Should children be homeschooled?

Children can receive a higher quality education

Question: Should children be homeschooled?
Position1 of 3›: Yes, children should be homeschooled
Argument‹3 of 4›: Children can receive a higher quality education

The curriculum is highly controlled in homeschooling, ensuring that it is valuable information.

The argument

Public school education cannot necessarily guarantee a quality education, or a learning route that parents would like for their child, and the case made here is that homeschooling can supply both where the public system does not. Outcomes are offered first. One study showed that "in a recent comparison of SAT scores, homeschooled children averaged 568 on the verbal test and 525 on the math; the national average was 506 on verbal and 514 on math." Proponents note that the homeschooled figures exceed the national averages on both sections, and they offer an explanation for why rather than leaving the comparison to speak alone. This may be from the ability of parents to tailor a child's curriculum and allow them to learn even more. A classroom must be taught at a single pace chosen for a group, so any individual pupil is either ahead of it or behind it for much of the time. A child can move at their own pace, rather than waiting for others or being dragged along before they have a full understanding of the subject — so time is not spent on material already mastered, and a topic that has not been grasped can be revisited rather than left behind. The second consideration is content rather than pace, and concerns what parents want the education to include. If parents have certain values they would like to instill within their children, they can incorporate this into the curriculum. This is especially beneficial for those with religious morals, as most public schools do not incorporate that into their education, so a family holding them has no way to have them taught within the school day. Education is able to be tailored to the family — in what is taught, at what speed, and toward what ends.

Premises

[P1]Public school cannot guarantee a quality education, whereas homeschooled children average higher SAT scores than the national mean. [P2] Homeschooling lets parents tailor the curriculum and pace to the child, instil their own values, and incorporate religious teaching that public schools omit. [C] Therefore, because children can receive a higher quality education, children should be homeschooled.

Counter-arguments

Just as not all educations received in public school may be high quality, the same goes for homeschoolers. Homeschooling may not allow a child to learn as much as they would like - it all depends on the learning style of the child and the teaching style of the parents.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] This depends on the student and the quality of the teaching.