Why I Will Homeschool My Son

My son, Jason, just turned three this past summer. As he almost too quickly approaches the age of four, which is when we as parents had initially decided to send him to school, the debate as to where to send him has heated up. He is very smart and advanced for his age (and I am not being biased at all about that). He knows how to count and spell in five languages, and has already begun to read and write basic words in English.

I have approached some colleagues and contacts about this topic, and what I have to say as a result of my research and questioning has astonished many, even me: The question of where to send him to school slowly became a question of if to send him anywhere at all, and, ultimately, when my son is ready for school, my wife and I will homeschool him.

The critics and doubters have asked countless questions: What about his social development? Why would you want to take on such a commitment? What about how he feels about it in the future? How will he learn to get by in the world if he doesn’t go to school? Isn’t it too expensive to homeschool? Won’t someone need to quit their job and stay home? The benefits of homeschooling far outweigh the disadvantages, especially in today’s day and age, and here’s why:

• Homeschooling is more personalized. With the student/teacher ratio in most schools today, students in schools today are lucky to get one minute of individual attention in each class or lesson period. When you homeschool, or join a homeschooling group, your children receive all the attention they need and crave. That makes an enormous difference, particularly for younger learners. In today’s school system, each year your child receives a new teacher, and each teacher has to absorb the strong points and weaknesses of each student. Hence, it could take weeks, even months, before your child’s teacher teaches them efficiently. In fact, the teacher could almost too easily miss something significant. Otherwise, what’s the excuse for so many children, many of whom are raised properly and go to “great” schools, winding up being so clueless? The answer, simply put, is that no one knows your child like you do. When you teach them, instead of a stranger, no one will know their educational needs better than you will.

• Homeschooling allows for self-paced learning. A critical part to learning is being capable of moving at a pace that is right for the student. Sometimes teachers must slow the pace down a bit to allow everyone to completely understand a topic or issue before moving on to the next point. Other times, the student is way ahead of the group or class, and sitting around waiting for others to catch up is both time-wasting and boring, which leads to less interest in the subject, and sometimes even a pattern of becoming distracted as a result of this lack of interest. Homeschooled children can study and learn at exactly the speed they need, in an environment that doesn’t cater to the slowest and lowest on the learning curve.

• Homeschooling teaches entrepreneurship. Life is about mentoring and being mentored. Many entrepreneurs see their day-to-day jobs as a form of mentorship. Moreover, angel investors are largely seeking entrepreneurs or situations where they can "add value" which are, essentially, mentoring situations. Mentoring is extremely important in virtually every aspect of life. This is all to say that making sure that your children learn entrepreneurship means helping your kids find someone to answer questions. We wouldn't tell our kids to learn ballet or skiing on their own, so why tell them, or expect them, to learn to launch and maintain a successful business on their own? Entrepreneurship often is about inspiration and hope. It involves a pie-in-the-sky method of thinking and analysis that most of the world doesn’t understand. Thus, the real accomplishment for entrepreneurs-to-be is learning the procedures and methods of entrepreneurship so they can put those skills to use in order to create a life for themselves. Money and business are nearly never brought up in schools. And yet, comprehending these topics is vital to survival in today’s world, and to becoming prosperous in life in general. Homeschooling allows for plenty of time to embrace and incorporate all kinds of training in topics such as money and business.

• Homeschooling promotes healthy eating. Unfortunately, the vast majority of today’s schools, especially public schools, feed our children garbage, which fosters and promotes obesity and a lifelong addiction to junk food.Remember, garbage in leads to garbage out.Huge corporations make billions of dollars off of the contracts they get to supply this junk to our kids, and the bottom line is all that they ever will care about. After all, their investment is in the profits off of the junk food, while yours is in the child. A developing brain develops as a result of what it eats and drinks. If it ingests toxins, and doesn’t receive ample nutrients, it will not function properly. Simply sending them with a lunch you’ve prepared will not solve this problem; kids swap lunches and get each other snacks all the time. You want your child to be beautiful and healthy. If your child is at home, you can control what they eat and drink.

• Homeschooling produces more leaders. Let’s go back in time a bit here and research the goal behind the creation of the public school system. This system was formed over a century ago in order to train workers and soldiers. Today, you can add consumers and followers to that list. Homeschooling allows both you and your child to set your own goals as to what they would like to achieve in all areas of life. Your goals can be to create cheerful, healthy, affluent, faithful, proficient men and women who are independent thinkers, financially independent, and capable of working toward making our world a much better place for everybody in it.

