I am fortunate enough to have many options for my kids education: public school, private school, private tutors, or home school. So why do I choose home school at this point?
When I was growing up, home schoolers had a reputation as weird, socially awkward kids whose parents were probably overly religious.
My tax money goes to pay for public schools, and it will be quite expensive to home school my kids. So why would I home school if it costs me so much more and is a lot more work?
I am leaning towards home school due to the following concerns:
-Teachers are paid on seniority, not performance. As someone who has worked very hard to come up with motivational systems for my teams, I know that an incorrect motivational system leads to very bad outcomes. I remember as a child that most of my time in school was spent at best being babysitted. My wife has been testing homeschooling our fraternal twin 4-year-olds and I am shocked that with just half an hour a day, both of them actually can already do basic math and reading at a first grade or above level.
-The current system of public education was set up 100 years ago and very different cultural and technological times that has seen very little real improvement since due to the motivational problems listed above.
-School now has very limited emphasis on the core skills to success in life: math, reading, science, finance, programming, applied experience / apprenticeship type work in the real world.
-Public schools are just that… Government run institutions. In my experience, the government does nothing well. I have had extensive interactions in business with government regulators and regulations, and I have not been impressed with the performance provided by the government. I believe that private organization generally far exceed government performance as private organizations are much easier to hold accountable.
-Many immigrants to the US have compared their experience in foreign countries to the United States and have said that the United States having a smaller government than what they had at home has led to our success here. Public schools are just another form of big government.
-Public schools push a set of values that seem to be whatever is currently most extreme in academia (intolerant tolerance, radical Marxism) rather than values that have been proven over time to work (honesty, trust, loyalty, work ethic, kindness to others, the golden rule, personal responsibility).
I would love to see a system of vouchers put in place so parents and students could select wherever they want to go… Any public school or private school or homeschool option would be available to any child. Florida is starting to do something like this where the $8,000 per year they spend on each child follows that child.