Homeschooling has been an educational option for centuries. In homeschooling, students are taught at home by their parents or tutor based on the requirements of the state. Homeschooling offers parents a chance to teach their children the required lesson as well as a the values and information that they feel will be valuable for the childrens future. But if students are only taught what is required they can miss out on some necessities of life like, social skills and the ability to find subjects they love or question certain lessons that are put forth. When it comes to education, some parents are not always qualified to properly teach students. There are many issues when it comes to the choice of homeschooling, parents see issues within the current education system, but are parents educated properly to teach their children, there is also an issue with vaccinations and the socialization of the students. Parent have right to make choices that they would find beneficial for their children, but when these choices begin to principally affect a majority of students.
In past years, the common reason behind parents enrolling their children in homeschooling was based on religious practices, but recently more parents are choosing homeschooling based on the concerns they have within the school system. In Isabel Lyman’s essay “Homeschooling”, Lyman breaks down the statistics of the changes in reasons behind parents choice to homeschool their children, “By the early twenty-first century, religion was no longer the main reason that parents chose to home-school; a 2004 report from the National Institute for Educational Statistics showed that thirty-one percent of families homeschool out of "concern about environment of other schools" while...
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Works Cited
Lyman, Isabel. "Homeschooling." Social Policy: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 426-431. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 27 Apr. 2014
Chris, Joyner. "Parents home-school to avoid vaccinations." USA Today n.d.: MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
Hull, Nancy. "Promise and peril: Virtual school offers students flexibility. However, some teachers, parents fear that students will miss out on valuable social skills and life experiences by attending online." St. Joseph News-Press (MO) 13 Oct. 2007: Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
"Preface to 'Is Homeschooling a Good Option?'." Homeschooling. Ed. Myra Immell. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Current Controversies. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
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
Moreover, some families choose to Homeschool in order to screen their child’s curriculum to remove secularist views found in modern day public school curriculum (2002). Others have children with special needs or learning disabilities, so they choose to homeschool (Maaja, 1997). Ultimately, families are looking for what they believe is best for their children. And these families want to be actively involved in the education of their children. Homeschooling parents do not want strangers raising their children. They want to raise their children with freedom from government systems and institutions (Ray, 2000a).
Homeschooling is often portrayed as an overprotective mom - unwilling to let her kids leave her for a day at school, and a large number of children, all unable to hold a conversation, let alone function normally in society. As someone who was homeschooled from kindergarten through eighth grade, I can attest that my homeschool experience was the exact opposite of this confining stereotype.
Parents decide to homeschool their children for multiple reasons. The most commonly given reason for homeschooling is religious and/or moral values. These reasons make up roughly seventy-five percent of parents. Some of these parents want more spiritual lessons taught that would not be provided in other schools. Others do not want their children to learn about evolution theories or sex education. The second most popular reason for hom...
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).
Mar. 2007). Rpt. in Homeschooling. Ed. Myra Immell. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Current Controversies. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 2 Oct. 2014.
To home school or not is the decision facing every parent and unfortunately there is no right or wrong answer. On the surface the differences are blaringly obvious but with America’s test scores in a free fall and the standard educational system broken homeschooling is becoming a trend that shows no signs of slowing down. In one study it is estimated that homeschooling has increased by 62% within just the last decade and the increase is estimated
While the majority choose to do so for academics, the reasoning goes beyond simply that. Homeschool families are often stereotyped as extremely religious and attempting to hide their children from the corruption and sin of the world. Families that do keep children out for these reasons are still prevalent within the homeschooling community; my mother contemplated homeschooling me and my brothers for this reason, and one of my best friends is homeschooled in a religious home. As homeschooling grows more mainstream, more families believe that public school squashes a child’s creativity and attempts to conform all children into the same person. Lynn Schnaiberg, a writer for Education Weekly, gives the reasons for four homeschooling families in her article “Staying Home from School.” In this article, the first family, the Scandora’s, believe “learning is not a product of teaching” and that their children should be free to learn at whatever pace they want. Another family featured in Schnaiberg’s article, the Collins family, is dissatisfied with the Baltimore city schools, which had some of the lowest test scores in the state. The Hoyt family has two children who are considered “gifted.” Because public schools do not give proper attention
“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.
I have chosen to write this essay about homeschooling. Homeschooling is one option for schooling children, along with public and private schools. Many people do not believe in homeschooling because they do not trust that parents are teaching their children correctly. They argue that parents can’t teach their children without proper training and that without it. They also worry that students will not learn to socialize or function in society and that homeschooling is just a way to hide children from the real world. A lot of people fear homeschooling because they do not know very much about that form of education. On the other hand many peoples opinion is that homeschooling has many benefits and that it gives
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.