Why you should not home school your kids

Home schooling has become a trend for numerous reasons.  One of the reasons is quality of education.  Some studies have shown that home schooled children are generally above average against their public school peers.  Some of these public school peers have the potential to be bullies or sell your kids drugs, so you want to keep them home and let them have more control over who they mingle with, subject to your approval.  And speaking of your approval, you approve the texts and the reading and the instructors and the experience of religion.  Not to mention you can sleep in and go to bed at a reasonable time.  And, if you so choose – and many do – you can utilize the same classes and programs offered to all the other kids.  You can send your kids to the public school for P.E., or to a local college for some of their high school classes for credit that they can use later to skip unnecessary years towards a degree.

Some individuals and governments resist the home school trend.  Families that come to the U.S. specifically for the freedom to give their children an education risk deportation.  They come here because America does allow home schooling, albeit begrudgingly.

Maybe the U.S. is so cranky because they're concerned for the children.  They wouldn't want your kids to be at a disadvantage when they get to college.  After such a good education at home reading Shakespeare and Frost and writing a dissertation on Plato, the first year or two of college is a review of middle school.  Home schooling means risking brain damage when your children bang their heads repeatedly against the wall of their dorm rooms.

Sure, not every home school is excellent, but why take that chance?  Don't risk raising your students to be too smart for college at the undergraduate degree level.  Think of all the money you'll spend on those first two years – maybe three! – of college before everyone catches up with your little scholars.  Think of their strong, healthy brains slowly turning to mush day after day, going through the motions of writing ten page papers that are so hard they can't wait to get to graduate school.  Just think!  You're setting your children up to spend years of their adult life in universities before they are finally satisfied with the challenge they find getting their doctorate in English.  You're raising your children to be academics!

Let's face it.  College will only put a strong hand on your budding child's shoulder and tell them, "It's time to conform, son.  Bwahaha we've finally GOT YOU!"

Right when your kids thought they were ready to fly, too.  You set them up to think that college is the time to soar mentally and academically and, of course, the reality is that college will teach them to slow down and match everyone else's mediocrity.  Please spare them that cruel punishment.  Spare them the pain of that horrible adjustment and protect them from haunting questions like, "What am I doing with my life?  Why is America so dumb?"  And that of course leads to anarchy.

So if you love your kids, do them and your country a favor.  Don't teach your kids to be smart and love learning.  We all know it's a dead end after high school, and the hill to interesting courses gets steep.  Why would you raise your kids to question the status quo?  You'd lead them to disappointment and disillusionment and despair.  They'll have to realize sooner or later that they need money and no one will stop to listen to all that advanced knowledge they accumulated.  There will be no circles to sit in and discuss Nietzsche or C.S. Lewis or Alex Haley.  Home schooling teaches your kids that life is smart.  Life is not smart, it is dumb.

Could be you'll be a lucky one and your home schooling will be mediocre, or your child won't be set on fire to learn.  But when your kids are at stake, you probably shouldn't take the risk.