There’s No School Like Home School

Home education is like home cooking: it’s time-honored, traditional, and definitely more nutritious than the processed variety.

Contemporary pundits may describe home schooling as a recent phenomenon, but actually it is public education that is the relative newcomer. Patrick Henry, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Edison share the distinction of having been home-schooled.

Nationwide, depending on the source and who’s counting, 1.5 million to 1.9 million children in the United States were home-educated in 2000–2001. That number is growing between 7 and 15 percent per year. Since home education was sanctioned by the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1985, the number of home schools in the state has grown from a few hundred to 23,909 schools teaching 46,909 students in 2001–2002. Figures from 2003 showed a 19 percent increase over the previous year and more than doubled the numbers reported five years before that.

What’s driving this amazing return to the home as a source for learning?

Articles on the matter typically focus on how bad things are in public schools and suggest that most parents who choose to home school are running away from those conditions. But there’s another, more positive side to the story.

Research shows that home-schooled children are more likely to make choices based on values they learn from their parents instead of feeling compelled to go along with the crowd. The common belief that home-schooled children are at a disadvantage because they don’t share the same social experiences as regular school children is a myth: they communicate well, get along with adults and other children — even with their siblings — and choose to spend time with others because they enjoy their company or have similar interests.

Home schooling seems to foster family togetherness. Kim McGrath of King, N.C., a former publishing house manager and college writer and editor, is home-schooling her 10-year-old daughter Mary Anne. “We’ve really become close as mother and daughter, especially now that Mary Anne is approaching adolescence,” she says. “It’s been such an incredible experience to go through this phase of life with her. This is something a teacher or school environment really can’t help so much with.”

The tutorial style of teaching employed in home schooling has been proven effective. And with home schooling, you can’t beat the teacher-student ratio and the flexibility of course content and scheduling. Celia Taylor, who teaches at home while running a farm, says home schooling is wherever they are and whatever they are doing. In caring for their dozen llamas, Celia muses, “We have a pretty full day by the time a lot of people are waking up.”

There are many supportive resources for home education — legal advocacy groups, home-ed clubs, discounts offered by booksellers and museums, and lots of free, readily available material online.

Overall, the case for home schooling is pretty compelling. “When we started home schooling, I felt as though I had tucked a child under each arm and jumped off a cliff,” says one mother. “Imagine my surprise to discover we have wings.”

Web sites with more information on home schooling include Homeschool.com , A to Zs Home's Cool, and National Home Education Network.