There is more and more discussion of home schooling. This should come as no surprise; it is at home that we learn most of what we know; and the best students have received their educational foundations at home. The strength of this approach is demonstrated by the rapid progress of many home-schooled children, even though they often spend much less time with textbooks than their peers.
Homeschooling is not yet the universal answer, unfortunately. There are parents who do not themselves have the education to teach their children; many of them are required to work, and therefore do not have the time; and, sad to say, too many parents simply do not care enough.
When one or more of these is the case, then we are well-served to build schools. Institutional education may not be as effective or efficient as home-schooling, but it still correlates powerfully with all desirable societal outcomes: income, lawfulness, civic participation, personal fulfillment. The bumper sticker is valid: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Few parents have all three requirements. And even those who do, almost always need some help. Few among us have mastery of visual and acoustic arts, mathematics, language, social studies, etc., that we can teach a child all the way through the high school requirements.
And for the handful of people who can do it all, everyone has limits: who has the mastery to educate a child through all the necessary college courses?
Is home schooling our goal? Should we build our lives so that our children are all home-schooled? As our world becomes more sophisticated, and more broadly educated, perhaps so. In the future, we might hope that all families have at least one parent with knowledge, time, and interest to home school.
Quite often, home schooling is superior to institutional education; when done right, it definitely works. Unfortunately, we are not yet to the point that it will work for all children, and for all parents.
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