The reasons are as diverse as the homeschoolers themselves! In the past, the most common reasons were probably religious and philosophical. Today, more and more homeschoolers are worried about issues such as safety in the schools (guns, bullies, drugs), the negative socialization of peer pressure, or the quality of education. Some parents just want to spend more time with their children or may view homeschooling as an inexpensive alternative to private school.
Because: "(society's)
Entrenched, false beliefs regarding learning and education will not be overcome
by the use of spurious titles to display the fact that children who don't go
to school really do learn …"
Mothers do not have children for the purpose of handing them over to the State.
Mothers, not governments, give birth to children and mothers, regardless of
race, creed, class, intellect and education, not governments, are designed to
nurture (bring up and nourish, including educationally) their own offspring.
Governments, not parents, designed a brutal system of artificial education for
children and governments, not parents, made attendance at educationally irrational
and intellectually, emotionally, psychologically and physically damaging schooling
institutions compulsory.
Governments, not parents, allowed cane and ruler wielding schoolteachers to
violently vent their spleen on generations of schooled children.
And governments, not parents, are responsible for the current obscene state
of public schools.
(Copyright BORN TO LEARN
- Adele Carrall - 1999)
Because we love them -
We protect our babies
from danger and as they grow older, warn them of potentially dangerous situations
and teach them about health and hygiene - as we love our children, we want them
to learn and educate them by providing them with information and encouraging
them to expand upon their skills and talents.
The vast majority of them
are sent away from the nurturing environment of their homes, where they have
been free to follow their natural instincts to learn and because of this, learning
at a very rapid rate, to a draconian institution, commonly known as a school.
After they are committed to the school, children are, while suffering varying
degrees of separation anxiety, deposited in what is called a, "Class."
They are perfunctorily placed … in a 'class' called, "Kindergarten,"
which consists of thirty or so children with vastly differing family backgrounds,
diverse prior learning experiences, incompatible capabilities and one teacher.
…
'Throughout the world, vast numbers of parents who want their children to have an excellent education are refusing to have them subjected to the educationally irrational system of schooling children en masse - and their numbers are multiplying at an astounding rate. Many of these intelligent and caring parents made it their business to discover as much as they could about learning, education and the practice of mass schooling long before their children reached what society now calls, "School age," and decided that it would be to their children's advantage not to attend school. Most of these parents rightly assert that because of their knowledge of these matters and their love of their children, they had no choice in their decision.
There are also many other parents who don't send their children to school and had no choice in their decision. Among these are parents who, from the time their children were babies, encouraged their instinctive love of music, singing, dancing, acting, art, reading, writing, history, mathematics and science. They also provided them with access to a wide vocabulary, general knowledge and information on hygiene and safety and helped them to develop sound moral values … long before they reached 'school age' but believing that children have to go to school and that, at school, their delight in learning would continue to be encouraged and their existing knowledge would broaden and grow, sent them to government owned and operated schools at around the age of five and have, due to abuse perpetrated upon their children within those schools, legally removed them to the nurturing environment of their own homes where, because their children are no longer being subjected to abuse by the mass schooling system, either public or private, they are stripped of funding by the government responsible for abuse of their children and where these parents, while themselves suffering from post traumatic stress, attempt to repair appalling emotional and psychological damage.
All of these parents display
every trait necessary for good parenting - great love of their children, commonsense,
courage, responsibility and dedication - their children learn in the real world,
not in a school, because these parents, for a multitude of reasons, arrived
at by use of logic, the science of correct and accurate thinking, reject mass
schooling for their children.'
The mass schooling system, which gained life and grew by preying upon and crushing
the spirits of children and by this means instilled into society an illogical
craving for its being, is beginning to perish. If it is allowed to die a slow
but natural death, countless more normal, intelligent children, many of whom
are gifted, will be labelled as having mental 'abnormalities'; innumerable other
children will develop mental illnesses and inestimable young lives will be lost
through suicide, drug abuse and school massacres. If it continues to be given
life support by attempts to alter its structure and massive, ever increasing,
injections of funding, it will take with it, in its death throes - which are
only just beginning - so many of its prey that society will be stunned, time
and time again, with the horror of its carnage.
