What You Should Know About Home Schooling

A. Through recorded history, most children were educated at home or in private schools. Only in the twentieth century has public schooling become the dominant form of education in America. Thus, home schooling is not the "new kid on the block," but has far more history and tradition behind it than public education. Home schooling has proven successful; it is public education which has produced questionable results!

A. Home education's success can be attributed to the following factors:

1. Parents who assume responsibility for educating their children demonstrate a high level of discipline and dedication, thus setting a good example for their children.

2. Parents are able to give their children special attention and favorable treatment that would be considered partiality and favoritism in public school classrooms.

3. Children tend to thrive in an environment characterized by family routines and values, and controlled by caring, responsible parents.

4. In home schools, children experience personal adult-to-child responses that are not practical in conventional classrooms. Student interaction with caring parents augments the curriculum.

5. Children in home schools are liberated from the all-day regimentation of lock step classrooms, thus allowing them to explore and think more freely and creatively.

6. Parents are able to involve their children with responsibilities and duties of home management, thus leading children to become independent, disciplined, and secure.

A. The Smithsonian Institution, considered by many to be the nation's premiere academic institution, offered a three-part recipe for encouraging high achievement in children:

1. The child should spend much time with warm, responsive parents and other adults.

2. The child should spend little time with peers.

3. The child should be allowed a great deal of free exploration under parental guidance.

A. No. The Constitution never mentions education. This was not an oversight ... the founders of our country firmly believed that the federal government had no right to interfere in the education of children.

Responsibility for education was reserved for parents. Education was not mentioned in the Bill of Rights because it was understood that parents had the responsibility to control their children's education.

A. No. Children do not belong to the state; they belong to God, Who holds parents responsible for child training. Most states recognize that parents should exercise their responsibility by the least restrictive means. Several court decisions have concluded that the state's interest in education does not include the right to mandate where or how a specific child must be educated.

A good reference book on the legal perspective of home schooling is Home Education and Constitutional Liberties by John Whitehead, available from The Rutherford Institute, P.O. Box 510, Manassas, VA 22110 or from the publisher, Crossway Books, 9825 W. Roosevelt Road., Westchester, IL 60153.

A. Some public education leaders might want parents to believe that attendance laws mean every child must be attending an institutional school, but the laws are intended to force parents to see that their child gets an adequate education ... not to force them to send the child to a certain type of school.

The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits laws or regulations that are too vague or allow too much administrative discretion. The vagueness rule was the basis for the Wisconsin Supreme Court's 1983 decision that dismissed a criminal action under the state's compulsory education statute against parents involved in home schooling. The courts have determined in several cases that compulsory attendance laws are too vague and allow too much administrative discretion, and are therefore unenforceable on home schoolers.

A. Home education is legal in all states, but some regulate home schools to a greater degree than other states.

Parental liberty has been recognized by the United States Supreme Court as a fundamental constitutional right. Home education is supported not only by this fundamental constitutional guarantee, but specifically by the constitutional guarantees of free speech and religious liberty.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Stanley v. Georgia, recognized the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusion into one's privacy. The courts have also recognized the right of parents to be free from unwarranted intrusions into their privacy ... in other words, a family has the right to be left alone when they aren't violating civil or criminal law or breaching the peace.

A. Most college courses in education are not really useful to home educators. Home education is basically tutoring and supervising one or more students within a home environment in which learning is the criteria. Conventional education is classroom supervision and teaching of large groups of students within an institutional environment in which imparting information is the criteria for advancement.

There is a major difference between classroom teaching and student learning under parental supervision. Parents normally do not learn how best to tutor and supervise children at home by earning a teaching degree in conventional classroom methods and procedures. (Accelerated Learning Systems does offer training to parents in methods of Philosophy of Education.)

A. Some will, but numerous public school educators are doing poorly now and damaging hundreds of students in the process. Responsible public educators contend that government schools should get their own houses in order before invading the privacy of the home and family. In most states, parents who are negligent can be prosecuted under existing laws ... no additional laws are needed that would restrict the right of responsible parents to educate their children.

Maintaining freedom always includes risk. Freedom to drive leads to inevitable accidents, injuries, and death. Parents accept those risks because they value freedom. The possibility that a few people will abuse a freedom is not cause to restrict freedom for parents.

A. For the most part, yes. Most parents can find materials as good or better than anything that is found in public schools, and these materials are usually quite affordable. Two resources that are extremely valuable to parents, even if they decide not to home school their children, are The Big Book Of Home Learning and The New Big Book Of Home Learning by Mary Pride, published by Crossway Books in Westchester, IL 60153. These are available by mail order or from most local bookstores.

A. Children in home schools have plenty of opportunities to be with other children. Most children need far more interaction with adults and far less interaction with other children. Children at home are free to make mistakes without ridicule and free to explore and learn at their own rate. Children in institutional schools are often embarrassed and ridiculed without mercy or control. Children who prefer to spend most of their time with other children usually become peer dependent, leading to a pessimism about themselves, their future, their parents, and even their peers. The subsequent loss of self-worth and self-direction is hardly what parents want for their children.

A. Good parenting during a child's early years is far more important than formal education or schooling.

Children who learn under direct training of their parents during their early years are usually more creative and better at solving problems than those forced into rigorous learning programs at an early age. No evidence exists to suggest that institutional schooling provides a superior environment over home schooling during elementary school years ... in fact, all the evidence is to the contrary.

