Why Would Somebody Wish To Homeschool His Or Her Children Nowadays? - By: Don Saunders

Ask any parent involved with homeschooling why they opted to homeschool their children and you will see that there are just about as many answers to this particular question as there are people involved in homeschooling.

In many cases, parents want to remove their children from the public schools because they see the public school system as being a failure, or as being harmful for their children. In other cases, parents wish to school their children at home for religious reasons, or because they wish to teach theur children particular values which they believe are missing from the public school system. Whatever the reason for schooling children at home, there can be little doubt that most parents opt for homeschooling because they believe that it is the best choice for their children.

For most parent there are two sides to to the homeschooling equation consisting of those positive things that it brings to the child and those things that it removes from the child's environment. Both peer pressure and bullying are widespread throughout the public school system nowadays and often places children under considerable pressure and, on occasions, can even place them in danger. Teaching your children at home allows you far more control over exactly who your children come into contact with and how they are influenced.

As far as a child's growth and academic development are concerned there is no question but that, in the majority of 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 gaining degrees (in many cases Master's degrees) at many of our finest universities and often at extremely young ages.

Of course a lot of people claim that these children are just gifted and that their success is due to their natural genius rather than to homeschooling. However, if this were to be the case then we are blessed with more than our fair share of geniuses amongst our youth. The fact of the matter is that the numbers simply do not support this view.

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

Although the majority of people believe that homeschooling is a relatively modern phenomenon it has in fact been with us for many hundreds of years and is a well tried and tested system which has more than stood the test of time. Of course homeschooling has changed considerably over the decades and much of the philosophy underlying homeschooling now comes from the work of supporters of the system during the 1960s.

Homeschooling is most certainly not an easy choice and is extremely hard work for most parents, especially in the early days, but there can be no doubt that it works and the rewards for both parents and children are well worth the effort.

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