The statistic that 96% of families home educate is a rather arbitrary guess. I can't find real numbers for how many children are completely neglected or handed over to a full-time nanny. I'm guessing they account for no more than 4% of the nation's families. But for the purposes of this post, that number could be ten times higher. The point here is the larger number of families left over.
They all home educate.
The difference between a homeschooler and 85-90% of the Americans is that when a "traditional" child turns four or five or six, instead of making the transition to a formal home educational model, they are sent away for schooling. Parents may have had that child enrolled in a daycare program before that; the single mothers I know have to work and so do not have the luxury of spending the day with their children. The transition may feel more natural to them. But somehow we've convinced ourselves that there is a huge difference between teaching a child how to walk, and talk, and behave, and recognize colors and numbers and shapes, and teaching that same child PE, and vocabulary, and social skills, and physics and algebra and geometry.
Whether you homeschooled or not, you taught your children. Even if your kids are in a great school now, odds are you are at least partially involved in their homework. ...school work done in the home... also known as home education.
I am not at all suggesting that everyone should lunge at the chance to homeschool. I'm not suggesting that choosing to send your kids to school is the wrong choice. You know your family's situation far better than I do. My point today is simply to remind us all of how natural, normal, and universal home education is.
Home education is not radical. It's something almost all families do, if informally. And if you helped your child learn how to eat, and dress, and play games, and look at picture books, and listen to you read, and count, and memorize your address, and recognize their birthday--without or without a book to aid you--you can absolutely home school.
The choice is yours.
Don't let a fear of being odd or a concern that you're not smart enough deter you. Homeschooling is natural and with the great homeschool curriculum available to you today, you can learn right alongside your student.
What percentage of families do you think home educate?
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester
Echolalic: repeating sounds made by others without understanding or thought
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