One researcher even suggests that all the learning necessary for success in high school could be accomplished in two or three years, during the junior high years ... thus denying the need for elementary school altogether! Psychological research has demonstrated that a normal child could begin formal structured education as a teen-ager and achieve the same overall academic level within a few years as would have been achieved by beginning school at age five or six.

According to various research studies, some public schools damage the normal learning process by premature teaching. This results in huge amounts of wasted effort by teachers who feel compelled to teach skills and facts too early. Additionally, most parents who decide to teach their children at home will do adequate research and provide sufficient educational material within the home to enable the child to learn academic skills. Again, the problem is not that a few parents may neglect their children, but rather that some public schools are already doing far more damage than could possibly be done by a few parents.

A. No significant risk is involved. Most children do not need to learn to read until they are at least seven or eight years old ... sometimes later. Boys tend to mature about a year later than girls so that in most cases boys should not be taught to read in a group with girls the same age, because most boys are not ready. Conventional schools seldom take this fact into account.

Research* indicates that reading and arithmetic skills require neurological and physiological maturation that many young children do not normally achieve until eight or nine years of age. Numerous reading problems, therefore, are caused by the very fact that children are placed in school before they are ready and are expected to learn concepts which they are not able to learn. The fact is, educational researchers have substantiated that much of what goes on in public schools is not good for children.**

*Joseph M. Wepman, "The Modality Concept--Including a Statement of the Perceptual and Conceptual Levels of Learning, "Perception and Reading," Proceeding of the Twelfth Annual Convention, International Reading Association, Newark, Delaware, 12 part 4 (1968; 1-6)

**Joseph W. Halliwell, "Reviewing the Reviews on Entrance Age and School Success," in Readings in Educational Psychology, 2nd ed., editors Victor H. Noll and Rachel P. Noll (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 65

A. Research shows that in public and conventional private schools actual instructional time is from 90 minutes to two hours per day ... and much of that is not really high quality instructional time. Most classes are fortunate if the teacher spends one or two minutes per day of undivided attention with each student. Many home school families need only from two to three hours per day of structured learning time to accomplish academic objectives normally expected of children.

A. According to the March 1980 issue of Education Digest, students taught individually average thirty percentile points higher on standardized tests than students taught in classes of twenty-five students. Alaska, because of its widely scattered population, maintains a state-operated correspondence study program in which students study at home. Statewide academic assessments consistently show that the students who study at home do better in the same grades and subjects than students who attend conventional public school classrooms.

A. They cannot be separated. All education is religious. A public school that teaches all day without mentioning God is teaching children a religion that says God is irrelevant and unimportant, having nothing to do with history, science, language, government, or any other subject. Such teaching is not religiously "neutral." It influences children to disregard a sense of accountability to God, thus encouraging youth to violate Biblical principles.

Public schools teach children the religion known as secular humanism, in which man is the measure of all things and the state is the highest power. God either does not exist or is an impersonal force having nothing important to do with everyday life. Religious principles which control the school will usually control the way youth learn to think and act.

A. No. First, it isn't free .. .the average public school spends more than $4,000 of taxpayer money to educate one student for nine months. And it isn't equal, either; great differences exist in the quality of education offered by various schools, districts, and regions across the country.

A majority of the money we pay for property taxes is used to support the local "free" public schools. You contribute this money to government schools even if you have no children and even if you disagree with what is being taught. School administrators are permitted to hire homosexuals and allow teaching of secular humanism. Furthermore, children are usually prohibited from saying grace over their meals or displaying a Bible. But students are permitted to graduate without basic skills in reading, writing, and simple arithmetic!

All that contemporary public education seems to guarantee parents is that taxpayers will end up paying more and more for less and less.

A. No. Before the inception of public education, most of the population could read and write. Public education is producing increasing numbers of people who receive high school diplomas but who cannot read and write well enough to function in contemporary society. Thousands of students drop out. Would you remain in a system that had completely failed to educate you?

A. The majority of parents send their children to public schools and never really investigate day-to-day activities. If they do observe negative areas and try to change things, they are often labeled troublemakers. The fact is, more than 30% of public school teachers and administrators don't enroll their own children in public schools.* If the people who operate an educational institution are afraid to enroll their own children, that should be a clear-cut signal to the public that something is desperately wrong.

It is generally not the responsibility of an individual parent or of any singe group of parents to attempt to reform the whole system. No single person would usually attempt to reform our medical or legal system; it is beyond his influence and resources. Parents do have the responsibility to make certain their own children are properly educated .

*Education USA, September 25, 1989; The New American, May 19, 1986.

A. Let the teachers speak for themselves.

One Iowa teacher resigned because she was "sick of being called foul names, sick of hearing students use four-letter words, fed up with garbage and fights in the halls, and sick of the standard 'you can't make me' attitude."

Another teacher says, "Today's students are undisciplined, unmotivated, and I've had it with their filthy language."

Another from Bryan, Texas, says, "Most teachers are so worn-out trying to maintain discipline that they have no time or energy for teaching. Kids who want to team are being ripped off."

Yet another, from Royal Oak, Michigan, says, "The public would not believe what goes on in the average classroom. Anyone who goes into teaching today should have his head examined."

Dr. Alfred Bloch in Los Angeles discovered that many teachers are suffering the same symptoms as soldiers who suffer from battle fatigue after being in combat.

A. Act 169 of the Pennsylvania Home Schooling Act permits parents, guardians, and legal custodians who possess a high school diploma or its equivalent to provide home education. As the supervisor of a home education program, they must file an affidavit with their local school superintendent. If you do decide to home school, you should also consider joining the Home School Legal Defense Organization.