Why We Homeschool

I have contemplated making a list of reasons why I will never put my kids in public school, but have never done so.   I have finally had it, and am going to start keeping a list of reasons.   Every time I hear of an incident in a public school, I'm going to add it to my list of reasons.

The first reason is a school about 20 minutes away from me.  In the 4th grade, the teacher hands out a piece of paper to the kids and tells them to answer the questions.   The questions ask things such as 'how much tv time do you have at home', 'how much time do you spend on the computer' 'what does your mother cook with - oil, lard, butter', etc.......     Then, they proceed to line the students up and weigh them, in front of their peers.   The weighing is done at every grade level - I don't know about the worksheet; I know that is at least done in the 4th grade classes.   The reason for all of this?    Obesity in children.  Um, ok.  Since when is it the school's responsibility to make sure kids aren't getting fat?   I thought they were supposed to educate the kids.   Not line them up and give these kids more ammunition to bully each other for how fat some of them may be.  Before the schools start butting in where they have no business being, how about they work on their own lunch menus first?  How about serving the kids a healthy lunch?    Oh, and you want to hear the height of irony with this particular school?   The P.E. teacher weighs over 400 lbs, and they had to build him a special bench in the gym.      But yet they feel free to invade the privacy of all of these families, demanding to know how they live their lives.  


My brother-in-law is a senior in high school.  He just started school, and his first assignment for his Global Studies class is to draw a world map and label it with lots of well-known landmarks - like Nile River, Himalayas, label the continents and oceans, etc.   You would think this would be a relatively easy task for 11th and 12th graders.  You would hope it would be, at least.  But, alas, no, it isn't.   The world map was up on an overhead, and it started with Europe on the left side, and stretched all the way over to North America on the right side.   The kids were supposed to go up to the front and label things.     B/c the map was 'switched' (not having the US on the left side where some flat maps typically start), these kids couldn't figure out which was Africa and which was South America.  They couldn't figure out where the Pacific or Atlantic oceans were.    Someone thought Asia was only India, Korea and Japan.........need I go on?     In a few short years, these kids will be businessmen, teachers, and engineers.   Scary thought, huh?


My dh's coworker has a son who is now in kindergarten.   Requirements for kindergarten acceptance nowadays?    Be able to write your name in both capital and lowercase letters, count to 10 (that one is reasonable), and know all the phonetic sounds of the alphabet.  Knowing all the phonetic sounds before entering kindergarten???????????   That used to be the whole POINT of kindergarten!!!!!!!!   Not to mention that for boys, especially, they are not developmentally ready to be able to write their name at 5 years old.  What a way to frustrate them and make them hate school, right off the bat.    You know,  I could kind of understand this reasoning, if our schools had a rigorous curriculum.   But it doesn't!    There is no reason to be pushing these kids this hard, this early.  Somehow I doubt knowing all your phonetic sounds before kindergarten is not going to insure that you know basic world geography at age 18.

Another reason that I'm glad I'm homeschooling is that I really won't have to worry about gross things such as lice, impetigo, or ringworm.


Public schools only allow kids to check out books that are on their reading level.  And until you are formally assessed to see what your reading level is, you are only allowed to check out books at your grade level.    So if you are in 2nd grade, even if you read at a 5th grade level, until they assess that, you will only be allowed to check out books at a 2nd grade level.  They say that they don't want kids picking out books that are too hard for them.  Whatever happened to challenging kids?  When you challenge what you read, and read words that you don't know, you get better.  Why be satisfied with what you can just do?  And what determines what book is at what grade level?  minimum standards is what.  It is just unbelievable to me that schools will not allow kids to read anything except what is the minimum standard.  How very educating.