My parents tried to home school their children. They did a terrible job! Once they realized that they were wholly incapable of educating their children properly, they sent us to a private christian school. This school had some of the worst teachers I have ever had, excepting my own parents of course! Eventually, we convinced our parents to put us into the public system which was vastly superior (which is not saying much!)to what we had experienced so far in our short lives.
I have little doubt that many of the home school parents who have posted above provide their children with an enriched curriculum which is head-and-shoulders above what is typically offered by the public system. However, there needs to be accountability. Home schooled children need to be tested annually to ensure that their parents are providing them with a suitable and complete education. My parents certainly failed us in that regard! You cannot simply assume that all parents are fit educators.
Some posters have suggested that they have no responsibility to the educational system as a whole and only have a responsibility to ensure the best for their own families. With respect, I completely disagree. The majority of people you will interact with over the course of your life will come from the public educational system. As a result, it is critical that the educational system does its job properly in educating the nation’s children. The system, in its current form, is in serious need of reform. We cannot make the problems go away by capable parents educating their own children and leaving less fortunate children on their own.
My wife and I have chosen to put our children in alternative schools that still operate within the public system. I am often dissatisfied with the quality of what is taught and supplement the curriculum where needed. To some degree then, our children are partially home schooled. Nevertheless, both my wife and I are active in the public system in seeking appropriate reforms to improve the system so that our nation does not face a future in which it cannot compete with nations whose systems are doing a vastly better job of educating their children, such as Finland.
