By Mimi Rothschild
I was overjoyed to read an article in the Boston Pilot that served as a pretty good introduction to the joys and advantages of homeschooling. Professor Michael Pakaluk is a professor of philosophy in Cambridge, Mass. who has chosen to homeschool his 16-year old daughter. He provides the following excellent list.
1. It’s efficient.
2. It’s inexpensive.
3. Homeschooling tends to develop good habits of reading.
4. Homeschooled children more easily become friends with their parents.
5. Homeschooling requires that the father play the role that he really should play in his children’s education.
6. Unity of studying and religious belief.
7. Homeschooling tends to foster a lively patriotism.
8. Homeschooled children can enjoy the innocence of childhood longer.
9. Homeschooled children socialize better.
I found the fourth point to be especially interesting. How many teenagers do you know that have healthy, loving relationships with their parents? Now, I’m not talking about parents who give their kids everything they want and allow them to walk all over them. I’m talking about good parents who are still able to claim that they are best friends with their kids. My teens and I have a wonderful relationship that exists because of homeschooling. Sure there are moments of antagonism and times that I must exact punishment, but for the most part, my kids and I enjoy each other’s company.
This may be one of the most coherent, simple, fair, and effortless defenses of homeschooling I have ever read. It is free from propaganda tactics or cheerleading for home education. Everyone considering homeschooling should check out the full article.
By Mimi Rothschild
I’ve been meaning to post about this Georgetown Times article for some time now. This particularly unbiased piece showcases how four moms are choosing to give up their career dreams and more to stay at home with the kids.
By joining up with the Georgetown Area Home Educators, this group of women is standing firm in their call to bring Kingdom Education to their children.
Hagmayer doesn’t understand why people disagree with home-schooling, saying it is not a new practice. Before the federal and local governments decided to regulate education, everyone home-schooled their children, she said.
“We’re not inventing anything new, Hagmayer said. “We’re just going back to the basics.”
What a surprisingly true statement. Many public school administrators have this backwards idea that homeschool parents are doing rejecting the longstanding institution of the public school. In actuality, the public school is an institution in its infancy. Homeschooling is a tradition that has been passed down from generations since the beginning of time, really. To think that homeschool parents are entering uncharted waters by pulling their kids out of the public school is quite naive.
I’d also like to call attention to the article’s mention of the women giving up their career dreams. We live in a me-oriented culture. Self-actualization is the name of the game. After all, do we moms want to look back on our lives and regret that we didn’t go for that career in the thick of the rat-race? This mentality not only flies in the face of everything we know from God’s Word, but it also opposes our natural inclinations. Life is a time to invest in other people. Christianity is built on the concept of you-orientation.
A good example is marriage. Why are so many marriages ending in divorce? The simple answer is that our society reflects a me-culture, but marriage is a you-culture institution. Marriage can’t work in me-culture because marriage is one big sacrifice!
These moms are choosing to follow a different path, and in the end, they’ll be more fulfilled. Investing in a child is the most fulfilling act in all of human behavior. Why do we bang our heads against walls trying to get rid of this gift!
By Mimi Rothschild
How would you educate if money was not an issue? Would you send your children to the most prestigious school in your city?
According to a recent Bloomberg article, many of Manhattan’s movers and shakers are no longer relying on outsourcing the education of their children. Whether they hire expensive private tutors for homeschooling or allow their children to educate themselves in an “unschooling” format, these upper-crust families are realizing that their children are too important to leave their education in anyone’s hands but their own.
“The growth of home schooling in Manhattan is part of a national trend. From 1999 to 2003, the number of kids being taught at home soared 29 percent to 1.1 million, according to the most recent survey by the U.S. Education Department. The city requires parents to create a teaching plan and to have students’ academic progress evaluated under state regulations.”
I think this is a fascinating development. For one thing, it blows the popular perception of homeschoolers being a bunch of rural hillbillies trying to escape from society. These are some of the most influential people in the city. They are choosing to homeschool, not for religious escapist reasons, but because they strongly feel it is the best academic environment for their children. Although they can afford to send their children to $30,000 private schools, they are forsaking this luxury.
“Leon Potgieter, who runs the 300-employee New York City office of Stamford, Connecticut-based consulting firm Towers Perrin, said he and his wife, Barbara, can afford any school for 9-year-old twins Luke and Sarah and 6-year-old Hannah. They chose home schooling because they decided that Barbara, 41, a physicist and computer scientist, could do a better job. Potgieter, 44, teaches the history lessons when he gets home from work.”
Again, these are not the uneducated right-wingers at which the mainstream media would point the finger. These are well-educated, urbane parents. Many of these homeschoolers have gone the “unschooling” route.
“While their peers are in school, Caroline and Jessica have the run of the town, to join clubs, visit museums and take classes. Caroline learns English in a teen book club, history from DVD documentaries and science at the American Museum of Natural History.”
That kind of freedom is what makes homeschooling so attractive to the rich. Why put restrictions on your child’s learning when you have such amazing resources all over the city of which to take advantage?
By Mimi Rothschild
Dana Hanley’s recent post on the Homeland Stupidity blog chronicles the tragic murder of a young homeschooled boy at the hands of his own adoptive parents. He was starved, beaten, and generally neglected before eventually succumbing to their daily torture.
East Lansing Mayor Mark Meadows is currently promoting the increased regulation of homeschooling to prevent tragedies like this from happening.
Meadows fails to realize two key truths. First, increasing regulation among homeschoolers will do nothing to prevent abuse cases like this from happening. If parents want to abuse their children, they will find a way to do so in order to keep it out of the public eye. Secondly, this type of violence is far from unique to homeschooling. Public school students around the country unfortunately suffer from similar abuse, and little is done about it in the public school. In fact, the homeschooled student in question was enrolled in public school for a time and nothing was done to prevent his murder. As commentor Christine points out, the child had social workers assigned to him even after leaving the public school.
The unfortunate death of a child should not prevent millions of healthy homes from enjoying the freedoms of homeschooling. Increased regulation will accomplish nothing other than extra red tape and hurdles for well-meaning parents to go through.
Christian homeschoolers, please pray for your homeschooling
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By Mimi Rothschild
No sooner had I written yesterday’s post about the hidden evils of charter schools did I come across this saddening article on World Net Daily.
In Anchorage, Alaska, what must be the least government-regulated state in the country, a program called Interior Distance Education of Alaska, or IDEA was recently launched. The program offered “free money” to parents in exchange for control over their children. After a long, hard-won battle to achieve independence from the state, homeschoolers are now giving it up voluntarily.
I can see why this temptation exists. The whole concept of an online charter school makes perfect sense in such a rural area. A lot of these families live completely isolated in the Alaskan frontier.
“Why not use online technology to tap into a market that no one else in public education was serving: the homeschool student? And thus IDEA was born. The plan was to entice homeschoolers with a package of goodies, including computers, access to instructional resources, assistance from certified teachers, guidance from a network of field representatives who are also homeschooling parents, plus a cash allotment for non-religious educational materials.”
There are alternatives to looking to the government. Essentially, the government is offering what The MorningStar Academy offers, but without the religious freedom. Parents of Alaska, realize that there are alternatives out there.
“Naturally, the leadership of APHEA is not very happy with this development. As Christians, they prefer to see homeschoolers totally independent of the state when it comes to the education of their children. And they predict that over time, the state will impose more and more regulations over what the enrolled homeschoolers can do to be eligible for the cash allotments.”
That’s how the government works. Hopefully, these home educators will not give up too many of their freedoms before realizing that they are buying into a lie.