Why More Parents are Choosing to Home Educate
Parents who want to provide a quality education for their children are caught between a rock and a hard place. Many public schools are simply failing their students. Even those that aren’t are still inculcating your children with philosophies and worldviews that you may not be comfortable with. Magnet or charter schools may do some things better, but they bring their own baggage. Private schools are cost-prohibitive for the majority of American families.
What’s a parent to do?!
There is another option that many parents may not have even considered: homeschooling.
More than 2 million children are homeschooled in the U.S., and those students on average outperform their public-school peers by more than 20 points on a variety of standardized tests. They are better equipped to think critically, write eloquently and persuasively, and participate more fully in leadership opportunities in the corporate culture as well as our own communities.
“But what about socialization? What about extracurriculars like sports or music?”
Homeschooling doesn’t appear to have stifled the success of NFL quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, five-time NBA all-star, power forward Blake Griffin, the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, Serena Williams, and Olympic Gold medalists Michelle Kwan, Bode Miller, and Carly Patterson. Pop stars like the Jonas Brothers, Hanson, and LeeAnn Rimes don’t seem to have suffered any lack of socialization—or success—from having been homeschooled. Homeschooling actually gives parents far more flexibility to allow their children to focus on the things they enjoy, whether it is figure skating or physics, playing the guitar or writing poetry.
Classical Conversations
Classical Conversations is one of the largest homeschooling organizations in the world with 50,000 families and 125,000 students enrolled in its programs in all 50 states and 25 countries. The classical model of education, which Classical Conversations embraces, is ideally suited to children’s natural learning development and has been proven over more than a thousand years. Founded in 1997, CC provides a comprehensive, classical curriculum, resources, training and a support community for homeschooling families.
Here are four areas where Classical Conversations can help you during your homeschooling journey.
Curriculum
“I couldn’t possibly teach my own children! I don’t know how to teach! I’m not a certified teacher!” All of those objections are without foundation. Your children will never have a teacher that understands them better, is more committed to teaching them, nor more vested in their success than you are. Classical Conversations has a comprehensive homeschool curriculum that has been tested over more than 20 years.
Community
John Donne wrote that “No man is an island,” and no one can identify with that statement more than the homeschooling parent trying to go it alone. Children simply learn better in community—they get to learn by watching their peers do it and listening to their peers explain it. Parents teach better in community—they are being equipped to teach by trained tutors, they learn from veteran homeschool parents, and gain insight and emotional support from their peers.
Geography
It’s no secret that American students know far less about world geography than their peers around the globe. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. eighth-graders tested below proficient in geography on the Nation’s Report Card. A recent National Geographic/Roper Poll found that half of 18- 24-year-old Americans surveyed could not locate New York on a map of the United States, and nearly 6 in 10 could not locate Ohio. Ten percent couldn’t find the U.S. on a world map. By contrast, every student that completes Classical Conversations’ Foundations program will not only be able to locate every country around the world but will also be able to draw and label a map of the entire world from memory.
Communication
Fear of public speaking is the most common phobia in the world, both among children and adults. According to a GMAC survey of more than a thousand U.S. corporations, communication skills top the list of skills and abilities that these employers will look for in hiring college graduates this year.
Classical Conversations’ students begin making oral presentations in front of their peers at age 4. They are writing persuasive essays at 12 and engaged in mock trial and debate at 13. By their senior year they are writing research papers that are more scholarly than any college freshman paper.
Click here to learn more about Classical Conversations.