Benefits Of Homeschooling

More and more parents are turning to home schooling as an alternative to traditional education. Doubtless, this makes sense. Our homes are where we learn most of what life requires of us; and no teacher can do as much for a student as a parent does by talking, reading, and otherwise instructing a child. Home schooling extends this, and does so quite effectively: in fewer hours per day, home-schooled children frequently cover more material than students in traditional schools.

However, not all parents are prepared to take over the education of their children. They may not have the education themselves to do this; they may not have enough time; and most unfortunate, many of them simply aren’t interested.

When one or more of these is the case, then we are well-served to build schools. Institutional education may not be as effective or efficient as home-schooling, but it still correlates powerfully with all desirable societal outcomes: income, lawfulness, civic participation, personal fulfillment. The bumper sticker is valid: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

Few parents have all three requirements. And even those who do, almost always need some help. Few among us have mastery of visual and acoustic arts, mathematics, language, social studies, etc., that we can teach a child all the way through the high school requirements.

And for the handful of people who can do it all, everyone has limits: who has the mastery to educate a child through all the necessary college courses?

Is home schooling our goal? Should we build our lives so that our children are all home-schooled? As our world becomes more sophisticated, and more broadly educated, perhaps so. In the future, we might hope that all families have at least one parent with knowledge, time, and interest to home school.

So home-schooling is very attractive, and perhaps one day will be universal. But for the near future, brick-and-mortar schools are still necessary for most children.

Filed under: Home School and tagged Home School