Why You Should Educate Your Own Children

The Case For Home Education

WHY you should educate your own children
Why YOU should educate your own children
Why you SHOULD educate your own children
Why you should EDUCATE your own children
Why you should educate YOUR OWN children
Why you should educate your own CHILDREN

Everywhere homeschoolers gather, one universal topic is ‘why we homeschool’. It’s like therapy for us. We want to tell each other why we are doing this crazy alternative thing, to explain our shared insanity. Why take on such an awesome responsibility of educating another human being when there are adequate, or even not so adequate schools full of trained professionals right down the street asking to take this responsibility off our shoulders? It’s a good question. In fact, it’s THE QUESTION. Why are you homeschooling? Who is it for? Answer that and you’ve got it licked!

Freedom is now our biggest reason to educate our children at home, but we didn’t figure this out for several years. More on this later.

The hardest thing about homeschooling is deciding to do it. The first and most formidable obstacle you must overcome is your own fear. Fear that you’ll miss something. Fear that you’ll do it wrong. Fear that others will consider you incapable (you’re not), incompetent (you’re not), selfish (you’re not) and shortsighted (you’re anything but).

Once you’ve overcome your own fear, here come armies of organized and casual groups and forces, all lined up against your inclination to homeschool which you must defeat. These may include:

Free government schools right down the street
Family financial considerations
The tax structure
Cultural expectations and norms
Your upbringing and education
Your parents, the in-laws, family, friends
Your spouse
Your church

Public schools stink. This is quite possibly your best and most powerful early argument for homeschooling. Even so called ‘good’ schools stink. They’re not ‘good enough’, no matter what others tell you. Things have changed since we parents were in school, and they weren’t that great back then.
Teachers and administrators are unresponsive and have their own agendas, only a small part of which has anything to do with educating other people’s children. Not all are so. Some teachers are wonderful. Some are saints. But the fact remains, the children they teach are other people’s children.

Much of what passes for school policy, district policy, and federal and state educational policy is based on the presumption of parental incompetence. Most of it is based on hard cases, which make bad law and bad policies. But because of the hard cases, education professionals see parents as well-intentioned amateurs incapable of making basic judgments about their own children. We’re tired of being told we are terrible parents, that we have terrible children and that we’re incapable of parenting without government assistance and direction. I’m sure tired of it. Certainly there are bad parents out there, but just as certainly there are many more good ones.

Schools teach things that should be left to parents. Character and ethics, sex education, health care, social services, counseling, pharmaceutical psychological interventions (drugs) and even condoms and birth control are routinely administered at schools without parent’s consent.

Children in public schools are often shallow, trendy, cliquish, disruptive, violent, rude and delinquent. Most aren’t, but enough are to mess up the whole idea of public school. And it’s not even their fault. They are what they have been made into. An example of the type of socialization your child can expect in public schools is to be teased, ostracized, ridiculed, hazed, assaulted, frisked, molested, invited to join a gang, knocked up, taught criminal behavior and offered drugs. Now that’s socialization! And that doesn’t even count what’s in the curriculum.

Schools want to diagnose, label and drug your children. ADD, ADHD, LD, ELL, APD, NDD, MDD, RFD, SID, GIS, OCD, CFS, CFIDS, FAS, AS, PDD, ASD, NIDS, HFA, PDQ, XYZ. The more labels they can hang on your kid, the more money they get. And they often try to talk you into drugging your kids so he’ll behave better while being forced to sit at a little wooden desk all day. Drugged children are much easier to manage.

Government schools aren’t safe. Armed guards, security badges, metal detectors, locker searches, book-bag searches and personal pat-downs, gangs, shootings, drugs, robberies, sexual harassment, hazing and a Lord-of-the-Flies environment create an atmosphere thick with fear. Naked violence is common while insanely, self defense is forbidden.

Government schools aren’t free. In fact, they cost much much more than private education. People who think that they are getting something for nothing by having government provide schooling that they would otherwise have to buy in the private market are not only kidding themselves by ignoring the taxes that government has to take from them, for their entire lives, in order to give them the appearance of something for nothing. They are also ignoring the strings that are going to be attached to their own money when it comes back to them in the form of ‘free government school’. Just because someone else is paying for something doesn’t mean that thing is free.

Zero-tolerance policies strip any last vestiges of discretion and judgment from local school officials. Absurd stories pepper the news of honor students expelled for cough drops, Midol or mouthwash in school, for a plastic butter knife, for wearing crucifix jewelry or a jersey of their favorite sports team. Common sense is voided, while petty offenses and trivial events draw absurdly extreme punishments.

