Ask anybody involved in homeschooling why they made the decision to to homeschool their children and you will find that there are just about as many answers to this question as there are people involved in homeschooling.
Often, parents wish to take their children out of the public schools because they see the public school system as being a failure, or as being positively harmful for their children. Other parents want to teach their children at home on religious grounds, or because they wish to instill particular values into their children which they feel are missing from the public school system. Whatever the reason for teaching children at home, there is little doubt that the majority of parents opt for homeschooling because they believe that it is the best choice for their children.
For the majority of parent there are two sides to homeschooling comprising those positive things that it brings to the child and those things that it removes from the child's environment. Peer pressure and bullying are rife in the public school system nowadays and often places children under considerable pressure and, on occasions, can even place them in danger. Homeschooling your children permits you much greater control over just who your children do and do not come into contact with and the influences they come under.
In terms of a child's academic development and growth there can be little doubt that, in most cases, homeschooling produces superior results and this is evidenced in such things as homeschooled children winning the National Spelling Bees and the high number of homeschooled children attaining degrees (in many cases Master's degrees) at many of our best universities and often at very young ages.
Of course many people hold that such children are simply gifted and that their success is the result of their natural genius rather than to any homeschooling. However, if this were the case then we are blessed with an abundance of geniuses in our younger generation. The simple fact of the matter is that the numbers simply do not support this view.
The numbers, which are produced not simply by supporters of homeschooling but by bodies such as the United States Department of Education, quite clearly demonstrate that homeschooled children do far better than their publicly schooled peers with homeschooled children a grade ahead by the age of 12 and as much as four grades ahead by the time they get to the equivalent of the 8th grade.
Although the majority of people think that homeschooling is a fairly modern phenomenon it has actually been with us for hundreds of years and is a well tried and tested system which has certainly stood the test of time. Homeschooling has of course changed considerably over the years and much of the philosophy underlying homeschooling nowadays stems from the work of supporters of the system back in the 1960s.
Homeschooling is most certainly not an easy choice and is very hard work for the majority of parents, especially during the early stages, but there can be no doubt that it works and the rewards for both children and parents are more than worth the effort.
Author Resource:-
Parenting4Dummies.com provides a comprehensive and growing resource of information, advice and articles on many aspects of parenting including parenting teenagers and also provides comprehensive advice for choosing a homeschooling program
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