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Alternative Schooling Styles : Home Schooling Parents Teaching Their Children at Home The number of children schooled at home is large and growing. It is estimated that between 1.5 and 2.5 million children are being schooled at home right now in the United States. There are probably as many reasons to school at home as there are parents who do. Even though it is probably the most challenging way to give your children an education, most of these parents would agree that it is also the most rewarding. One benefit of running your own school is it that you decide what to teach and when and how to teach it. You can change schooling styles whenever you choose, selecting from many different ones. Many homeschoolers would say that the biggest benefits are the intangible ones, those that come from taking full responsibility for their children's upbringing. For example, homeschooled children, because they spend more time with adults, receive better social, spiritual, and moral attention and guidance. They are closer to their family members. They are more likely to understand their parents' beliefs and more able to pass on their family's way of life to the next generation. Parents are better able to influence their children's social activities, ensuring that their relationships are normal and healthy. These things make stronger families, churches, and communities. It's also fun. You will relearn old things and discover new ones. There is a large and growing number of support groups around the country to help you get started, as well as many companies selling home schooling books and supplies. Students are able to choose from more subjects than ever. Online learning and networking, made possible by the Internet, are offering more learning options than ever before. This style demands a lot of time and patience. It could cost more because one parent must stay home to teach. However, if you are willing to change your lifestyle, you will find that home schooling is not as difficult as it first appears. In fact, once you establish your routine, it becomes a natural part of your life. Children grow up so fast (as any grandparent will tell you). Take time now to investigate this schooling style. It will keep you busy, but the memories will last you and your children a lifetime. You will have given them treasures they could not have gotten anywhere else. Resources and Curricula Quotes
"Good teaching comes from good people." -- Parker Palmer, educational activist and author "Education: a debt due from present to future generations." -- George Peabody "Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve." -- Roger Lewin "A native American who cannot read or write is as rare an appearance...as a comet or an earthquake." -- John Adams, political philosopher, diplomat, and second president of the United States "[P]ublic schools, with their compulsory attendance laws, strike a fundamental blow at the family as the unit of childrearing and at individuality. Many important decisions are transferred from parents and children to government officials, including teachers.... As the government, through its schools, has taken on more and more of the family's traditional functions, and moved those functions further away, the family to some extent has been drained of its vitality and reason for being.... The fundamental issue is who raises the children and sees to their education: the state or the parents? In a free society, there can be only one answer." -- Sheldon Richman in Separating School and State “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” -- Proverbs 22:6
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