Home-Schooling Gains Popularity
Many parents are choosing to take their children out of public school and educate them at home. According to a national survey and research, there are over 1.5 million home-schooled students, a 75 percent increase from the 850 thousand students being home-schooled ten years ago.
In a Yahoo article, home-schooling families give reasons such as concern about public school environments, strengthening family ties, and being able to provide more time for children’s interests by developing individualized curriculum.
Robert Kunzman, author of a book on homes-chooling, said “It’s the moral or ethical milieu, an emphasis or perceived over-emphasis on categorization and labeling of kids, violence and safety.”
In an article on the home-school trend , a couple who home-schools their children say they have nothing against the local school system, except that it cannot provide individualized, one-on-one instruction. The mother also says, “We’re giving [our kids] a very strong foundation so that when they go out in the world they’re able to be a strong model in the face of negative influences rather than being influenced by those negative things.”
Home-schooling families have more resources and support systems than before, due to increased visibility and awareness, and the availability of resources through the Internet. According to a Yahoo article, home-schooled students have opportunities to perform in concerts and theaters, special museum programs, and can take classes to earn college credits.
The increased popularity of home-schooling shows that it can be beneficial and a positive experience for some children. NHERI research shows that about three-quarters of a sample of home-educated adults are choosing to home-school their own children.
May 15th, 2011 at 2:44 am
The number of homeschooled children has actually been updated since the study you mentioned.
There are an estimated 2.04 million now . . . http://www.nheri.org/HomeschoolPopulationReport2010.html
October 15th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Yeah, I moved from continent to continent and when I landed back to Switzerland and I wanted to start home schooling I realized that it’s basically impossible to do it where I live because of local regulations. Results: schools here are plenty of problems, boring classes are quite usual, breaking up families make children quite difficult to control. Now it’s over for most of my children (4) but perhaps in the future the home schooling system will appear here, too.
October 26th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
I’m heard many great things about home schooling and I think that it’s important to continue home schooling as well. Children will be focused on the topic at hand, since their parents won’t let them slack off.
November 23rd, 2011 at 8:49 pm
We have home schooled our children and it was probably the best decision we could have made for them. they get to interact with others at sports that they partake in and various other activities. You just cant beat the personal attention that you can give your own child to teach them things that no teacher would be willing or able to offer. The only thing that is at times a problem is the immense amount of time it takes to make it work although this also gets better with time and experience.