Philip Franklin: Gee, thanks for letting me know home-schooling won’t work
Re “Social drawback of home schooling” (Page A9, Aug. 11): After reading Dan Thomasson’s recent column about home-schooling I’ve pondered how easily I’ve been misled. Now I can undo the damage I’ve caused my children! I thought I was helping them to discover “life its own self” where every moment is a teachable one. Instead, apparently, I was an overprotective parent fearful of the scourge of our public school system and dreaming of that apocalyptic moment when society stops wasting taxpayer dollars on professional educators when anybody could do their job.
In reality we just wanted to raise our children well. Our oldest son teaches programmers at Twitter. Our second son is an ICU nurse at Doctors Hospital. Our youngest son is finishing his doctoral thesis while starting his 4th year as the head of the music department at a community college in Illinois. And my wife, who talked me into ruining our children’s lives, is now in her 19th year as a public school teacher working at a charter school that supports home-schooling families.
Homeschooling doesn’t mean social isolation or an end to public schools. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to educating children. The increased popularity of homeschooling simply reflects that fact.
Philip Franklin, Modesto
This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 5:42 PM with the headline "Philip Franklin: Gee, thanks for letting me know home-schooling won’t work."