Prof. Glenn Reynolds – How Home Schooling Threatens Monopoly Education
In a new piece at USA Today, Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit notes the value of home schooling and the threat it represents to America’s failing public school system.
How home schooling threatens monopoly education
“What about home schooling? You know, it’s not just for scary religious people any more.” That’s a line from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and it should strike fear into the hearts, not of vampires, but of public-school administrators everywhere.
The fact is, Americans across the country — but especially in large, urban school systems — are voting with their feet and abandoning traditional public schools, to the point that teachers are facing layoffs. Some are going to charter schools, which are still public but are run more flexibly. Some are leaving for private schools. But many others are going another step beyond traditional education, and switching to online school or even pure home schooling.
And, as Buffy so accurately noted, it’s not just “scary religious people.” In fact, rather than scary, those religious people are looking more like trendsetters. A recent piece in The Atlantic told of purely secular parents’ decision to take their kids out of New York public schools and home school instead:
“That first year, chatting with other homeschooling parents at soccer games, picnics, and after-church coffee hours, I found that our decision was far from unusual. Homeschooling has long been a philosophical choice for religious traditionalists and off-the-grid homesteaders, but for the parents we met — among them several actors, a jazz composer, a restaurateur, a TV chef, a Columbia University physical-plant supervisor, and a handful of college professors — it was a practical alternative to New York’s notoriously inadequate education system.”
New York’s public school system is indeed notoriously inadequate. And, like most public school systems (or public systems of any kind), it’s run more for the convenience of the staff and bureaucrats than for the benefit of parents or kids.
Read it all at the link below.
Comments
Achieve Educational Freedom, Excellence and Harmony: Eliminate the Public Schools
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/galvin4.1.1.html
Strike a Victory for Federalism: Eliminate the Public Schools
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/galvin5.1.1.html
Meant to thumbs up the article… stupid phone.
Good stuff always enjoy reading along the lines of making improving the education system
This my 15th (!!) year of homeschooling–one child left in the fold. We were nervous with our first child–we figured if it didn’t work, it was only first grade. After the first semester, we never looked back. Our children are well-mannered, can speak intelligently with people of all ages, the first two have received incredible scholarships to college and both are doing well. Most often we ran into, “what about social skills?” Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that. I finally switched the table and would question the person about their own fears for their children in public schools. That shut them up pretty quickly. I also had the freedom of putting our children in ability-specific, rather than age-specific classes–what a difference! Two of them finished high school at 16, the third as finished at 15. We just added to the transcript until they were old enough for college. Education never hurt anyone, to have extra going into college helped them immensely. These days, more and more people say they wish they had homeschooled, when they hear that I have taught our children. How times have changed!
Vive le homeschooling!