Viability not Liability

Allisyn Stanfield
AP Language
Synthesis essay
Word Count: 1,141



Viability not Liability

Since the early 1990s, the number of children engaging in homeschooling in the United States has increased dramatically. Approximately 420,000 children were currently homeschooling in 1994 and in 2003, about 1,090,000 children were homeschooling.(1) One major reason for this large augment is many parents’ increasing disgust with the methods of education presented in public schools. Other parents feel that their children need a more religious backdrop behind their education while still others feel uncomfortable with the environment in which their children saturate at public schools. Once a minority in the education world, homeschooling, now legal in all fifty of the United States, has now come to the spotlight of center stage.(1)
The increasing numbers of homeschoolers has triggered many people to reconsider homeschooling as an option for education. If so many people are homeschooling their children, then there must be just as many benefits to it as any other method of education. In fact, homeschoolers may enjoy some benefits foreign to those enrolled in public schools. What, people begin to ask, have we been missing all of these years? To some, homeschooling may seem to have more drawbacks then public schooling, however, homeschooling has just as many advantages and disadvantages as any other method of education.
One hefty advantage of homeschooling is that children may pursue learning at their own speed with a teacher who thoroughly understands their needs. Sometimes, children find the pace of public school teaching to be frustratingly slow or fast. The solution can be found in home education. A mother presents the ultimately understanding teacher who can arrange a schedule to suit her child’s learning patterns to perfection. Colten Rogers, my neighbor, and long time friend, presents an excellent example of this situation. As a young child enrolled in the public school, he was a constant disruption in class; always making noise or distracting a classmate. He was instantly labeled a “bad boy” by all of his teachers, given scant respect, and endless discipline for his actions. Later, it became apparent that the reason for his behavior was his overwhelming boredom with his education. Colten was, and still is, a brilliant individual who needed his education to be challenging and fast paced, an accommodation not offered to him in the public school. On trying homeschooling, his mother, no stranger to his love of knowledge, quickly stepped up his courses, and increased the speed of his education. The one on one rapidly moving system worked magnificently and Colten quickly excelled in his education. Without the option of homeschooling, Colten would have been forever labeled a “naughty kid” instead of genius.
Homeschooling also provides opportunities for children to full heartedly pursue particular interests. Public school systems allow only one class period a day for each subject. In some cases only one class period every other day is allowed for certain subjects. How will children who have a special interest and hunger for those less frequented classes satisfy that hunger? Ever since I was a young child, I have had a particular passion for art. My teacher, and mother, observed my interest in art and let me shift my main focus to this subject, signing me up for multiple art classes, buying art videos, and allowing ample time for me to practice drawing. Last year when I glanced over the class schedule of a nearby public school, I observed that only two classes in art are taught in a week. I realized that if I attended such a school, I would be strictly bound to the study of subjects deemed important by others, not by me. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous poet and writer states it best in his essay Education: “It is not for you to choose what he (the student) shall know, what he shall do…he only holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own.”(2)

The practice of home schooling also allows for full interaction between teacher and student. In public school systems each class contains twenty to thirty students and only one teacher permitting little time for teachers to build relationships with each student they teach. On the other hand, classes at home consist of only several students at the most. In these situations, the teacher may construct relationships with each student and become familiar with their educational needs. This one on one situation also makes the teacher readily available to the student. A public schooled student requiring assistance on a school subject would find it much more difficult to arrange a meeting with the teacher then would a home schooled student. After all, when one lives with the teacher, tutoring sessions can take place at almost any time. In this aspect, home schooling is easier on both the teachers and the students.

However, homeschooling also imparts disadvantages as well as advantages. One of the main disadvantages of homeschooling is the added cost. Of course people who go to public schools pay for their education indirectly through taxes, but those who home school have those costs plus the additional costs of resources like curriculum and, in some cases, tuition for online classes. Also, in order to home school one’s children, one parent must be at home to teach them. Thus, home schooling families must rely wholly on one parent to provide for their needs while families that public school their children may balance the responsibility of provision on the shoulders of both parents. “If your dad didn’t make enough money to support our family, then I would have to join the work force and we definitely wouldn’t be able to home school you and your sister” says Lynn Stanfield, a connoisseur of homeschooling.

Another prominent disadvantage to home education is the possible lack of social interaction. Especially if the children are not enrolled in extracurricular activities such as sports or dance lessons where they may interact with their peers, they may get very little if any socialization outside of their own family. Although this is not necessarily a bad thing, it could negatively affect the behavior or attitudes of some children. Certain children have a greater need for interaction with their peers, while others may be content with the interaction that takes place between them and their families.

Neither home schooling nor public schooling can be called the others superior because each family must decide what method works best for their children. However, homeschooling deserves its title as an equivalent mode of education to public schooling. After all it matters not by which method knowledge is imparted, but only that it is imparted and that it is imparted correctly. As Ralph Waldo Emerson states, “Give a boy accurate perceptions...Keep his (the student’s) nature and arm it with knowledge in the very direction to which it points.”(2)

Biography:

1. Bauman, Kurt J. “Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics.” <www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053>.

2. Shea, Renee H. The Language of Composition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.