Ask anyone involved with homeschooling why they decided to homeschool their children and you will see that there are roughly as many answers to this question as there are parents undertaking homeschooling.

In many cases, parents want to take their children out of the public schools because they see the public school system as failing, or as being positively harmful for their children. In other cases, parents decide to school their children at home on religious grounds, or because they wish to teach theur children specific values which they feel are missing from the public school system. Whatever the reason for teaching children at home, there can be little doubt that the majority of parents choose homeschooling because they believe that it is the best choice for their children.

For most parent there are two sides to homeschooling comprising those things which it brings to the child and those negative things which it removes from the child's environment. Both peer pressure and bullying are widespread throughout our public schools nowadays and often places children under considerable pressure and, at times, even place them in danger. Homeschooling your children allows you much more control over exactly who your children do and do not come into contact with and the influences they come under.

As far as a child's growth and academic development are concerned there is no question but that, in the majority of cases, homeschooling leads to superior results and this is evidenced in such things as homeschooled children winning the National Spelling Bees and the number of homeschooled children attaining degrees (in many cases Master's degrees) at many of our finest universities and often at extremely young ages.

Naturally many people claim that these children are merely gifted and that their achievements are due to their natural genius rather than to any homeschooling. But, if this were the case then it is certainly true to say that we are blessed with more than our fair share of geniuses in our youth. The simple fact of the matter is that at the end of the day the numbers simply do not support this view.

The statistics, which are produced not merely by supporters of homeschooling but by bodies such as the US Department of Education, quite clearly demonstrate that homeschooled children do far better than their publicly schooled counterparts with homeschooled children a grade ahead by the time they reach the age of 12 and a staggering four grades ahead by the time they reach the equivalent of the 8th grade.

Despite the fact that the majority of people think that homeschooling is a fairly modern phenomenon it has actually been with us for many hundreds of years and is a tried and tested system which has certainly stood the test of time. Homeschooling has of course changed considerably over the years and much of the philosophy underlying homeschooling today comes from the work of supporters of the system back in the 1960s.

Homeschooling is undoubtedly a difficult choice and is extremely hard work for the majority of parents, especially in the early days, but there can be no doubt that it works and the rewards for both children and parents are well worth the effort.

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