Children Should Never Be Educated at Home by Their Parents - Term Paper Example

Module Children Should Never Be Educated At Home by Their Parents Homeschooling has become quite popular in the current mainstream American society. Many parents who regularly home school their children claim that they do not agree with the morals that are encouraged, or which go unchecked in public schools. They have also made claims in the past that the standard of primary and secondary education in the United States has gone down over the last few years. While these may be valid claims in some regions, they do not account for all the states in the nation. Public education has many positive effects on child development that could not possibly be replaced by home-schooling. Teachers have special skills that allow them to be able to meet the needs of growing children in a satisfactory way (Gaither 147). These skills are acquired over more than three years of teaching instruction in accredited higher institutions of learning. Parents cannot simply ignore such facts. Neither can they presume that they have all the skills necessary to educate their own children because they gave birth to them. Most parents who wish to home school their children do not have adequate skills. Any parent can teach his or her child when they are in third grade. However, as the child develops, he or she will need to be tutored by people who have specialized in different fields. Most parents do not have a good grasp of all the different subjects that are taught in public schools such as calculus, Drama, Trigonometry, Biology, Psychology, and Instrumental Music (Windley 22). Forcing children to settle for a parent’s bland versions of each of these subjects can result in the child having limited choices about the colleges to apply for because the parent’s incompetence will be evident in the child’s low or mediocre scores. Even though it is not openly stated, most home schooled children tend to have educational deficits. They are usually very proficient in the subject that their parents specialize in, but are behind their public-schooled colleagues in other subjects. It is impossible for any parent to be skilled in all the subjects in the national school curriculum. With the academic standards growing more demanding, parents who wish to home school their children will have to deal with even more pressure to ensure that their children are more than conversant with each of the subjects. In addition, home schooled children usually have no recommendation slips from acknowledged educational establishments. While there are a number of universities that may not require a high school diploma from applying candidates, this is still a very real obstacle for most home schooled children. Another reason why parents should not be allowed to home school their children is because of the socialization aspect. Parents have no real substitute for the exposure that children get in public schools. Many parents claim that they involve their children in different clubs and social groups in order for them to get a feeling of how to conduct themselves in society. However, this simply does not count because it is likely that the ‘groups’ spoken about by such parents have people with similar ages and interests. Attending public schools is something that forces children to learn how to work with others from different cultures, religions, values, and interests. That is more representative of the world in which the children will be forced to function in future. If the children already have internalized strong personal values, they will not be affected or influenced by what they meet on the outside. In being exposed to people who are different from them in any number of ways, the children also start learning how to be tolerant of others from a young age. It is particularly important for children to learn tolerance at a young age because then, they are impressionable and can be easily influenced to see things in the right way. Moreover, once they grow older, they start to have their own opinions about what ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ should mean; and if they have the wrong beliefs about these two principles, it can be extremely difficult to change their minds about their wrong belief systems. Having wrong belief systems will cause children to be unable to adjust to the world when they become adults. Another reason why home schooling is not beneficial for children has to do with discipline. Children in public schools adopt particular listening behaviours in the course of their lessons. Even if parents who are usually lenient with their children try to enforce a code of discipline during lessons, the child may not understand what the parent is trying to do and thus is not likely to pay attention to the parent’s instructions in the same way that children in public schools listen to and obey their teachers. Parents who support home schooling have to be extremely strict if they expect to achieve the same result as do public schools. This can strain the parent-child relationship because the child starts to see the parent as a disciplinarian rather than the parent. While each home-schooling scenario is different from the next, home schooled children tend to experience things later in life than their public schooled counterparts because of their delayed exposure to society in an unsheltered manner (Murphy 56). For instance, they may experience extreme anxiety when going to job interviews because they have had such limited exposure to large groups of people and are now about to be judged by a team of people. They may also be unusually naive for their ages or too trusting of strangers that they meet. They may also have problems in properly relating with others because they have not had to consider the feelings or actions of others all through their development into adulthood. This is not only a fact where peers are concerned, but also where lecturers in University are concerned (Saliger 11). If a home schooled person is accepted to a university, he or she will suddenly be expected to learn how to contribute in a classroom environment. A home schooled student will find difficulty in outwardly expressing views in different subjects as well as in discussing their academic progress with their lecturers. This can be made harder if the home-schooled individual’s professors do not understand why they seem withdrawn. Children who have shy personalities and are enrolled in public schools are usually forced to find ways of being more active by their peers and teachers. However, shy children in home-schooled situations have no one to encourage them to seek others out and also cannot express the need for having a more extensive social life. It is understandable that parents who home school their children merely wish to protect them from the bad influences that are common in public schools. Home-schooling, however, is not the answer. Keeping children ignorant of negative influences that are harmful is not the way to ensure that they will be wiser than their peers. It is better for parents to instil their morals in their children then allow for those morals to be tested in a public schools platform. If their children have truly internalized their parent’s values, they will not be swayed by any strange trends. Works Cited Gaither, Milton. Home School: An American History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Murphy, Joseph. Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement. New York: Corwin, 2012. Print. Saliger, Lena. The Homeschooling Movement in the United States of America. New York: GRIN Verlag, 2010. Windley, Carol. Home Schooling. New York: Cormorant Books Incorporated, 2006. Print. Read More