Has home schooling our children become a dangerous trend?

With every day that passes, more and more parents are choosing to home school their children. A movement is sweeping across the nation, and for good reason. With recent drastic changes in the education system and even laws that have passed that change the way our children interact with others, it’s no wonder. Home school has become the trend, and it’s growing.

I remember when I first decided to home school. My daughter was in a local pre-school and I pulled her out of it because the teacher felt she should be held back a grade due to her “maturity level”, and didn’t even look at how smart or capable she was. Let me tell you that little spit fire personality is what I love most about my now graduated daughter. Through out the years she spent a few years in a christian school, a few years in online public school from home, and her final year she graduated on the honor roll from our local public school. She never struggled with her maturity being too low, in fact, she was more mature than kids her age and felt like she would never make friends.

When we made the decision to home school her for kinder, I had no idea I would end up having five children. And I had no idea that I would be locked into a now 14 year commitment to home school. Over the past 14 years I have home schooled my five children every year but one. That one year we had them all in a private school while i recovered from illness. To me home school is not a trend. To me home school is life. It is a life I love. It is what I have done, and it has been one mountain to climb after another. It is hard work.

I wonder if the parents of the trendy home school movement realize the hard work involved. I’ve heard a lot of people say that “it sounds easy”, or “I can do that no problem”. I believe no doubt that with the right amount of preparation and diligent hard work any parent could home school their children. But I also worry about this growing trend. I don’t worry that children will fail to be educated or that parents will fail to pull the weight. I worry that with the swing of the masses pulling away from the bricks and mortar tradition, that big government will begin to impose more regulations on us, the ever faithful, dedicated lifers.

We have chosen this way long before the masses found it trendy. Long before the laws and education system began failing our children we decided that teaching our kids at home would be a better fit for our families. And long, long, before big government decided that test are more important, and morals are subjective, we the parents of this generation knew that we must protect our children at all costs.

I’m not a political person. I like to avoid all news media, and social platforms during election season. I will not tell you who to vote for, nor will i suggest who I will vote for. But the one thing that I must say is, vote for freedom. We must choose the leaders that will ensure our rights as parents to educate our children without over-reaching laws to regulate us. We must not choose what is trendy, or popular simply to follow the masses. We need to think of our children, and their future.

We as parents have a legacy that we will leave in each one of our children. The world we prepare for them with our wisdom, and teaching can only go as far as the world we build for them with out votes. What we choose today will either build a bright future for our kids, or it will pave the way to hardships. And aren’t our children worth it?