Homeschooling: Would It Work for Your Child?

By Larissa Phillips

For most New York City parents, education is the issue that never goes away. Will Pre-K be eliminated? Will class size go up? How will my child’s school fare in the standardized test scores? Will my child be reading sanitized versions of history and literature?

But for one group of parents, the whims of Albany policy-makers, the efforts of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and issues such as test scores and school violence, are not so relevant. Their children are not subject to the inclinations of the politicians or the economy. Their children do not go to school.

Conflicting History

Homeschooling used to seem like the province of aging hippies and fundamentalist Christians. Rather than subject their children to the evils of society, popular opinion supposed these reputedly selfish or, perhaps, just plain crazy parents preferred to cloister their kids at home. The public (and, often, the school board and the state) charged that the kids were deprived of normal socialization, an objective curriculum and a decent education. Possibly, it was the arrogance that irked onlookers the most. How could one set of parents hope to provide the same range and depth of knowledge as an entire school setting?

Although homeschooling was a normal part of American life until 100 years ago (Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Rachel Carson and others were schooled at home), today’s parents have been harassed and jailed for keeping their children out of school. According to the Homeschooling Legal Defense Association, as recently as January of this year, a homeschooled Texas teenager was placed in juvenile detention for two weeks over the Christmas holidays, for truancy. Last summer, a Colorado family was wrongfully accused of neglect for homeschooling their daughter, and a Michigan family had its social security benefits unlawfully reduced because they were homeschooling their special needs daughter. Perhaps, just as tryingly, many have been castigated by family and friends and accused of abuse and neglect.

But is homeschooling really so bad? And more to the point: Is it maybe a good thing?

Growing Options

In recent years, the number of homeschooling families has skyrocketed. With these growing numbers (and the advent of the Internet), options have increased. Today, homeschooling styles are as diverse as parenting styles. They range from families who emulate the school day as nearly as possible (sitting down at 9 a.m. to cover the range of subjects, one by one, that a traditional classroom would cover) to the "unschoolers," who believe that the natural curiosity of a child will provide sufficient guidance and that any parental direction can be damaging to a child’s spirit.