As a first generation home school graduate that has every intention to homeschool my own children (yet unborn), I firmly believe that home education fosters a spirit of learning that can scarcely be replicated in the public or private school system. Many of us here understand the benefits gained by distance learning and credit for life experiences, and we are relieved to have escaped the brick and motar prison sentence. Yet, the principles of distance education are also the back bone of homeschooling, such as individual inititive, the fact that knowledge can be gained outside the classroom
, the ability to have the power of the purse, the desire to have control over your education, and being able to circumvent the sometimes helpful classroom experience that is more often a waste of valuable time.
Home education ought not be outlawed anymore than distance education ought to be outlawed. The public school experience is the shadow of the brick and motar university. While there are good teachers and "good" public schools (I live in a rural area where there are still some left) just as there are good professors and colleges, the very philosophy of the public school system, as it currently is, is one of protocol and not the holistic, inititive producing approach that other methods can afford. I didn't say that a public school system and brick and mortar colleges aren't necessary, I just said the very nature of homeschooling and distance education is often better than the alternatives. They both give more scope for the imagination!
With that, I must second Anne Girl. Many people that homeschool do so to allow their children the benefit of a godly, Christian education, and that definately tips the scale away from the secular public school environment as it stands today. While I do believe it to be the parents' responsibility to train and educated their children, I also believe they have the right to delgate this to someone else, if they so choose. Unfortunately, public schools have shirked their original intent. According to Dr. Benjamin Rush, signor of the Declaration of Independence, the leading proponent of the public school system in America, and a strong advocate of the Word of God being studied in publicly funded schools
, declared, "Let the children who are sent to those schools be taught to read and write - - - (and a)bove all, let both sexes be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is the most essential part of education - -" He understood the Bible truths from Proverbs and Galations that "the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" and that "where the spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty". So much for the "separation of church and state" myth.
I would estimate that the majority of people who homeschool, do so out of religious conviction first, and math and english reasons second.