Unfortunately, homeshooled children basically get the same teaching and learning approach in their own homes that they would be getting in formal schools and unless the homeschool “teacher” (usually a parent) is highly skilled and able to dedicate upwards of 8 hours a day to this task, the children as often as not do not emerge any better off.

What is needed is a better way to enable children to learn and provide for them to do so outside of their homes and without needing for one or more parents to make a life commitment to it. Take a look at the definitive treatment of this problem developed by Trigon-International in its recently released commission report, “Education in America — What’s to Be Done?”

I support our public school system. I pay a high property rate, in fact so high that our state takes some of those taxes and gives them to other counties that have chosen to tax less.

I have asked nothing for my money from my public school until this, my son’s junior year. He scored well on last year’s PSAT. This year taking the PSAT is the only way for him to qualify as a National Merit Scholar. Our “inclusive”, “diverse”, community minded public high school first said “NO” he could not test there, because ” a ceiling tile might fall on him” and they were concerned about his safety. Unbelieveable? We thought so, so we asked our school board. They said our son “might cheat or bring a gun on the school grounds”. Even though he has the same earlier scores as his sister(a 2008 National Merit Finalist), our public school would not allow him to take the test there. We had to drive across town to a private school.

Suprisingly, the most accommodating schools are the local private schools. On the 11th phone call we found a private school willing to risk the ceiling tiles/guns/cheating to test our son.

Our experience with the local community colleges and even a university was refreshing different. They knew we had a choice, and we paid them directly (not through taxes).

Choice and competition are the key. The public school system won’t change, because the customers are not the students, its the teachers and politicians.

I wouldn’t home school my children (and don’t.) They are 13, 10, and 4. There is too much about the experience of having to work with and be around others that keeping them at home all day doesn’t make sense.

Despite the claims that socialization at school isn’t important–or can even be a negative at times–where else are they going to get the exposure? Kudos to parents who provide good opportunities like scouts or sports, but how many hours a week is that? I recently learned about a few families at church who home school: it suddenly made sense because all of the kids are noticeably uncomfortable, awkward, and I dare say a bit weird.

What is the expectation, that when the kid turns 18 they are loosed on the world and perhaps easily sent off to college? Or enter the workforce. How is that going to be for a shock to the system? And why is a college-level education acceptable, while K-12 is not for home schoolers?

I don’t expect responses to there questions, which are more rhetorical.

I regularly help my children with their homework. I don’t find evidence that they aren’t learning at a level they should be expected or that the curriculum isn’t sufficient. Yes, I have found on a few occasions that the teaching tactics and content seemed to be more than a little slanted toward meeting the state’s standardized text expectations as those exams approached, but not at their current school since we arrived a year ago.

I say love your kids, support them, and spend time on educational activities that supplement anything else they are doing. But have an expectation that they will have an opportunity to explore the world and interact with others in a public or private school. If you are instilling positive values and setting an example for their behavior, it will affect them wherever they are.

And what an adventure it has been! After starting from necessity, we caught a vision of what education could be, not just an escape from a government system that couldn’t help our son with his problems and hardly even cared enough to try, but a unique learning experience tailored to his specific interests and abilities. “If this is education, bring it on!” is the way he put it. He did well in most subjects, was accepted into his first choice college, and graduated in 4-1/2 years.

It was a life-changing experience for me, his mother, too, well worth the time and effort I put into it and the things I had to give up for it. Our family joined a local homeschool support group, which I eventually came to lead for three years. Not only did it provide many group activities from which to choose, but it gave me a chance to receive advice from others and to give back that help to other new people who joined. We still belong to that group and attend some of its activities even though we finished homeschooling 11 years ago.

What a difference it has made to how he turned out! Our son never went through the rebellion stage, never cared for the silly trends other teens think are so important, and shares my husband’s and my interests, views, and beliefs much more closely than do our older boys. He has wide-ranging interests and abilities and can hold conversations on many topics with any age group.

Homeschooling isn’t for everyone, but most people can do a good job even if they aren’t college educated or certified teachers. There are many helps available for subjects the parents don’t feel comfortable teaching. The opportunity to fit the education to the child rather than forcing the child to fit a standardized mold (and often not a very good one at that) more than makes up for anything lacking. How can even a fine teacher do as good a job working with a child he/she has never met before, in a class with 20 or 30 other students, than can that child’s parents who have known and loved him all his life? The school system had no idea what to do for our son, but we certainly did!

In our boy’s case, I would say my husband and I succeeded in salvaging an at-risk child who, without our intervention, could easily have slipped into destructive or self-destructive behavior, or at least would have left school as soon as possible and probably would never have chosen to go to college.

My only regret is that we tried so long and hard with the public system, while our son suffered miserably. I wish we had never sent him, or any of our boys, to public school. I can only try to imagine how different our family would have been if we had homeschooled all three.

I work with special ed kids. If a child decides to throw him or herself to the floor, kicking and screaming, I have to catch the child under the arms and gently lower him/her to the floor. If I am caught off guard and reach out just in time to catch an arm before the child hits the floor, I could be sued by the parents of the child. A teacher was sued last year because a child had a bruise on his arm where the teacher reached out to catch him before he collided with some concrete steps.

The IEP (and the parents) require that the children spend a portion of their time in inclusion in a regular class even though the children may be disruptive in the classroom and abusive to the other children. If I’m working with one child having a tantrum and another child takes advantage of the moment and clobbers a regular ed kid behind my back (impulse control being somewhat lacking), I can be sued by that regular ed child’s parents. When informed of their child’s antisocial behavior, the parents laugh; however, if their child is the focus of another child’s aggression (sigh), I’ll be sued, along with the school system.

Special ed teachers are bitten, scratched, kicked, slapped, cursed and have to deal with all manner of bodily fluids from the incontinent kids on a daily basis.

If my children were still of school age, there is no way that they would be going to a public school.