Why I Home-Educate.

I wrote an essay to myself about this subject about a year ago and thought that I would share it for the benefit of those who love us and want to undestand why we are keeping our girls in our home instead of sending them to school. It is a little long for a blog post so I will break it up into parts.

America’s children are in trouble. The education system in this great country is creating adults who are ill prepared to live and thrive in this world. In an effort to “keep up” with the rest of the world the power over our children’s education has been handed to a federal government that is so large there isn’t anything to compare it to. Not only is the government large, but it is so far removed from the actual children they have control over that those who have the power can no longer (if they ever could) be considered a judge of what is best for them. They do not think of our children as individuals; there is no John or Mary or Susan, just students, no names just numbers, like in prison.

The state of education in America is not solely the fault of those who are in control of it, it is by and large the fault of those who gave that power away to something that had no right to it in the first place; the same people who have the right and responsibility to take that power back.
I am speaking of the parents. By taking the decision making power away from parents and communities and relying on the Federal Government to decide what is right we have forced our children to get a cookie cutter or assembly line schooling. It may be more efficient, but it is definitely not what is best. Of course it is cheaper this way (if anything about the American School system can be considered cheap). It is standardized. This also makes it easier to measure and hold teachers and administrators and the students themselves accountable. Accountability is necessary because there is no trust within the system; parents don’t trust the teachers, the teachers don’t trust the administrators, and no one trusts the students, including the students themselves.

In my opinion trust is the biggest barrier I as a home educator have to break. I have to get the government to trust me, then the administrators, then the teachers, and then I have to somehow trust myself. Following this I have to gain the trust of my extended family and my friends. My children’s trust is the only one I don’t have to work for. Being taught by their parents, and especially their mother, is natural to children. Attempting this has left me tired even before I begin teaching.
If home schooling is so much extra work and so tiring why am I even doing it. This is a question I have been asking myself lately, not because I am thinking of giving it up, but because soon I will have to start answering the hard questions of my family and friends. I want to be prepared to answer them in a way that will seem non combative, yet informative. I do not plan on trying to talk them into home schooling, but I want to be prepared when they try to convince me that public school is the best for my children.

More of the essay to come soon.