled in the 2007 – 2008 academic years (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). By either count, homeschooling is growing exponentially.
In today’s American society, quality education is important for one to succeed. Without proper education, a person will find it extremely difficult to apply for college, a job, or to pursue his or her dream. Typically when Americans think of education, public education is the first to come to mind. Public education has been around for centuries and is provided to most children throughout the United States. Due to this fact, public education has been the go to education source for years. Though, this trend is slowly changing with many parents deciding to home school their children instead. Many factors are the cause for this issue, but the common arguments arise from a certain few. For students, public school provides many opportunities ranging from social connections, school sports, and the exposure to teachers who are experts in their fields. But homeschooling is often superior because it offers additional time for students to participate in various extracurricular activities and community service, allows for more individual attention, personal character development, and it offers less exposure to discrimination that is received in the public school environment.
As the population in public schools increase, the problems in these schools are also on the rise. These changes are leasing to the way parents are schooling their children. Many parents are leaning towards homeschooling as a solution to this problem. This increase in homeschooling can be directly related to an increase in school violence, the offering of a lack luster curriculum, and lack of student teacher interaction.
All children in America have the right to a quality education. Most students receive that education through conventional means, going to a public or private school. There is another option for today's children, home schooling. Home schooling is a controversial issue. While it does have its benefits, some people believe it has too many downfalls to be an effective method of education. In this paper, topics such as academic impact, social impact, and parental opinions of home schooling will be discussed.