Public schools teach state-mandated politically-correct standards-based nonsense. Learning gets completely lost in the process. They school children but don’t educate them. And forget about an individualized curriculum or taking a child’s interesting into account. Standards demand that you cover Egypt in 3rd grade, state history in 4th grade, South America in 5th grade etc. No regard is given to what the child wants to learn, or to what he already knows. Learning standards are established and set in stone before the students ever show up.

In our wonderful government operated compulsory-attendance factory-style conveyor-belt schools your child can learn such wonderful tidbits as: color within the lines, the policeman is your friend, and the civil war was fought to free slaves. You might learn something in public school as long as you don’t pray, sing the national anthem or pledge allegiance to the flag.


Many schools send hours of homework each night, even for children in first and second grade. Even in Kindergarten! There are also frequently long weekend assignments and even extensive summer homework for the next year. Some schools even mandate ‘volunteer’ hours as a requirement for graduation or advancement. If you’re going to spend that much time with your kids doing homework anyway, why send them in the first place. What takes 6-8 hours in school will only take you 2-3 hours each day (or less) to accomplish at home.

Government hiring and firing rules, tenure and teacher’s unions protect poor performing and mediocre teachers, turning schools into jobs programs for adults rather than educational programs for kids.

You may be able to make a difference in the local public schools as an activist parent, and if this is your chosen cause, go after it with as much fire and zeal as you care to offer, but don’t feel put out if you would just as soon abandon the whole system and put that energy into raising your own children. Most parents consider their first duty as parent is to their own children.

I’ve often said that the biggest problem with public schools is that they are full of kids whose parents expect someone else to teach their children. If every parent volunteered, taught, supported and got involved, the schools might be wonderful places. They’re not.

A better education. Homeschooled children consistently outperform public schooled students, and most private school students. Few schools routinely find the majority of their students in the 80th to 90th percentile where homeschoolers hang out. And it’s no wonder, with all the advantages we have. Give any dedicated teacher only 2 or 3 kids to teach instead of a whole classroom full, and they’ll do wonderful things.

Control. All homeschoolers are control freaks. Send your kids to public school and you don’t control what, when, how, where or with whom they learn. Pay for a private school and you get some choice about what and where they learn, but not about when. As a homeschooler you have complete control over what, when and where and with whom your children learn. Homeschooling is the ultimate in educational choice. This means you don’t have to teach objectionable subjects, and can focus on what you and the child like best. You can dwell on a subject, savor it, and explore its depth and breadth. We’ve never done museums, monuments or zoos the same since we started homeschooling. Now we linger, soaking it in. Complete control over your child’s education is the distinguishing characteristic of home education.

One-on-one attention is one of the very best benefits of home education. Customized education is another. Your home educated children essentially have their own private tutor. You can’t buy a home education because you can’t buy a mom.

Family time. One of the worst things about school’s schedule is that it robs your family of time together. The best environment for children (and adults) isn’t a school, it’s a family. Homeschool and your family will be closer. You will really get to know your children, and they’ll get to know you. There will be real sibling bonding.

Socialization is one of the major benefits of home education. I distinctly recall being told by teachers during my public school upbringing, “We are not here to socialize”, which was really just a highbrow way of saying, “Shut Up!” Looking back though, I realize that they lied to me at the most fundamental level. At least 75% of what happens in public school is social training. Probably much more. Nearly everyone would agree that there is both positive and negative socialization in public school. I’ve already addressed some of the negative socialization school offers, so it’s only fair to acknowledge the positive socialization. There are great teachers that can touch your heart and leave wonderful lasting memories. Most of us who attended public school recall memories of intense friendships. Most schools have social groups, clubs and events that create wonderful opportunities for social learning. Even homeschoolers cannot ignore all the resources and energy in public schools. Yet acknowledging all that, the opportunities for socialization while educating at home are undeniable. By homeschooling we can:
Be in the world meeting people of all ages, rather than only those who were born the same year as us
Bond and socialize with our family to create truly lasting relationships. How many of your old school friends do you socialize with now, as an adult?
Participate in all the same activities outside of school as any other family, such as sports, music, scouts, church, etc.

Vacations. You get to take vacations whenever you want, not whenever the school system lets you. This means you can travel off-season, getting better rates and enjoying touristy things more because the crowds will be smaller. And the off-season crowds are often seniors with wonderful stories to tell, or foreigners with great foreign perspective. (socialization!) We often take vacations in May and September, months when hotels and attractions are very lightly booked. We also enjoy midweek vacations rather than weekend-only outings.

