The Weekly Sam: HOME SCHOOLING AND THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

(This article was originally published in the late 1980s.  Today, the homeschool movement is flourishing-Ed)

Home schooling is now the fastest growing educational phenomenon in the United States. For example, in April of this year, Massachusetts had its first home-school convention and more than 600 registries showed up, many with babes in arms preparing for the future. These are young Christian families who have decided that their children will never see the inside of a public school. No one knows exactly how many children are being educated at home. Estimates vary from 200,000 to a million. What we do know is that there are now home-school associations in every state and more home-school conventions, conferences, seminars, workshops and book fairs than anyone family can attend. Why is the home-education movement attracting so many new young families? Much of it has to do with the renewal of the Christian family and the desire to adhere to Biblical principles in child rearing.

The growing knowledge among Christians that the public schools are aggressively proselytizing Christian children into humanism via such programs as values clarification, sensitivity training, globalism, multiculturalism, evolution, sex education and death education is perhaps the most compelling reason why parents are turning to home schooling as the preferred alternative ~. Also, many families are disappointed in the lukewarm religious content of many Christian schools that seem to adopt too much from  the public schools in curriculum and general ‘practice. What the parents want is a strong, radical shift in orientation toward the Bible. They seek its moral and spiritual security in a world inundated by pornography, drugs, violence, abortion. political corruption and pagan depravity. The home school is being recognized as perhaps the only sure safe haven for children growing up in an increasingly dangerous society.

Meanwhile, the education establishment has become quite concerned with the growth of the home-education movement, which is contributing to the exodus from the public school. In fact, at its 1988 convention, the National Education Association virtually declared war on home education with its Resolution C-34:

“The National Education Association believes that home-school programs cannot provide the child with a comprehensive education experience. The Association believes that, if parental preference home-school study occurs, students enrolled must meet all state requirements. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used. The Association further believes that such home-school programs should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents.”

While the NEA deprecates the home school as an educational institution, the home schoolers are proving that their children are indeed getting a “comprehensive education experience” far  superior to the academic junk-food that public schoolers are fed for twelve years and result in declining test scores and increased functional illiteracy.

All of this has led to an education reform movement which is costing the taxpayers additional billions without any visible improvement to date. In addition, wherever home schoolers have been tested,  they’ve done better than their public-school counterparts. For example, in Tennessee, where about 900 home schoolers were registered with the state in 1989 — even though it is estimated that about 4,000 Tennessee children are being taught at home — home schoolers did quite \well. The Chattanooga News-Free Press of Dec. 11, 1989, reported:

“State tests show that second graders are about equal to their classroom-educated counterparts. But by the fifth grade, home schoolers have passed their classroom peers in reading, and by the seventh grade home schoolers excel in both math and language, scores show.”

In 1987, the performance of homeschoolers in Tennessee was equally impressive. Of the 561 homeschoolers tested, 213 outscored 245,000 of their public-school counterparts. Fifty-nine homeschool second graders were among the nation’s top 16 percent in reading ability and in the top 10 percentile in math. In the eighth grade, 30 home-schoolers scored 89 percent in reading and 79 percent in math. The 61,518 public school students scored 82 percent in reading and 72 percent in math. (Chattanooga Times, 8/13/87)

The reason why home schoolers do so well is because one-on-one tutoring is far superior to the classroom situation where children who need help get lost in the crowd. In tutoring you get immediate feedback, immediate correction, and thus the child is less likely to develop bad academic habits. Also, home-schooling parents are more apt to teach their children to read by intensive phonics than by the discredited, inefficient look-say or whole-word method. This makes an enormous difference when the goal is academic excellence. Another reason why home schoolers excel is because home educators are highly motivated, dedicated parents, committed to providing their children with the best education possible.

They want their children to become the best that America has to offer. The home-educated youngster represents the finest expression of the American Christian character; moral in behavior, peer independent, self-confident, respectful of elders, self-disciplined, inventive, freedom loving, patriotic, enterprising, God fearing. These are the youngsters who will become the leaders of tomorrow. It is symptomatic of our corrupt, paganized society that it is the finest Christian families, who have accepted their responsibility to educate and rear their children in a Godly manner, who are being , harassed and prosecuted by educational bureaucrats and state attorneys in Iowa, Michigan and elsewhere, determined to impose an atheistic sovereignty over God’s children. There will be many trials and tribulations in the days ahead, but in Christ, victory is ultimately assured.

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