Homeschooling is a sacrifice. It requires that the parents come up with the financial planning to make this undertaking possible. Two parents working full-time obviously can’t do it. Thus, families may have to be creative.
Homeschooling is also a reward. Most days it takes little more than two or three hours for academic work, leaving lots of time for other endeavors – time outside playing or running a track, plus time inside playing musical instruments or reading or playing fiercely-contested boardgames. No electronics save the computer for learning the keyboard as soon as possible.
Homeschooled children are noticeable. They don’t have the pressure of “socialization” at school so they’re freer to be themselves.On one occasion, the owner of a small bookstore where I’d taken the future Baron asked me if I homeschooled. Taken aback, I admitted as much and asked how she knew. “Without exception”, she said, “the homeschooled kids I see are calm and poised.” Since then, I’ve learned to pay attention to kids in public…I think she’s right, though I don’t ever ask.
As public education continues to swirl the drain, I feel great sympathy for those who don’t have the choice to educate their children en famille. It was a joy I’d not have missed for anything.
Dr Turley reports on Russia’s growing homeschooled population:
The primary driver for public education today in the US is the government education bureaucracy, sharing power and wealth with the public teachers unions. As large, unaccountable bureaucracies spending tax money, there is every incentive for public education to become more expensive and more pervasive. The resulting situation is oriented towards making public education as large as possible, though not necessarily making things more comfortable for individual teachers. For instance, the mandate that every child, regardless of how disruptive or dangerous, be included in an educational setting, is hard on the teachers, but insures that not only does the bureaucracy have more students, but sets up requirements for special schools, special classes, more guards, etc, etc.
The incentive for education bureaucrats to oppose home schooling is quite obvious: the more students opt out of public education, the smaller the population that can be used to extract yet more money from the taxpayer.
The results of public education versus home schooling are illustrative of the general productivity of socialism versus private decision-making. Private schools are probably probably a pretty good substitute for home schooling, but the bureaucracies have made sure to keep a finger in the pie through certification, enrollment requirements, affirmative action and the like.
One thing to keep in mind is that the educational bureaucracies will always have the long-term objective of destroying home schooling, or even significant private schooling. The advantage of the bureaucracy is that, like the Terminator, they always keep coming back; they never, ever stop.
They’ll probably lay low during the Trump presidency, but likely a Democrat will be elected after Trump, just going by the cycles of American elections. If it is a person elected through identity politics, forget it.
The role of the official ideology (globalist, anti-Christian, anti-family and culture-destroying) in the Western education today is about the same as the role of Communist ideology in the USSR.
We homeschooled our two starting in their first and second grade years.
They are now in their early 30s, successful and we have grandchildren. It was a fabulous journey and we are so thankful to have escaped governmental tyranny regarding their so-called education (indoctrination). IF you can, you should. Get your life under your control.
Sadly I have no children (and am unlikely to at 70!), but my partner is a grandmother; her granddaughter’s mother (hope this is clear) is a teacher, so her delightful two-year-old goes to nursery school in term (semester) time. Her language skills were falling behind, but have advanced by leaps and bounds during the summer break, when she spent more time with her parents. There is no simple answer; parents need to earn a living.
But what does it mean, “to earn a living”? Here in the U.S., families often need two cars because of where and how they decided to live. Then, two working people with children often find it difficult to prepare meals so they pay for take-out or pizza delivery.
When the well-being of the kids are put first (at least when they are young and in need of close attention in order to thrive), different decisions can be made that allow for a much simpler, cheaper life, one further down on the economic chain, perhaps, but surely more conducive to reaching children’s full potential.
When my dad was a little boy, he walked several kilometers to school in the terrible Siberian frosts. He came before everyone else and left later, spending time in the school library. At school he was more interesting than at home.
For my time in several schools I remember only two interesting and intelligent teachers who were smarter than my parents. One teacher was the wife of an astrophysicist, the other a wife of a military surgeon.
I think that now the general situation in schools resembles a famous film “Detachment”.
But if you do not go to school, then where do you eye people?
Homeschooling in the U.S. is so common that you can join up with other families for outings, shared lessons, etc. There is a state-by-state network for doing so. And most school districts permit homeschoolers in for sports, contests, etc. They get some kind of payment from the state, and they improve their standing in competitions. It is much friendlier than it used to be.