Book Reviews: Using Home School to Pass Along Your Personal Values
Home school parents often cite personal values when they make the decision to start a home school program for their children. Both sides of the political spectrum feel that the other side blatantly and brazenly infringes on their rights as parents. Some religious parents see secular groups as performing a violent assault on their way of life and values, while secular parents feel that religious movements are using political power to unduly influence the lives of their children. Whichever side you come down on, home school may be a good option for you. Home school allows you to more closely supervise the types of messages that your children receive and how your children interpret those signals.
Home school allows you to almost completely control what your children have and don't have access to in terms of curriculum, literature and books, friends, and other outside influences. Curriculum is one major point of contention between religious and secular home school groups, but neither side has to worry. Religious home school parents can make Bible study the core of their curriculum while non-religious home school parents are free to teach their children using whatever books and materials they believe suit their needs as well as the needs of their children. The same holds true for literature and books. While more religious home school parents can pick books for their children that reflect Christian values, non-religious parents can pick non-religious books that they believe will impact their children for their home school curriculum.
Home school also allows you to pick and choose who your children will see. If you are a religious parent concerned about the moral values in today's public school, home school may be the answer to a major problem for you. You can keep your children away from the declining moral values and culture of disrespect that you see in today's traditional schools. On the other hand, many secular parents feel that religious groups are using the schools to proselytize their religion. Again, both sets of parents can utilize home school to make sure their children are exposed only to the messages that the parents deem fit for them. In the home school situation, the parent also has a good deal more control over whom their children socialize with. Parents, no matter what side of the socio-political spectrum they fall on, will be glad for this increased say in the lives of their children.
________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, author, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of almost 3 decades reside with their 8 children in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. because "our current system of education has broken its promise..." Learning By Grace, Inc. delivers Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children in the United States and throughout the world.
Rothschild has authored a number of books about education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Daily Education News Blog contains feature stories on alternatives in education.