Blind to the desperate efforts of the many distraught children who try to draw attention to their terrible plight in today's schools, governments ignore their anguished and despairing pleas and continue to doggedly cling to an antiquated pseudo-educational system which, because it denies the special needs of all children, actually causes vast numbers of children to have what are officially recognised as, "Special needs."
Oblivious to the cost, in
both human and financial terms, of schooling children en masse, governments
around the world not only fail to provide any alternatives whatsoever to this
inhuman system but treat parents who don't have their children subjected to
its educational, emotional, psychological, moral and physical dangers with extreme
suspicion and in New South Wales, Australia, blatantly and vindictively discriminate
against them and enslave them to, "Education," 'guidelines' - laws
which are based upon the educationally irrational methods used in their own
failed mass schooling system.
'Progressive' methods of learning, which are claimed by many, if not most, of
today's 'education experts' to be ideal, are much the same as those used by
children who aren't schooled and 'education' officials know that, even in schools,
where, due to the fact that children's 'learning' is both programmed and broken
into 'subjects', much forced 'learning' still takes place, these methods are
difficult to document.
In the mass schooling system
'progressive' methods leave children's 'learning' almost solely in the hands
of other children, thereby exacerbating the damage already caused by their 'learning'
being programmed and broken into 'subjects'.
Children who are free to learn as nature intended have constantly available
one to one access to information and guidance from a parent (who, unlike schoolteachers,
loves them and knows and understands their needs); their learning is based upon
life's events, not programming and is free of the endless interruptions which
are an intrinsic part of the mass schooling system. These children cover, in
a whole manner, a vast quantity of 'subjects' every waking hour of their lives
and their learning is as rich and varied as life itself. Yet, in New South Wales,
parents of these children are expected to (at their AND THEIR CHILDREN'S expense,
both time-wise and financially) provide the N.S.W. Board of Studies with documentation
which is applicable to 'traditional' (FORCED) methods of 'learning'.
Parents of free children are aware of the damages forced 'learning' causes and the N.S.W. Board of Studies 'guidelines' attempt, albeit through ignorance, to restrict their children's learning and to force them to violate their duty of care to their children's education by inflicting an artificial 'education' upon them. THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO CAUSE THESE PARENTS EMOTIONAL CONFLICT RESULTING IN EXTREME STRESS, WITH ALL ITS DIRE REPERCUSSIONS.
Most parents, because they love their children, do their utmost to ensure that they are well educated (and this is just one of the many reasons why more and more children are being freed to learn as nature intended).
For many reasons, numerous dissatisfied and worried parents would like an alternative to the schooling system currently being doggedly clung to by governments. Although society has been indoctrinated with the false belief that schools 'educate', many of these parents, despite the fact that they were supposed to be 'educated' during their own ten to thirteen long years at school, wrongly believe that they lack sufficient education to teach their own children.
The discrimination and tyranny displayed by governments towards the legal practice of allowing children to learn in a safe family environment and in the real world, instead of in a mass schooling institution, needs to be replaced by freely given support, both financial and in the form of educational resources.
Copyright - SCHOOL MANIA - Adele Carrall - 2000
Many adults found only abject
misery during their forced attendance at school and many - although still believing
that, because they went to school, they have been educated - have found their
education to be insufficient to meet their needs in adulthood.
Yet millions of people, from all walks of life, allow their children to be put
through this same system, a system which has, for many years, been outmoded
by the ready access every member of our population has to technological devices
and other learning tools. Why? Because not only does the schooling system itself
train children to believe that schools 'educate', most parents are led to believe
that schools and the 'education' they proffer have changed since their own schooldays,
thereby rendering them incapable of 'teaching' their own children.