Thousands of present day students, like many of our Founding Fathers, are being taught at home.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.
As a former board member for Teach For America, I understand that every child has the ability to learn and that, no matter their circumstances at home, we have a duty and a responsibility to educate them and to do it well.
And that's actually the brunt of what we do is, people going straight from their workplace, straight from home, straight into the classroom and working directly with the students. So then we're able to work with thousands and thousands more students.
Home teaching is an excellent preparation for missionary service.
Realistically, I think we are not prepared to go home until we do get more teachers and lower class sizes.
Teach For America was built on the idea that our best hope of reaching 'One Day' is to have thousands of alumni use their diverse experiences and ideas to effect change from inside and outside the education system.
Homeschoolers are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers. They are self-motivated and self-directed, independent-minded and creative. They are not content to turn their education of their children over to the government.
Our experience at Teach For America has been that the more people understand educational inequity, the more they want to do something about it.
The phenomenon of home schooling is a wonderful example of the American can-do attitude. Growing numbers of parents have become disenchanted with government-run public schools. Many parents have simply taken matters into their own hands, literally.
Everything that we used to think got taught at home now seemingly has to be taught in the public school system, and something is going to get lost in the process.