Parental education & homeschooling
August 29th, 2007 (General Information)
I’ve been thinking again about something that came up in 1 of the comments about another post that I had made. In the comment the suggestion was made about me needing to be educated before I educate my daughter. While I am not going to get into defending myself, as there really is no need to do so, it does bring up a good question…
How much, if any, education do parents need to have before they begin homeschooling their children?
Now, I’m not going to say that a parent who is uneducated themselves should be able to homeschool their child. I’m also not going to say that you need to have a masters degree or doctorate before you homeschool your child. I don’t know if I’d even say that you’d have to have a college degree. There are many things that you can do without all of these degrees and I really think that homeschooling should be one of these things. This is because there really is a lot of things that you need an education about the world to do instead of a book education. Of course, you still need to know how to do things like math, spelling, reading, etc. My opinion though is as long as you can pass these skills on to your child, you should be allowed to homeschool them.
Of course, there is not any test that you have to take in order to be able to homeschool your child. Should there be? I honestly don’t think so. However, I know some people may disagree. Some people believe that if you are incompetent in any area that your child will suffer. This is not necessarily true though. After all, there is such a thing as a tutor. Plus the school districts will make sure that your child is getting a proper education.
This is how I seriously feel and I refuse to apologize for any of it. I also feel that each of us is entitled to our own opinions and to teach our children what we believe, regardless of what others may think. This does not make us “uneducated” or even unable to homeschool our children. Instead, it makes us human. After all this is something that any parent is going to do - regardless as to whether or not they homeschool their child.