Why Would Somebody Wish To Homeschool His Or Her Children Today?

By Author: Donald Saunders
Total Articles: 84
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Ask any parent involved with homeschooling why they decided to homeschool their children and you will see that there are roughly as many answers to this question as there are people undertaking homeschooling.

In many cases, parents decide to take their children out of the public schools because they see the public school system as failing, or as being positively harmful to their children. In other cases, parents decide to school their children at home for religious reasons, or because they wish to instill certain values into their children which they see as missing from the public school system. Whatever the reason for teaching children at home, there is little doubt that the majority of parents opt for homeschooling because they see it as the best educational choice for their children.

For the majority of parent there are two sides to homeschooling comprising those things which it brings to the child and those negative things which it removes from the child's environment. Peer pressure and bullying are rife in the public school system nowadays and frequently places children under considerable pressure and, on ...
... occasions, even place them in danger. Homeschooling your children permits you much more control over just who your children do and do not come into contact with and the influences they are subjected to.

In terms of a child's academic development and growth there can be little question but that, in most cases, homeschooling leads to superior results and this is seen in things like homeschooled children winning the National Spelling Bees and the number of homeschooled children attaining degrees (in many cases Master's degrees) at many of our finest universities and often at remarkably young ages.

Not surprisingly a lot of people hold that such children are simply gifted and that their achievements are a consequence of their natural genius rather than to any homeschooling. But, if this were the case then it is certainly true to say that we are blessed with more than our fair share of geniuses amongst our youth. The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day the numbers simply do not support this point of view.

The statistics, which are produced not simply by supporters of homeschooling but by bodies such as the US Department of Education, demonstrate clearly that homeschooled children do much better than their publicly schooled peers with homeschooled children a grade ahead by the age of 12 and a staggering four grades ahead by the time they get to the equivalent of the 8th grade.

Despite the fact that the majority of people think that homeschooling is a quite modern phenomenon it has actually been around for hundreds of years and is a tried and tested system which has more than stood the test of time. Homeschooling has of course changed considerably over the years and much of the philosophy behind homeschooling now comes from the work of supporters of the system during the 1960s.

Homeschooling is most certainly a difficult option and is extremely hard work for the majority of parents, especially in the early days, but there is little doubt that it works and the rewards for both children and parents are more than worth the effort.