Parents who wish to foster traditional values in their children have been facing an uphill battle in recent years. Our nation’s schools are becoming less about academics and more about indoctrinating our youth with liberal propaganda.
With the social and political climate of the nation becoming more divided and tumultuous every day, parents must be more vigilant than ever to protect the sanctity of their family values, while also giving their child the best education available.
Now, a once small and stigmatized form of education is growing at record levels – and you may be surprised at the developing trend and the broad reasons why American families are abandoning the public school system.
Families in the 1980s and 90s typically homeschooled their children for religious and values-based reasons, and with the widespread acceptance of the liberal agenda in America today, traditional values are still at the core of homeschooling.
But now, education experts nationwide are beginning to agree that the personally-tailored education plan that homeschooling provides is vastly superior to anything being offered in our nation’s public school system.
In fact, you’d be surprised who is giving credence to homeschooling and recognizing the failures of our public education system. Even liberal billionaires like Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have rallied behind the need for personally-tailored education for American students.
Microsoft’s Bill Gates wrote on his blog, Gatesnotes:
It’s amazing how little the typical classroom has changed over the years. Picture a teacher standing at a chalkboard, lecturing to 25 or 30 students. The kids all learn at different paces and in different ways, so some are bored while others feel hopelessly behind. This system was designed decades ago, and it doesn’t reflect what educators have learned about helping students and teachers do their best work. It’s what I had in mind when I said years ago that America’s high schools are obsolete. And it’s one reason why so many students show up for college unprepared for rigorous work.
Government-run public education is failing our children. This is proven by hard data like test scores, dropout rates, and decreasing numbers of college graduates. Public education is also kicking academics to the curb by making the focus about liberal social issues that cause upheaval and conflict, rather than learning.
Perhaps one of the greatest myths surrounding home education is that students are “sheltered” from the real world, or “unsocialized” by not being exposed to a large group of peers.
This could not be further from the truth, and even major news outlets are beginning to report on the superiority of homeschooling for both academics and the development of social maturity.
Business Insider reported on the growing trends in American homeschooling:
The most common misconception about homeschoolers is that they lack social skills. But today’s students have just as much opportunity to see kids their own age as those in private or public schools, and often without as much distraction.
Homeschoolers don’t deal with all the downsides of being around kids in a toxic school environment…and are able to learn in a more harmonious environment.
A small but growing body of research suggests homeschoolers, compared to kids in traditional schools, grow up with stronger friendships with other kids, better relationships with their parents and adults, greater empathy, and, at least as adolescents, a greater sense of social responsibility.
Research shows that homeschooled students are often more mature and self-confident, and take on more responsibility and positions of leadership than their publicly educated peers.
And with the rising tide of liberal intolerance and the push by the left to have our youth conform to their radical ideology, our nation’s children are facing record levels of bullying, anxiety, depression, and suicide.
While supporters of public schooling point to the idea that it will better prepare them for life as an adult, the opposite is true. Adults must take their own initiative to learn in their careers and advance themselves while working with colleagues of different ages, in different environments, and by facing different challenges.
Homeschoolers are often able to learn these skills prior to adulthood by spending as much time with adults as peers and by working for personal success and development, rather than on a prescribed routine of lessons and tests that do not meet their individual needs.
Business Insider continued:
Since kids spend more time around adults in the “real world,” they rarely come to see school as set apart from other aspects of life. Homeschooling makes sense from an achievement point of view.
Research suggests homeschooled children tend to do better on standardized tests, stick around longer in college, and do better once they’re enrolled.
Contrary to the name, homeschooling takes place in an actual home only a fraction of the time. A great deal of instruction happens in community colleges, at libraries, or in the halls of local museums.
“I have to explain to people that we didn’t have a blackboard in our kitchen with equations written on it. I was out in the world,” says [Claire Dickson, a Harvard student who was homeschooled].
And while parents must remain vigilant about their child’s use of technology, the internet has provided an even greater opportunity for the growth of the homeschool movement.
It has become a valuable resource for homeschoolers in which families can now participate in a multitude of online lessons, virtual field trips, and discussions with peers in other countries to learn about their cultures – the opportunities are endless.
It is estimated that more than two million students are homeschooled in the U.S. today, increasing exponentially from around 800,000 in 1999. With these skyrocketing numbers, it appears American families, and experts nationwide, are realizing that home education is the best education.
Are you new to homeschooling, or are you a homeschool veteran? What are your reasons for homeschooling your children? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.