Back-to-school time is upon us. My Instagram feed is starting to fill with first-day photos as a new school year begins this week in some parts of the country. For those of us who homeschool, we often get asked, “So, why did you decide to homeschool?” We respond with various personal and educational reasons, including the top motivator for homeschoolers on national surveys: “concern about the school environment.” What always strikes me, though, is that parents who send their kids to school never get asked this question. When was the last time someone asked a parent, “So, why did you decide to send your child to school?”
Category: Whole Family Learning
How Our Culture Disempowers Teens
Teenagers are extraordinarily capable. Louis Braille invented his language for the blind when he was 15. Mary Shelley, daughter of libertarian feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. As a young teen, Anne Frank documented her life of hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Prize at 17.
Yes, Parents Are Capable of Choosing How Their Children Should Be Educated
At the heart of debates around education freedom and school choice is the subtle but sinister sentiment that parents can’t be trusted. They are too busy, too poor, or too ignorant to make the right decisions for their kids, and others know better how to raise and educate children. Never mind that parents have successfully cared for and educated their children for millennia, ensuring the ongoing survival and continued success of our species.
How to Deschool Yourself for Success and Satisfaction
Most of us spent at least 15,000 hours of our childhood and adolescence being schooled before we turned 18. Now in adulthood, we may need to unlearn some of what we were taught and embrace self-education for career success and personal fulfillment. Much of what we learned in school was dictated by others, disconnected from…
What (Other) Economists Think About Democrats’ Education Plans
I was curious what these NPR-interviewed economists might say about the Democratic presidential candidates’ education plans, which involve funneling more money into a government system of mass compulsory schooling.
The Entrepreneur Who Became a Billionaire After Being Rejected by Facebook
Jan Koum had a rough upbringing. At 16, he immigrated from Europe to the United States with his mother and grandmother, who were fleeing political unrest and religious persecution. Jan’s mother got a job as a babysitter in California while Jan went to school and worked at a grocery store cleaning floors. His father planned…
More Charter Schools Translates to Fewer Homeschoolers, Study Says
Parents want more education choice, and mechanisms that lower the cost of alternatives to one’s assigned district school are sought-after. Even though many families homeschool on a budget and more parents work and homeschool, there can be both real costs and opportunity costs to homeschooling.
100 Reasons to Homeschool Your Kids
This is my 100th article for FEE.org, so here are 100 reasons to homeschool your kids!
Today’s Schools Are Yesterday’s Streetcars: How Technology Will Transform Education
We can predict the future of education by glimpsing the past of transportation. Fueled by technological innovation, namely electricity, streetcars gradually replaced the horse-and-buggy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, followed by mass-produced automobiles that ultimately toppled the streetcar.
Bernie Sanders’s War on Charter Schools Is Hardly Progressive
Bernie Sanders is fortifying efforts to preserve the educational status quo and stifle change. Earlier this week, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate announced his 10-point plan for education reform, including banning for-profit charter schools, placing “a moratorium on public funds for charter school expansion” and ensuring that charter schools look and act the same as conventional public schools.