Why Homeschooling?

My wife and I have gotten a lot of flak from people over the years because of our desire and interest in homeschooling our children. "You're not trained to teach!" "They won't be properly socialized!" "They'll be just like you and won't think for themselves!" And that's just a sample of the kind of things we've heard.

Here's the thing: None of those objections have any value. Not at all. Not trained to teach? Give me a break; we teach our children from the moment they're born. We teach them how to use the toilet, how to brush their teeth, how to hold a fork and spoon, how to eat solid food...our children learn right from the start, and always have. Who else would they learn it from?

No, the notion that you have to be 'trained' to teach comes from the public schooling mentality, where there's only one way to teach and one way to learn. The problem with that is that it simply isn't true. People learn in different ways, and just because one child doesn't do well with 'book learning' doesn't mean they're unintelligent, no matter what the report card says.

Public education has been so watered down (and I'm being polite in using that terminology) that it's effectively nothing more than a babysitting service for two-income families. And it's not a particularly good babysitting service, either; some public schools have descended into a Lord of the Flies-level social order; the kids are in charge, and the adults are hamstrung by the latest 'don't do anything to hurt the kids' feelings' rulings that come down the pipe. Bullying is rampant, as are drug use, sexual assault, and outright violence. I don't really need a degree from a teacher's college to tell me that's not a good situation for a child.

As for socialization, well...see the above paragraph. How is that supposed to be 'socialization' that is good for the child? Seriously, what's the point of complaining that homeschooling parents aren't sending their kids to spend time with other kids when those other kids are smoking cigarettes or watching porn on their iPhones? And that's the kids in elementary school; let's not even get into what the high schoolers are doing. And that's not the kind of socialization we need, anyway.

A Harvard law professor just came out and insisted that parents shouldn't have absolute authority over their children. However, she's just as adamant that people like her SHOULD have that same authority. Parents are slowly being pushed out of the school system altogether; sure, there's 'meet the teacher' night once or twice a year, but really, parents are seen as a nuisance and an inconvenience. And I say that from personal experience.

Anyway, this professor is concerned that kids will only get their parents' viewpoint on religion, social justice, politics, and whatever else the parents teach their kids. How dare the parents instill their own values into the next generation? How horrible that we aren't subjecting our children to the political and social indoctrination they get from the public schools? Sorry, Ms. Harvard Law professor, but last time I checked, we live in a free society where people are still allowed to have opinions that differ from yours.

And I haven't even touched on the obvious benefits of homeschooling, such as the statistical evidence that homeschoolers do much better on standardized tests than public school kids, or how homeschooled kids have a much wider range of experiences with people of various ages, since they aren't cooped up in a room for six hours with people their own age.

Kids in public schools today are learning to read from Cat in the Hat, if they're lucky. Homeschoolers learn to read unabridged books at a young age: Fairy tales, fables, poetry, and novels. My son, who is not yet twelve, started reading Virgil's The Aeneid, one of the greatest epic stories of all time. Can the public schools boast like that?

He also wants to read my own books, which is nice. He especially wants to read the latest one, Best Served Cold, available now on Amazon.com. You should read it, too. Even a twelve-year-old can understand it; how hard can it be?