Success breeds success. Once homeschooling starts to work for your family, once it comes together and you have a few moments of dizzying, dazzling rightness, you will grow and become more resolute in your belief that it is right for your family. Experienced homeschoolers can appear to be a bit smug. It’s working out for them. And they’re frequently forceful in their defense and justification of their methods. Similarly though, failure breeds failure. You may be, in fact, succeeding but if you believe you are failing, you can cause yourself to fail.

Character education. They’re actually putting this in the curriculum of some public schools. Gives me the willies, government teaching character.

Labels and diagnoses. Homeschool and your child will be less likely and have less need to be diagnosed, labeled and drugged. My evidence is anecdotal, and I would love to see legitimate studies done comparing rates of learning disabilities and childhood psychiatric disorders between schooled and homeschooled children. I’ve searched for such studies and found nothing. If anyone knows of such a study, please let me know. My experiences talking with many homeschoolers who pulled their kids from government schools is that they didn’t need the drugs anymore because homeschooling allowed them the freedom to be kids, the chance to improve their diets, and the opportunity for the parents to implement discipline. Learning disabilities become irrelevant when a child can work at his own pace, rather than at the same speed as the rest of the class.

Drugs, both prescription psychotropics and illegal narcotics

Rewards: Homeschooling is a lot more work than driving your kids to school or herding them out to the bus stop every morning, but the rewards are well worth it. And while we started homeschooling because of academics, there were unexpected benefits we only realized after we’d done it for a while. After a few years at it we realized that academics are the easy, minor, almost trivial part of homeschooling, and that it’s really about a rich, full family lifestyle.

Time. Homeschooling is a little like retiring. Once you’ve done it for a while, you’ll be so busy you’ll wonder how you ever had time for school.
Time again: You life will no longer be ruled by bells and schedules. You and your children will have long uninterrupted blocks of time to study intensely, play intensely or simply ponder.
Time to read. When I first heard about homeschooling and had it explained to me, I was in awe and totally envious. I thought, “If I’d had this opportunity, I could have easily read my way to a better education than I got in public school.”
And still, time. Time outdoors. Time making cardboard forts or exploring the woods or building tree-houses or playing games with the dog or practicing a musical instrument.
Learning how to learn, how to research, how to ask questions. Not just learning how to be taught, how to regurgitate ‘correct’ answers, how to fill in the correct bubble on a multiple choice exam. Since we’ve been homeschooling my kids have found ways to learn that I never thought of, and have followed interests they could never had followed in school.
Exposure to the world, to lots of adults, lots of ideas, to broadening experiences
Growing up at the correct speed, their own speed, ripening and unfolding into the adults they were meant to be, as opposed to being pressured in schools into pretended maturity and pretended adulthood, while having their childhoods perversely prolonged.
Joy! Joy in learning, in living, in loving, in everything. There’s no joy in public school. It’s discouraged. Home education is full of joy.

When your God commands you to do something, it’s hard to refuse

If you heart is telling you to homeschool, listen to it. It’s probably right.

Freedom. You don’t realize what a slave you were to the school system until you leave it. No more parent-teacher meetings, early release days, teacher-in-service days, snow days, days you must stay home with sick children, waiting for spring break, Christmas break or summer to take vacations. No more back to school sales, lunch boxes, school uniforms, calls from the principal’s office, teacher’s notes, nurse’s notes, medical release slips, permission slips, clueless substitute teachers. No more PTA meetings, school fundraisers, school psychologists, school tests, school begging, school cliques, school fights, school politics. No more school bus. No more assigned homework. You’re freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Of course, with freedom comes responsibility. You may choose to duplicate some or all of the above items at home, but the key is choice. You choose. Rather than having Hobson’s choice forced on you by the schools. And choice equals freedom.

I applaud you for reading thus far.

You should homeschool. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I am an advocate of homeschooling. And so, I advocate. If your children are at school right now you should drive there this instant, pick them up and don’t ever bring them back. Do not send them tomorrow morning. Do not wait until the semester is over, or the school year has ended, or hope that things will get better. They won’t. School is harming your kids and your family. Pull them out now and educate them at home or else YOU ARE BEING A DELINQUENT PARENT, shirking your duty to your kids, to your spouse, to you family and to your God.

Homeschooling is good for kids, and it’s good for families. Even if their parents aren’t doing it perfectly. You would do well to help your children become educated adults without the dubious benefit of school.

HOMESCHOOL YOUR CHILD!