Why We are Choosing to Homeschool

My oldest child is only three and while we have yet to leap headlong into the homeschooling world, it was something that my husband and I decided on before we were even engaged. We personally, do not feel that, in good conscience, we could send our children to a public school. But, we also believe that it is the right of the parents (not the government or society) to choose how they want to educate their children and what would ultimately best work for their family situation. That said, here are a few thoughts for the day on why we homeschool. :)

There are so many more reasons why we homeschool, but the number one reason is that public schools or government schools directly attack my way of life and the moral values I want my children to learn. They teach that creationism is not a valid argument, and instead argue that it is the uneducated that follow that mindset. They teach sex education in elementary school and stress that abstinence until marriage is an unattainable and old-fashioned goal. History has been “rewritten” to completely keep God out of the founding of our country stating that most founding fathers were either atheists or deists. English curriculum contains books that openly attack religious morality and claim that it's okay because, “Hey, the children are reading!”

There are certainly several arguments about why homeschooling is wrong or at the very least should be heavily monitored by the very system that most homeschooling parents are trying to avoid, but my personal favorites are the following: Homeschooling parents are overprotective and are out of touch with reality! And the most common, albeit the most uneducated, What about socialization?!

The generalization that homeschooling parents are overprotective is an old and tired argument. As another homeschooling parent once said, we are simply “proactive.” I am not saying that there are not public school families who are not also proactive in their children's education, but neither would I say that they are overprotective in their desire to know what is being taught in the curriculum that their children are exposed to. I am simply cutting out the middle man, by being directly involved in the teaching and presentation of our curriculum, there is no necessary “un-teaching” that will have to occur. As for being out of touch with reality, I am well aware of the “reality” of the public school system, and quite frankly you can keep it. As someone who LOVED school, I myself dealt with drugs in the hallways and physical attacks. I will instead bring my children up in an environment that will actually meet the original goals of education and preserve in them a love for learning that will not be shadowed by the natural occurrences the environment of the public nourishes.

When someone says that our children are or will become under socialized, useless and zombiesque members of society, I usually laugh it off and pass it over as an old saying that is simply being repeated, because that's all anyone really knows to say when arguing against homeschooling. I think that people who use that argument are simply uneducated in all that is available to the homeschooling family. I am certainly not naive enough to think that there aren't those homeschoolers who fall into that unsocialized view, but the percentage of homeschool graduates that emerge that way is insignificant, and I believe shrinking.

Just a few thoughts headed your way after my reading of an anti-homeschooling article. I should really stay away from those things. :)