Homeschool

What's this home-school thing about? Just read the news and it is clear that our Public Education System is in serious trouble. Children today are not being taught skills they will need to function as useful literate citizens rather they are being coached on how to pass the latest state test. Even that effort in many cases is failing. Who doesn't want the best for their child? If you don't or don't care you are a bad parent and shouldn't even have children. For the rest of us, if we can, we want nothing but the very best.

One alternative to the public education system is private schools. Here you get to choose what kind of school your child will attend. What they will be taught and to some degree what kind of environment they will be in. You can choose a school that will teach the tenets of your faith or a school that custom tailors the academic curriculum for your child.

Another option is Home-Schooling. Where private schools offer custom curriculum's for a child and focus on certain areas, Home-Schooling takes it to the extreme. Home-schooled children are taught at home by a parent. As you may guess, that means that a parent has to be at home to teach the children. This means that you may have to sacrifice your career. You will definitely have to sacrifice a lot of your time. You will need to be able and willing to teach your children. You need to either understand the subject you are teaching or be able to learn it yourself first or know how to find out what you need to know to be able to explain it to your child in a way they can understand.

System	Pro	Con
Public School	Easiest for the parent Already paid for by your taxes	Children are not taught well Parents get no say in what they are taught Drugs, guns, gangs, violence
Private School	Easy for the parent Children get a good education Parents choose the school and therefore what is taught	Expensive, and you pay taxes for public school anyway Parents don't have 100% control over what is taught
Home School	Parent controls 100% of the curriculum Already paid for by your taxes Less expensive than private school	Required dedication from the parent Expensive, and you pay taxes for public school anyway Parents need to be able to teach

There are some parents who have children who are having problems in public school who would be tempted to take their children out of school and just keep them at home without teaching them anything. While there won't be anymore problems at school, what a horriable disservice they are doing to thier children. If it is not, this should be classified as abuse.

To any parent who is home-schooling and doing right by thier children, I commend you. You are true heroes who are helping to develop the future of our country.

Mesquite Christian HomeSchool Association

Karen and I are the presidents of Mesquite Christian HomeSchool Association. Please visit our web site.

send e-mail to Dennis
send e-mail to Karen