Homeschooling vs Public Schooling:

The Benefits To Home School

Here are more reasons why the benefits to homeschooling vs public schooling lead me to agree with Award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto that schools are not a good place for your kids.

If you think that's going too far, look at what John Gatto goes on to say:

"If they are swarmed by friends and win every award the place can offer, it changes nothing. From the first month of my teaching career of 30 years, I realized that intellectual power, creative insight, and good character was being diminished in my classroom." (John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction)

When it comes to mass public schooling, however well done, you cannot compete with the benefits to homeschooling.

One look at the activities we have done with William and Catherine will show you that homeschooling is of a fundamentally different nature than anything that could be attempted through public schools. Would you be able to teach a class with up to 30 children how to build a robot? Or run a dinosaurs for kids class activity for schools lasting two years for 7-13 year-olds covering the entire history of Life on Earth?

Besides which, something should have struck you. The activities sound fun, don't they? And that's one of the overwhelming benefits to homeschooling. You can follow the interests of your child, wherever they may lead. Look at John Taylor Gatto again:

"I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom," he says.

"Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave me the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it…They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were." (John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction)

Benefits To Homeschooling vs Public Schools

If you look at the About Me page, you'll see that I was homeschooled for the first eleven years of my life and the world seemed a fantastic place. Watching the ruthless efficiency with which High School demolished almost every subject it put on the blackboard is one of the main reasons I decided to avoid schools and enjoy the advantages of homeschooling with William and Catherine.

So what is it about homeschooling vs public schooling which makes schools so bad? It ignores the way children learn. Look at the wisdom of another iconic figure, John Holt:

"Schools cling more and more stubbornly to their mistaken idea that education and teaching are industrial processes, to be designed and planned from above in the minutest detail and then imposed on passive teachers and their even more passive students." (John Holt, How Children Learn)

And, if you need to hear the best endorsement ever of the benefits to homeschooling, look at what he says:

"It is only in the presence of loving, respectful, trusting adults…that children will learn all they are capable of learning, or reveal to us what they are learning." (John Holt, How Children Learn)

In fact, the very nature of public schooling means they cannot compete with the benefits to homeschooling.

"We need to realize (that)... no two people are alike, all 'averages' are lies, and nobody can be accurately contained by numbers and graphs." (John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction)

Benefits to Homeschooling

You can see what I mean by allowing your kids to set the agenda if you have a look at our free homeschooling curriculum. You won't see standard public schooling lesson plans, targets, achievement scores. But, as you travel to the rainforest with homeschool science or join our ocean creatures for kids projects, you'll see we can use all the benefits of homeschooling to teach science in a completely different way.

You'll find the fundamental difference between homeschooling vs public schooling in our home are the homeschooling methods we use. Schools teach top-down; our homeschooling is, as much as possible, bottom-up. It's William and Catherine who have shown us the benefits to homeschooling by getting us learning how to draw a dragon or finding out how to make an ocean diorama.

For us, it's about the benefits of learning together, trying things out, seeing what works and encouraging interests. It's meant we've covered all sorts of education no public schooling could ever encompass. It's exciting, fulfilling and often challenging.

Scary isn't it? What I'm saying is that mass public schooling has got it wrong. It does its best, there are lots of very good teachers and very good schools, but fundamentally it cannot compete. Schools are also dangerous:

"By supporting school-imposed order, however innocently, parents make enemies of their own children, sometimes lifelong enemies." (John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction)

You'll see that having a close-knit family is one of the many homeschooling benefits that come from not sending your child to school.

The debate over homeschooling vs public schooling has led many people to question what effect schools have on our children. If you want to know more about John Holt and why he became so disillusioned with public schooling, Wikipedia tells you all about his life and why his book: Teach Your Own, became the textbook of the early homeschooling movement.

Homeschooling vs public schooling is one of the most important issues that affects you and your children; I hope I've let the cat out of the bag, made you question whether public schools are best and shown you that you do have a choice.

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