More Reasons Why I HomeSchool

parker — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:06:00 GMT

I read not one, but two appalling stories today in the news about children and the public school system. I could not have decided to homeschool at a better time.

Not sure what area this story is from, but two fifth-graders were recently arrested for selling marijuana at their elementary school. My oldest daughter will be in 5th grade next year and I can’t imagine having her come home to tell me about this. I am not ignorant of the fact that this happens in schools. My husband and I have had discussions with both of our young daughters about the bad effects of illegal drugs and more importantly, about how they might be approached by other kids their age who want them to think that it is ok to take the drugs. Part of my outrage with this is that someone taught these young boys how to start their “career” in selling drugs before they had a real chance to get a good education and set their goals on a promising career. While it is true that not everyone gets that chance, don’t waste those early years on such nonsense!

Then, there was an elementary school teacher who decided to send feces home with one of her 5-year old students to teach him a lesson. Whether or not the child was responsible for the classroom accident is not yet known, but this is insane. According to the media, the incident is being “investigated.” In other words, the woman is still in the classroom at this point and I can’t imagine how the parents of this child must feel at this point. Although the child is too old to not be trained, there could be several valid reasons for why the accident happened. If it was not an accident, it still could have been handled differently. This is not the type of lesson that the child went to school to learn.

Home Schooling

parker — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:42:00 GMT

In July of last year, I did a short blog post about school vs. home school and how the academic benefits of home school are great, however, the social interaction is quite a concern. Our children, in kindergarten and 4th grade, have been coming home with quite “offensive” homework and classwork in that they were not being challenged. Both children were showing extreme signs of boredom and we were teaching them at home ahead of their grade level. This caused them boredom in class and the feeling of “being held back”, so we made the decision to home school. This was just two weeks ago and we have already seen a great improvement in their attitudes toward learning and they are excited about new things again! It is so unfortunate to see our schools going through such an academic struggle, however, when your children do not have to be exposed to that setting, it is a good feeling to take them out and teach them at their own level. It will help them to move forward and be excited about getting an education.

As far as the social skills, find groups of home schoolers to meet up with (or in our case, many friends who homeschool) and they can play to their hearts content. As they get older, they have study partners, movie going partners, hang out at each other’s homes, etc. just as they do when they are social in school. There is no need to make them feel they are no longer a part of a social environment. Groups can get together to help each other understand certain academic concepts and it will help all to put more effort into getting a better education.

Our area was hard hit by recent budget cuts in education, and that also helped us to make our critical decisions. With the gifted program for young students who work hard to excel being cut, who knows how these children will feel? What does this say that hard work will get them?

This is not an option for everyone. We have a family with one parent at home and one at work, so this will work better for us. When and if circumstances change, we will have to face that when we come to it. For now, we have made a family decision that works well for all.

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More Reasons Why I HomeSchool

Home Schooling