Homeschooling

Essay by TralynCollege, UndergraduateA+, October 2002

download word file, 3 pages 4.4

Home schooling

When most people are asked about school, pictures from school buses, rows of desks the lunchroom come to their minds. In our modern and ever changing world that statement could not be more miscalculated. There are as many different concepts about schools and teaching it, as there are children in the USA. Meaning that there are as many ways to home school as there are children. Home Education allows for more individual learning styles. Families are free to spend more time together while learning together.

In the early years of this country, most children were educated at home, either by parents or tutors. Public education started in the middle of the 19th century. When, in the 1960s, an education reformer named John Holt began pushing home schooling as an alternative public schools. Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history.

In the little red brick schoolhouse, we would pursue both "democracy in education and education in democracy." (Stanford historian David Tyack)

Home schooling's successes didn't come easily, though the practice is actually an old tradition. In achievement and socialization, home school children significantly excel conventional schools in all states. The 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that 68 percent of fourth grade students in the United States are reading below the proficient level. The dropout rate of public students in 1999 was 11.2 percent. The U.S. came in last in advanced mathematics. In physics, 12th graders did equally as poorly. In grades one through four, the median ITBS/TAP composite scaled scores for home school students are a full grade above that of their public/private school peers. The gap starts to widen in grade...