• Homeschooling actually results in better social development. One of the very few reasons left to promote the public school system is that children “need” school for “social development.” As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. This can be proven easily and through many statistics, like a shocking statistic that showcases the social results of public school systems – more than 40% of young men are arrested by age 23! As we all know, individuals who are arrested have much less of a chance of ever getting a decent, career job. Convicted felons will find it very, very difficult to obtain even a mediocre job. And remember that most serial killers went to public schools. To say that children need schools for social development is like saying that drivers need to get into dangerous accidents to properly learn how to drive. It is nonsense. Kids learn best from the adults who love them, not from other kids their own age who know just as little as they do, if not less. Moreover, children are vulnerable and can easily pick up bad habits from others who don’t have parents that are as good at parenting as you are. Let alone other kids and young adults who are drug dealers. This holds true when it comes to manners and communication, in addition to learning. The school system is, in fact, an illusion of reality that has very little resemblance to the real world. It’s the only period during life when kids are surrounded only by kids of their own age. In the real world, individuals are constantly surrounded by people of every age. Here’s something to think about: If we’re to question how effectively homeschooling promotes social development, we ought to ask the very same question with regards to school systems. One thing that homeschooling excels at that school systems do not is how to be self-reliant and cheerful when by yourself for a while. This is a valuable skill to acquire, as these days I know many people who are so busy working that they no longer have the time to see their old school ‘friends,’ even if they reside close by. Not only will homeschooling shelter your children from the many, many bad apples of modern society (the ratio keeps getting worse), they will learn and become influenced by groups that they will fit in with for life, not just until the 6 grade. They don’t need to be exposed to degenerates to learn not to be like degenerates; exposure to future leaders, influencers and well-mannered children will get them to gravitate towards similar group of people throughout their lives.

• Homeschooling produces better results, academically and otherwise, quicker. It has become well known that homeschooled children are at least one academic year ahead of public school-educated children. This is the minimum, and very often the difference is much more than that. We constantly hear on the news about families of homeschooled children who are graduating at 14, finishing college at 18, etc. When it comes to reasoning skills, homeschooled individuals are generally found to be a far as seven years ahead! Also, homeschoolers earn better grades on standardized tests and other forms of testing. They average over 77% when assessed via testing and other academic methods. Public school students average about 50%.

• Homeschooling raises self-esteem, the key to success in life. Arguably the most imperative factor of being socially adept is possessing strong self-esteem. Nothing has been found to build stronger self-esteem in an individual than spending the first seven years of their life, 24 hours a day, with their parents. This fosters solid feelings of love and security. The absence of a parent during that time does the exact opposite. Thus, the more that a child is homeschooled, especially during their early years, the better. Some studies have even shown that toddlers go into stress the minute their mothers simply exit the room! This makes sense since, down the line, babies of nurturing species such as humans and primates have been programmed to depend on their mothers for survival. Stress is the main blocker to learning as it scrambles the brain. Love makes the brain stronger and, if a parent is not present with their child during the first seven-or-so years of the child’s life, it may be perceived to be lack of love, which can affect self-esteem and even more than that.

• Homeschooling is free of drugs and violence. We don’t need the statistics and reports to back this one up. Most individuals will be introduced to illicit substances and dangerous drugs through schools, or via ‘friends’ they meet at schools. Kids that attend private schools can be more prone to doing drugs, simply since they have more money. If you homeschool, you have much more of a say as to whom your child spends time with.

• Homeschooling keeps up with the times. We all know the word “lag.” It denotes the gap between when an idea is conceived and when it is accepted and implemented. In educational systems, this can take up to 80 years! As a result, many school children will stop caring about school work at a certain age because they become smart enough to realize that 95 percent of what they are being taught won’t have any practical impact or application in the real world.

