It’s the Parents Choice
When picking between home school and public the parents have a lot to think about. There are cirques, and advocates for both as both options has its pros and cons.
As a home school student the child would only be exposed to the information the parent wants their child to know. If the family is a strong believer in any certain religion and does not want their child to know about creationism and evolution; being the teacher the parent will not have to teach them. Another plus that the advocates of home schooling preach is that home school students do better in college. According to home-school.com students that are home school graduate college with a 3.46 GPA while all other students graduate college with a 3.16 GPA. Also states that home school students; college graduate rate is 9 percent higher then its peers.
One of main the reason educators do not like for students top be home school because some of the kids are antisocial and do not really know how to make new friends. They also do not learn how to face the type of adversity that kids in public school go through. Like an argument on the playground or discovering their first crush in one of their classes; all of those little situations shapes their young minds.
Diane Ravitch wrote in “Why I Changed My Mind”: “We must ensure that every child has the benefit of a coherent curriculum, one that includes history, literature, geography, civics, science, the arts, mathematics and physical education.” Including all of those elements into our education process like the public school systems does will prepare our students for the real world. That is the advantage of going to public school once a child graduates from high school they should be ready to go to college and not only do well in there classes but with every day life.
In a 24 hour day, we spend 8 of those hours sleeping, 8 hours in school, 2 hours doing extracurricular activities, so there is only 6 hours in the day for public school students to spend with there parents. All of that time away from their parents is preparing them to leave there home, and be young adults. If the kids our at home for most of there young life they will not be mentally ready to take on the real world alone because they had there parents every step of the way.
As Diane Ravitch mentioned in her book; whether the kid is at a charter school or public the No child left behind law has it flaws that must be fixed before we can improve on our education system as country and move from the bottom of the totem pole.
As a parent I believe that I should ultimately have the final say so on where my child decides to go to school. A person that lives in DC, that has no idea what my family and I are going through, should not be able to tell me what is best for my child. Whether I think it is best for my child to be home schooled or attend any public school in the area, parents should have the choice.
