A Vote for Home School

A Vote for Home School

Michalena Tymchyn

DeVry University

ENGL 135

Professor Marie Cahill

6/21/2011

Abstract

This paper discusses the pros of home schooling and why for the right family it can be the better option over public and private schooling. Once considered a backwards choice only used by religious and political fringe groups, home schooling is on the rise. This paper declares that the benefits such as higher academic performance and greater control over children’s safety, make home schooling the better choice over public school. Various statistics and studies show that home schooled children tend to be more well rounded and successful then public/private school children. This paper also touches on the objections and possible disadvantages of home schooling. Though not for every family, home schooling is a viable option for parents who have the time, money, patience and a need to pass on a love of learning.

“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing,”  said Ralph Waldo Emerson over one hundred years ago and seems to still hold true in public schools today. America’s public schools have been in the news on a regular basis in the past decade. If the American public isn’t hearing horror stories about school shooting and the “No Child Left Behind Act,” they’re hearing about budget cuts and teacher cut-backs. With classroom overcrowding, sliding test scores, and drug problems, public schools seem to be on a down-ward spiral. However, an old form of education is making a come-back, and offers a choice to parents fed up with a sub-standard education. Concerned parents should consider home schooling their children as a better alternative to public and/or private schooling.

The concept and practice of home schooling used to be quite common. For hundreds of years, the children of Europe's wealthy...