The Great Flip-Flop

Nicholas Byron Hall while all too eager to criticize homeschooling in his post What are the disadvantages of homeschooling? can't seem to get around all the MANY advantages homeschooling offers.

While homeschooling may come with advantages, it's questionable as to whether it's worthwhile in the majority of cases.

This of course is nothing more then his uninformed opinion.

What's known as "opportunity cost" is a type of cost that occurs when someone could be using their time more beneficially. In other words, parents homeschooling their children are costing themselves an income. This income could be used in a variety of ways, including funding a private school education for the child. In many ways, it's rather suspect why parents choose homeschooling when they could work.  

There are more important things in life then money, apparently this Philosophy and Political Science major has yet to learn that. He also assumes that a private school would be available for the child to attend if the parents only had the money for tuition. In my area the only private schools are Catholic, not being Catholic I had no wish for my children to receive a Catholic education. In other areas private schools have long waiting list.

Parents are rarely qualified to teach their children; sorry, it's true. 

Nonetheless, some evidence suggests homeschooling provides a better education - with students learning at home scoring higher on standardized tests. In fact, some studies even report higher happiness in life amongst. This is arguably because the public school system fails students, but the private school system is not scoring above homeschooling either. This makes it appear that perhaps homeschooling is the best option.

Looks like he is trying to have it both ways first we aren't qualified to teach our own children, but he then fails to explain how us unqualified parents provide our children with a better education then either public or private schools.

He then goes on to blame homeschoolers for the problems in the public schools.

The problem is that people don't put the effort into their public school system. When the system fails them, they give up and take their children out of it. It's hard to blame them, but some would argue that citizens have an obligation to work together against corruption and irresponsible behavior.

For some reason these same do gooders that think homeschoolers should keep their children in public schools and waste their time and energy trying to fix them have no problem with parents sending their children to private schools. And for someone who was so concerned about the opportunity cost of homeschooling he fails to mention the "opportunity cost" to parents of spending their time trying to fix "public schools". We tried to fix our public schools and discovered there was no way to fix them for our children.  The decisions are made by our school board and not only do they serve long terms, we were only eligible to vote for one of the board members. The one board member who agreed with our position. Leaving our children in a mediocre academic environment helps no one. On the other hand giving our children the best education possible so they will be productive members of society helps everyone.

Hall also doesn't seem to realize that today many minorities and low income families choose to homeschool.

Lastly, some objections are made on the basis of religious ideology. Other arguments can be made with respect to morals, political values, etc. Parents are teaching children false things about science within the context of homeschooling, and parents have only one perspective.

First off parents are TWO separate people with their own unique views, secondly homeschoolers interact with more people then their parents. Hall also fails to realize that many homeschooling parents believe in evolution and teach it to their children.

Tiresomely Hall seems to believe all the old homeschool stereotypes.