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Thousands of Parents Now Homeschool Their Children In Less Time Than You Think |
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Many parents are disgusted with the dismal education their kids get in public
school, but think they wouldn't have the time to homeschool their kids because
both parents (or single moms) have jobs.
The good news is that even
working parents can homeschool their kids. Parents don’t have to depend on
vouchers or charter schools, which are few and far between. The time you will
need to teach your children the basics — reading, writing, and arithmetic — is
much less than you think.
Most parents are not aware of the fact that
for over 200 years in this country, before we ever had public schools, most
working parents taught their kids to read and do arithmetic at home. Let me
quote author and former public-school teacher John Gatto from his wonderful
book, "Dumbing Us Down":
“Were the colonists geniuses? [i.e., why did
our colonial forefathers have literacy rates close to 90 percent?]. No, the
truth is that reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about 100 hours
[italics added] to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to
learn. . . . Millions of people teach themselves these things. It really isn’t
very hard. . .”
To be conservative, let’s assume that because you’re not
an experienced teacher it takes you three hundred hours to teach your child
these skills with the help of learn-to-read phonics workbooks and computer
software. Three hundred hours, divided by the average six-hour public school
day, comes out to fifty school days, which is about ten weeks or three months.
Let me emphasize this point — it could take you, or a tutor you pay, as
little as three months to teach your child to read, write, and do simple
arithmetic. Again, to be even more conservative, most children could learn these
skills in one year if you (or a tutor) concentrated your instruction on these
basics. Public schools take eight to twelve years of children’s lives, yet they
turn out millions of high-school graduates who can barely read their own diploma
or multiply 12 x15 without a calculator.
David Colfax and his wife Micki
were public-school teachers turned ranchers who taught their four sons at home
in the 1970s and 1980s, and three of their sons eventually went to Harvard. They
co-authored a book titled Homeschooling For Excellence, which describes their
home-schooling experience. In their book, they compared the time a child wastes
in public school to the time average home-schooling parents need to teach their
children the basics. Here’s what they wrote:
“The numbers are
straightforward and irrefutable. The child who attends public school typically
spends approximately 1100 hours a year there, but only twenty percent of
these—220—are spent, as the educators say, ‘on task.’ Nearly 900 hours, or
eighty percent, are squandered on what are essentially organizational matters.”
“In contrast, the homeschooled child who spends only two hours per day,
seven days a week, year-round, on basics alone, logs over three times as many
hours ‘on task’ in a given year than does his public school counterpart.
Moreover, unlike the public school child, whose day is largely taken up by
non-task activities, the homeschooled child has ample time left each day to take
part in other activities — athletics, art, history, etc...”
So,
according to the authors, if home-schooled children study for only two hours a
day, year round, they will get three times more educational hours on academic
basics like reading, writing, and arithmetic than public-school students get.
Not only does teaching your child the basics at home take far less time
than you thought, but teaching these skills is even easier today because parents
now have tons of education resources available to them such as the Internet and
computer learning software. Also, bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders
have whole sections full of books about teaching your child to read, write, and
do basic math, as well as books that will interest and challenge young readers.
Once your children learn to read well, the whole world of learning opens
to them. They can explore any subject that interests them, and read ever more
difficult material by themselves in books or on the computer. For a small
subscription fee, your children can study the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on
the Internet. They can access almost every major library in the world through
the Internet, including the Library of Congress. If your kids love to read and
learn, the Internet provides unlimited resources.
Once your children
read fluently, you can point them towards your local library or bookstore,
supervise their studies, and see where their interests lie. Your job is to
introduce your kids to as many different subjects and resources as possible.
Have them take art classes at the local YMCA, library, or arts and crafts store.
Introduce them to different kinds of music. See if they enjoy a music lesson on
the piano, guitar, or drums. Give them classic novels by great authors to read.
Most home-schooling parents spend about three to four hours a day
homeschooling their kids. The key point to remember is that you have many
options and a vast amount of education resource material available to help you
homeschool your children and quickly teach them the basics.
The Resource
section in my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace" lists a wealth of education
resources parents can take advantage of right now. You do not have to depend on
vouchers or charter schools. When you take advantage of all the education
resources available to you, home-schooling can be fairly easy and take much less
time than you think.
Don't your kids deserve the great education you can
give them?
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