Home Schooling: ignorance or true education?
There are many reasons why parents home school their children, sheltering them from getting picked on by fellow classmates or keep them out of schools in order to accommodate their sports schedule. However, when parents home school their children, there is little accountability for what is actually taught to them.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some parents that are qualified and competent when it comes to teaching their children. But, there are also a lot of parents that want to home school their kids in order to make sure they retain a biased, ignorant view of society.
One particularly irksome example is in the documentary “Jesus Camp.” The movie shows one mother who home schools her children in order to shelter them from evolution and indoctrinate them with her fundamentalist Christian beliefs. According to the documentary, 75 percent of home schooled children are Evangelical Christians like the woman just mentioned.
Home school situations like this lead to a bigger population of individuals who are intolerant and narrow-minded.
Even if parents are doing a decent job teaching their children the basic curriculum and they are showing proficient test scores, they are being deprived of exposure to new ideas. If all they ever learn is one side of every argument, then they will never be able to think for themselves or accept new ideas.
The home school system is flawed. Even parents with good intentions cannot provide the same environment you receive at public or private school. Children are missing out on opportunities to develop their social skills.
Home schooling can be a good idea in theory, but the best way to get a well-rounded education is jumping in to the classroom with all of the other kids and interacting with one another.