Running head: HOMESCHOOLING

Homeschooling
Diana Marino
Miller Motte
English Composition II
EN102
Karen Desrosiers
November 7, 2014

Homeschooling
As parents we have many rights regarding the welfare of our children. Some of these rights include their nutrition, social life or even their clothing. However, the most important right we have as the parent is the right to control what is being taught to our children. Moreover, or who is teaching our children. Additionally, how and what is being taught to our children is undoubtedly the most important thing for a child. Teaching our child includes more than academics. It includes their social environment, how they respond to certain situations and life lessons as well. That is why homeschooling is the best option as a parent. Furthermore, when a parent decides to homeschool their child, they are in control of what they learn and how they are being taught. This is ultimately the best part of being a parent.
Homeschooling is defined as “to teach school subjects to one's children at home” (Definition of homeschooling, 2014, p. 1). This could not be any clearer. Homeschooling has always been and now in the last decade and years to come it has been more increasily popular. For instance, “ the number of homeschoolers nearly tripled in the five years from 1990-91 to 1995-96, when there were, according to the best possible estimate, about 700,000 homeschoolers”(Lines, 2000, ¶ 1). As mentioned before homeschooling has always been starting from times ago. Families have always felt more comfortable teaching their children academics for a number of reasons, some of these reason included morally and religious reasons. For example, some of the most popular families that took homeschooling very seriously decade’s age were Mormons, Amish community and the Seventh Day Adventists. Now days there are more religious groups that feel that homeschooling is the best option to teach their children their values and beliefs; while still teaching academics.
Even though religion plays a big part in the reason for homeschooling; it is not the only one. Parents have numerous reasons to want to be their child’s teacher. For instance, they might be unhappy with the quality of their child’s current educational system. One problem that parents have a problem with in the public school system is Common Core. “The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA)” (Common Core State Standards Imitative, n.d., ¶ 2). The goal of this academic standard to make sure that every child reaches the goal in the same way by the end of the school year. The problem with this standard is that it puts too much pressure on the teacher, preventing them from being creative in their teaching. It also tries to aim more of a critical thinking which could be very discouraging for the child. For example, during the test it could take a child up to 10 hours to complete. Now if that’s not abuse, I’m not sure what is. This is just one reason that parents are not satisfied with the school system. Another reason could be their child might have learning disabilities that are not being properly addressed in a traditional setting. Although most public schools have special needs programs to assist the child, it isn’t as simple for the child. For instance, the child might feel secluded from the other peers often causing insecurities. They could also feel embarrassed especially in the older grades. This could also be a problem in the classrooms where the student to teacher ratio is extremely high. For instance, according to the National Center of education of Statistics “The average class size in 2007–08 was 20.0 pupils for public elementary schools and 23.4 pupils for public secondary schools” (Institute for Education Sciences, p. 1).This can cause for less help to the students. Parents that are not comfortable with the way their child may feel do well to take them out of