Homeschooling Flaws

Clemmitt, a veteran social policy reporter, powerfully argues in her March article that with more parents wanting to homeschool their children and few cases of abuse and educational neglect, furthermore raises the question of what actions can be done to protect the child. She states, parents main reason for homeschooling is based on special learning needs, ethnic, religious and political conditions. Clemmitt used the example of a homeschooled child’s experience, celebrities, as well as a pros and cons debt and, statistics.

He uses phrases such as “research, experience, and philosophy of freedom” to invoke a sense of pride at being someone willing to read this article. He further qualifies this by using words such as “well-adjusted…industrious…civically involved” to describe those who are home schooled. This creates a sense of longing for these values as a society especially when he talks about how these values and many others are “embodied in the Constitution.” This simple reference to the constitution creates a sense of patriotism at our country believing in such strong values and principles. He is also able to create the emotion of disapproval as he describes public schools as a “public-good school experiment” and then describes their result of the experiment as full of “illiteracy, drug abuse, [climbing] incarceration rates.” He then ends his article creating a sense of hope challenge “successfully home school one child at a time, for his or her personal good and the furtherance of the public good.” Ray’s effective emotional appeals through his word choice are able to focus his audience on the importance of homeschooling for the benefits of society.

Education in our society is a very important factor in shaping our future. One’s future is depended on the education they receive and everyone is somehow affected by this. Children from the ages of kindergarteners to seniors in high school, college graduates, and stay at home mothers, are all shaped by the education the government provides us. There are many different ways to acquire an education some through private schools, public, charter, and being homeschooled. However, homeschooling is growing more in popularity than it has ever been.

There are many definitions for the term “real world”. Consequently, to the homeschooling parent, the real world starts when they give birth at conception, all the way until they reach the lawful age of 18. As a result, parents have structured their curriculum up to the 12th grade level. The “real world” has various meanings, and to the homeschooling community, there are many factors which come into play (Ray, 2004, p. 5). Ray asserts

Homeschooling, and its rise in the past decade, is a hot topic of discussion in American society. “About 1.35 million children in the country are being officially homeschooled, making it a vital and expanding form of private education and political force in U.S. society” (Cooper & Sureau, 2007). The homeschool movement is growing rapidly because parents are researching their local educational systems and finding that it lacks in the fundamental standards and values they want to instill in their children. “It is odd that homeschooling, perhaps the ultimate form of privatization and withdrawal from, if not rejection of, the public education system, has now reached a level of unprecedented visibility, politicization, and publicization” (Cooper

Homeschooling has been practiced throughout history especially in colonial times due to the lack of schools in the colonies. When public and private schools became popular in society, the homeschooling path was erased for many parents. The idea of homeschooling seemed to be crushed for Americans until John Holt revived the idea in the 1970s. Holt believed that early children education was harmful because it ruined a child’s individuality. In the 1980s, a young man named Michael Farris established an organization called the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Farris pushed the organization to erase any difficulties of homeschooling your child such as district school board officials requiring homeschooled

erupted in the late '70s against our monolithic government school systems, stands as one of the most significant educational developments of the century. The number of American children being taught at home, although minuscule compared to public school enrollments, had grown by the late 1990s from near zero to a near million” (Wagner, 2001, p. 58). Indeed, the rise of homeschooling is one of the most significant trends of the past half-century. Homeschooling is vastly growing to nations as widespread as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, as well as the U.S. (Ray, 2001). The

The popularity of home school began rising in the 1970s and growth continues to increase. (Murphy 336). The National Center for Education Statistics estimated in 2007 that 1.5 million students were homeschooled in the United States (Drenovsky and Cohen 20). This number is now reported at around two million, and Murphy states, “ . . . it [homeschooling] remains the fastest growing form of education in the United States” (342). This information proves that parents are searching for an alternative to traditional public-school education. Many wish to educate their children due to their own experiences, beliefs, and values. While other people argue that home school provides students with no social skills and complications when applying for college; however, these are misconceptions. Home school is an appropriate option to provide an education to children, and it does not leave them incompetent to survive in the “real world”.

According to (Lyman) Families are turning to home education as an alternate to learning in public or private schools. Several families have completely different reasons for selecting to pull their kids out of school and homeschool them. Reasons for homeschooling will vary from spiritual reasons to discontent with the government’s management over the curriculum and also the teaching methodology. Several parents who opt to homeschool all have a similar belief that the education of children, ought to be the responsibility of parents or guardians which it’s their own right to come to a decision whether or not their children ought to be educated.

There are about 2.2 million home-educated students in the United States. There were an estimated 1.73 to 2.35 million children (in grades K to 12) home educated during the spring of 2010 in the United States (Ray, 2011). It seems the homeschool population is continuing to grow (at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past few years). Homeschooling is on the rise based on the fact that parents can customize and individualized curriculum. Parents feel they have a say in what their children are learning. Many parents want their children to be taught in a positive learning environment they can control and trust. It is important for parents to be hands on with leaning; through homeschooling they feel that they can be involved in a meaningful way.

Homeschooling is becoming a fast growing educational trend in today’s society. “The National Center for Education Statistics estimated that 1.1 million students received their schooling from home in the United States in 2003. This number represents approximately 2.2% of the entire student body in America. By contrast, only 15,000 students received home education 20 years ago.” (Jr., Ronald Kreager) Parents have not always had a constitutional right to homeschool their children. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that homeschooling was legal. Even then there was a lot of consiversiry over the laws homeschoolers and their parents should have to abide by.

George Bernard Shaw, an influential Irish writer, once said, “My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.” Many parents have latched onto Shaw’s beliefs and have made the audacious decision to home educate. Currently, there are approximately 1,642,027 homeschooled children in the U.S.A. alone. Home educating is an alternative to mainstream public schooling, and it is performed within the home through curriculums, co-ops, or online education systems. Homeschooling is advantageous because homeschooled children are proven to perform better academically, they can avoid inimical mainstream school situations, and parents can specialize curriculum in the best interest of their child individually.

“Homeschooling has become a popular alternative to public or private school for an increasing number of students in the United States” (The Language of Composition, 276). “In 1995”, according to “the National Home Education Research Institute,” “the number of home-schooled children [was] approximately 500,000 students” (Pearson). Then in 2002, the number completely doubled, showing that “at least 1 million children” (Riech) are being homeschooled. On the one hand, there are an abounding amount of views that suggest homeschooling to be absolutely beneficial in the students’ lives, however, on the other hand, people still suggest that attending public or private school is still the better choice. This method of education brings an enormous set of contradicting views.

Is your child at the age where they need to begin their education? Are you conflicted with the many options of where to educate your child? When it comes to the issue of education, many people-- from educators to students to parents to administrators to politicians-- have different ideas as to what makes for the best education. According to Samantha Moore, in her evaluation essay titled “There’s no place like home,” she argues that homeschooling provides a better educational experience for students over the public school system. Specifically she states that “evaluating homeschooling through aesthetic, moral, and practical criteria favors homeschooling over public school” (Moore, 2017, p. 2). In other words, she expresses that homeschooling is better morally, is cheaper and more convenient, and is safer. While I agree that for some students faced with certain situations, homeschooling is the better option, I disagree with Moore’s overall claim that homeschooling is the best option for students over public education. By examining the examples from her evaluation essay in a different way, it will become clear that the American public school system is actually the best option when it comes to students’ education.

Cooper B. S., & Sureau J. The politics of homeschooling new developments, new challenges // Educational Policy. – 2007. – № 21-1. – p. 110-131.