• Homeschooling is more productive. I mentioned this before: life is about survival. Those who understand this better live a life of more pleasure, and those who don’t understand this that well have more pain. People learn this through being productive, not from being busy. Productive work does not equal busy work. Busy work that is done in school very often leads to bored children who accept the routine but learn little to nothing from it. While home, your kids will learn things that will help them with this idea of survival, including how to do real work, like chores or errands. They do not learn much by sitting around and gazing out of the window. At home they learn how to do almost everything, from how to prepare food and cook, to how do understand politics and mathematics, so they remain strong, healthy and clever and can also save money by learning the skills necessary to look after themselves. The also learn how to explore new topics covering the multitude of subjects which aren’t even pointed out in schools, such as: banking, business, manufacturing, marketing, sales, finance, farming, utility repairs, entrepreneurship, travel, and thinking independently. In contrast, the busy work that comprises a sizable portion of school curricula just fills in time. This ultimately promotes laziness in children who don’t grow up to know a whole lot, and who are reluctant to do real work or think for themselves – they are waiting to be spoon-fed what to do with their lives. I certainly am not claiming that all children turn out to be this way, as I went through the school system myself. However, if they don’t, it is due to their parents, and not because of anything they learned while in school.

• Homeschooling is inexpensive. You can homeschool your child for less than a thousand dollars a year. Even if you choose to send your child to a public school, expenses still exist that are directly related to their schooling. Moreover, a top private school can cost $15,000 – $20,000 a year or even more. Yet, the true price you will pay is because much of the money in schools is not spent effectively. A field trip from school that might cost $75 per student may not be nearly as productive as a decent program or educational toy. The library, and your group or community, can provide loads of content for free. Also, you must envision the entire picture when figuring out the price of a good education. For instance, think through taxes and the price associated with living in an expensive area. Relocating to a more rural region where the overall cost of living is not nearly as much, and staying at home as a mother (or father) in order to be able to homeschool, will potentially spend a lot less money because mom (or dad) no longer needs the budget for gas and suits associated with work, nor would they have to budget in daycare or other related payments. Moreover, activities will be mainly at home or in the direct area, which will save even more money, like cooking meals at home instead of buying packaged food, or even gardening and growing food. You might have believed that homeschooling is too expensive, but I seriously believe that you simply can’t afford not to do it. Have you ever come across adolescents, or, for that matter, fully grown adults, who are so bad at taking care of themselves, whether financially or otherwise, that they ultimately wind up coming back home and living with their parents? I definitely know more than a few. I was even one of them myself for a while. Schools, public or private, incorporate a number of additional things to their curricula that you may not necessary be keen on teaching your own children, such as killing numerous hours playing computer games, or how to be a consumer rather than a saver or an investor, or spending more to stay beside everyone else – while the fact is that not many of those folks care about you at all, and after school ends you possibly will not encounter any of them again. Schools also indirectly promote laziness. After all, school children park themselves at their desks six hours a day on average. And much of that time is spent daydreaming or chatting.

• Homeschooling is portable. More and more families need to move regularly to accommodate their careers and lives today than ever before. There is an extra element of pressure and tension in this if you have kids, for you will only agree to move into areas with great schools, which can be very limiting. Moreover, each time your young ones have to switch schools, their education, and sometimes even their morale, suffers. Homeschooling allows you the flexibility of living anywhere, at any time, without affecting your child’s education. For instance, I am in business development, and need to travel a lot. I also love taking long trips with my family. No problem! I also recently moved to a small town in the countryside, where the cost of living is a fraction of my past costs, and, again, I can do that easily if I homeschool.

• Homeschooling fosters a love of learning. Countless individuals do not have a clue as to what the answer to “What would you like to be when you grow up?” should be, since they have no idea what they’ll need to do if and when they get there. For example – someone I know spent almost five years studying in college to become a pharmacist. Then he graduated and, after a few years working as a pharmacist, he hated it. So he went right back to college and ultimately became a dentist. What a waste of time and money! Homeschooling allows you to create opportunities for your children to get real-world experiences and a taste of many different careers. Kids who are homeschooled logically learn to love learning. Most children I know that go to schools, private or public, learn to hate it. Thus, kids who are homeschooled are primed and very well positioned to continue to love top learn for life, and they will also more than probably impart this love onto their children and communities in the future.

Convinced yet? The list of benefits goes on and on, ranging from academic to political to religious to professional to social, but I will stop here, as I aimed to cover most of the academic, professional and social reasons in this article. Bottom line, your children are your most precious investment, so if you think you can (and I am almost positive that you can) afford to take on this wonderful adventure of an experience, I strongly urge you to do so, as it might just become the best decision you have ever made for anyone, ever.

Michael Khater is a business development executive, writer, e-learning expert and supplier diversity specialist at Appliedinfo Partners (D2 Creative/ D2 TEAM-Sim) in Somerset, NJ.