Children all over the United States and Canada are being bombarded in their own public schools by a slew of marketing messages from corporate America. Public school students can no longer walk down the hallway, ride the bus, or even open up their textbooks without being subjected to a message that essentially tells them that they need to buy something.
“Corporations in the Classroom” is a one-hour documentary that profiles the increasing covert influence that big business is exerting on public school children in America and Canada. Marketing to school age students is estimated to be a 2 billion dollar industry. The film raises questions about the lack of regulations that are in place that would protect our children from the aggressive corporate marketing campaigns that are often masquerading as classroom lessons.
The problem that I see with this new “curricula,” that is being perpetrated on our children, is not necessarily the idea that corporate sponsorships are inappropriate ways to fund education. Just like public television has brought millions of people excellent programming through corporate sponsorships and fundraising efforts, it is not inconceivable that appropriate advertising could be used to pay for quality education.
The problem is that it is being done in the public schools where the taxpayers are already paying for the education. If corporate sponsorships were to replace the taxpayer funded system, there may be a new level of accountability that would improve the school system.
As home schoolers who are forced to pay for our local schools even when we have rejected them as unworthy of our children, eliminating the taxpayer funded public schools would give home schooling families significantly more money to invest in their home school children’s education.
A new school system that was funded by private enterprises would mean that the quality of the schooling would rise because families would have choices in where they send their children. The fundamental principle of our free market system is that when people are free to create businesses that offer services or products then those businesses are forced to offer the highest quality product because of the competition they face from other businesses trying to do the same thing. That competition is what makes the price go down and helps increase the quality. In our public schools, there is virtually no competition except for the rich who can afford a five figure tuition. The illegal monopoly that our public schools enjoy over education is what makes it so poor. Eliminate the monopoly, allow enterprise to flourish the way it does in every other industry and that is one of the solutions to our failing public educational system.
Michael Alison Chandler of The Washington Post wrote a compelling and positive article on homeschooling yesterday. Often times the mainstream media has been critical of homeschooling. Media outlets have overlooked homeschooling’s success and instead focused on a number of unimportant related issues during the debate over homeschooling. Chandler gives credit where credit is due and praises the quality education homeschooling delivers to students.
Chandler notes that homeschooling “is gaining ground in a crucial arena: college admissions.” Most colleges and universities have a formal policy in place for evaluating homeschooling students. This policy will prove to be monumental as the number of homeschooling students have increased to almost two million students in America.
I’m so happy that homeschoolers are finally being lauded for their accomplishments and their first-class educations. Chandler describes my excitement when thinking about how far homeschooling has come over the last 25 years considering “it was illegal in many states for parents without teaching licenses to educate their children at home.”
Read the rest of Michael Alison Chandler’s article on homeschooling here.
What are your homeschoolers doing this summer? Going back in time? Sailing on the high seas? Hanging out with the three little pigs? Summer is the perfect time for homeschoolers to improve their readings skills and have a blast while doing it. We’ve compiled a comprehensive summer reading list for each Grace Academy grade so that your homeschoolers can improve their reading skills over the summer and have fun reading a variety of amazing stories. Encourage your homeschooler to read everyday and see their reading skills improve dramatically over the summer!
Homeschool parents should also check out our homeschool summer school program. Our summer school program helps homeschoolers grow their minds, gain credit toward a high school diploma, and surge ahead academically instead of developing lazy habits. Have a great summer!!!
Parents are dramatically pulling their children out of public schools to homeschool them instead. According to the National Center for Education Statistics the number of homeschool students in 2003 is up 29 percent from 1999. Just imagine the increase of homeschool students in America now in 2007.
Parents are discovering the benefits of homeschooling their children as public schools continue to be plagued with violence, drugs, bullying, and an overall failing approach to educating students. Some parents are still apprehensive about homeschooling their children, most often because of the homeschooling myths that public schools have been feeding the masses over the years.
Ruth Olson of Newsweek sat down with Laura Derrick, president of the National Home Educator’s Network to discuss issues on homeschooling for high school students. Derrick tackles some of the theories non-homeschoolers have about homeschoolers, talks about her own experience with homeschooling, and why so many students are leaving the public schools to be homeschooled instead. Here is an excerpt:
What are some of the issues they face? I know for a lot of kids, high school is kind of their social life, that period of their life where they’re finding their boyfriend or girlfriend and hanging out with buddies and stuff.
“Right. And that’s very important. I mean, there is a long period of growth and maturation that happens during that time that is partly fueled by those social interactions, and teens really do need those; it’s not just something that’s nice to have. We see what happens when they’re deprived of that. For most homeschoolers, that’s not an issue. I know that’s the perception from outside the homeschooling universe, and homeschoolers actually laugh about it, because most of us, we call ourselves carschoolers because we’re in the car so much. There are, unfortunately, some parents who do isolate their kids more than is probably good for the kids. Those kind of parents come in every walk of life and across the board, unfortunately, and some of them do exist in the homeschooling world, too. But the vast majority of families really do get out and do a lot. So I don’t see that as being a problem that’s really related to homeschooling so much as it is to parenting.”
I think all of our MorningStar Academy’s parents and homeschoolers will find the complete interview to be quite fascinating. I would love to know what you think of the interview and if you agree with Laura Derrick or not.
Read the complete interview with Laura Derrick here.
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