The Responsibility of All Parents

Homeschooling vs. Schooling

The duty of parents

From HomeschoolUnderSeige.com:

"As a teacher, I would say that ALL parents have the responsibility to home school their children. Parents should be home schooling their children in the art of reading, basic number skills, colors, rules of polite society, the habits needed to study and learn something new on your own, problem solving skills, their native language (if they have one), skills like carpentry or art (if the parents have such skills), to name just a few. These are things that I, as a teacher, have limited ability to support in my classroom. Many are things that should happen before the child enters the school system, and continue afterward, so that the students have foundations on which to build their further learning. Learning that should continue, I hope, their whole life."

I agree with this teacher on this point: all parents have a responsibility to home school their children in the basics. 

Teachers cannot and should not be expected to teach children to read. That should be happening at home all the time. One of the things we don't talk about as much pertaining to the failure of the public schools is how parental attitudes have contributed to that failure.

I'll liken it to a doctor who tells parents not to try home remedies to resolve illnesses, to bring a child in immediately if there is a fever above 100 degrees. So they do. Then the same doctor complains that the parents are bringing in a child with just a fever and not taking care of it at home.

Likewise, certain educators have made a point of telling parents they can't resolve reading problems at home, can't possibly teach their own children to read. So they don't even try. Some parents have been told they could do damage to their children by trying to teach them to read before school age.

???

And then you get common-sense teachers like this one in the article who want you to teach your child to read before school.

So the wrong parental attitude of 'Let the school do it' is not only the fault of parents, but of educators who want to monopolize education regardless of the practical realities that make this impossible. 

Thankfully, the solution is already a nationwide movement. More people are homeschooling or "afterschooling" or "beforeschooling." More parents understand that the public schools will fail their children if they are not equal partners with their children's teachers. That's a wonderful thing!

In the next generation, we can look forward to more intelligent teens who know how to research, ask questions, and collaborate for greater innovation -- not teens who were taught to pass tests and expect spoon-fed knowledge.

Homeschooled teens become informed voters. Schooled teens become low-information voters, SNL-watchers who actually believe it's the "news."

So this trend toward homeschooling could save our nation, too.

Do you homeschool? Afterschool? Beforeschool? Or do you trust the schools to do it all?