Here are ten reasons why parents should keep their kids in public schools:

1 – Public schools can cripple your child’s ability to read. The schools use a special reading-instruction method to do this called whole-language (or balanced literacy). But that’s a good thing. Why do kids need to read anyhow? It only gives them ambitions to go to college. Parents have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for college tuition these days, so if your child can’t read, you end up saving a lot of money.

2 – Public schools can wreck your child’s ability to do math, with “fuzzy” math curriculums. But that’s a good thing. That way, your child will not strive to be a scientist or engineer and make a lot of money. Having a lot of money causes stress, and you don’t want your kids to be stressed in life, do you? Also, if your child grows up to be a supermarket check-out clerk, you don’t have to worry. The machine scans in all the prices and will tell your child how much change to give back to the customer.

3 – Public schools violate your God-given parental rights to choose who teaches your child and what he is taught. But hell, aren’t we swamped today with too many choices anyhow? It’s only reasonable to let education “experts” who have been trained in our finest “teacher” colleges tell us how to educate our children. After all, haven’t these education “experts” done a superb job educating our children up to now?

4 – Public schools give your child a “well-rounded” education. Your child’s day is filled with shocking sex-education classes, multiculturalism classes that spit on American values, save-the-earth environmental propaganda classes, drug-education classes that give your child all the dope about these drugs so he can choose wisely, and violence- prevention classes for those kids who get violent from being bored to death in public-school classrooms.

5 – Public schools give your children great socialization. Where else can your kids smoke a joint in the bathroom, meet roaming drug dealers in the schoolyards, be raped or assaulted by violent bullies on the prowl for victims, and join a racial clique that promotes harmony among the students? That’s a lot better than the “bad” socialization of homeschooling that “isolates” kids from this wonderful interaction with their peers.

6 – Public schools give your kids a great sex education. As parents, we don’t want to talk to our kids about embarrassing sex matters anyhow, so this takes us off the hook. Your child’s sex-education classes will teach her why homosexuality is a “normal” lifestyle and why sexual promiscuity is OK, as long as you remember to “protect” yourself. If your teenage daughter then decides to experiment and gets pregnant, that’s great also, because the welfare office will give your daughter monthly welfare checks, food stamps, rent subsidies, and free health care. What more can you ask for?

7 – Public schools will give your child free drugs. Yes, Ritalin is now the drug of choice for millions of school children. But isn’t that a good thing? Ritalin will help your son stop “fidgeting” and “pay attention” in class, even though he is bored to death. Ritalin also helps the teacher maintain discipline in the classroom. After all, if your son disrupts the class by “acting out,” the other kids can’t learn anything, right? So Ritalin is a wonderful way to mentally strap-down your child to his desk.

8 – Your child can “participate” in your school’s Teen-Screen program. These are “mental-health” screening programs that help determine if your teenager is mentally deranged. A health “expert” in your public school will ask your child questions such as, “have you been unhappy lately,” or “do you get along with your brothers and sisters?” From your bewildered child’s answers to these illuminating questions, the health “expert” will give his opinion as to whether your child might have a mental “disease.” He might then “recommend” that you take your child to a psychiatrist who might start your child on a cocktail of mind-altering drugs. But hell, having your child labeled with a mental “disease” isn’t that bad, is it? Your child will lose the confidence to go to college, and we’re back to advantage number one, where you’ll save a lot of money on college tuition.

9 — Your child can stay in school for twelve years. Well, maybe he won’t know how to read a bus schedule or his own diploma after twelve years, but twelve years go by fast, don’t they? Why teach your child to read at home with phonics so he becomes a great reader in only two years? My God, what will your child then do with all his free time once he can easily read War and Peace? He might actually come to love learning.

10 – Finally, public schools are cheap day-care centers. We all work hard these days because income, real estate, social security, and dozens of other taxes loot half our paychecks, and big-government-created inflation sharply increases the cost of everything we buy. So since we can’t save a penny, we can’t afford private day-care. That’s why we need public schools to house our kids while we make a living to pay the bills.

Parents, there are many other reasons NOT to keep your child in public school, but I hope you get the point by now.

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Mary Hanlan knew how engrossed her father got when he was working, and smiled adoringly at his handsome face peering intently at the computer, clicking his mouse furiously, while his brows furrowed in concentration. She knew she had to use her ingenuity to get his attention, and it had become a game between them on how she did this. She went alongside him and tickled his left ear lightly with the feather. Josh waved his hand next to his ear, as if swatting away an annoying fly. Mary giggled and tickled his ear again while she said “Daddy” again, this time more insistently. Finally, her father turned in his chair and noticed his daughter standing there.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, as he smiled with delight on seeing his daughter. “I didn’t notice you. I’m working on the designs of the new engine for my company. You want to see what it looks like so far, honey?”

Mary loved that her father shared his work with her, shared his love of science and engineering. It was what got Mary fascinated with science since she was three years old, sitting on her father’s lap in front of the computer screen, while he let her click the mouse as he was designing. But she didn’t have time to do that now. “No Daddy, I have to talk to you about something first,” she said.

“O.K. sweetheart, what is it?,” he said, as he turned around in his chair and gave her his full attention. Mary loved her father’s kind, bright, playful brown eyes. “By the way,” he said, “how come you’re home in the middle of the morning? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Daddy. I got this letter from my science teacher. The principal told me to give it to you. He said it was about the note I wrote to my science teacher, Miss Johnson. Here’s the letter from her. Josh took the letter and read it.

The letter said, “Dear Mr. Hanlan, I must speak to you about your daughter, Mary. She wrote me an insulting and inexcusable letter criticizing my teaching. We cannot allow such behavior from our students. You must come to see me immediately, or serious measures will be taken against your daughter. Please call me as soon as possible for an appointment.”

Josh looked up from the letter at his daughter, who had a worried, but angry look on her face. Josh knew that look. His daughter was so bright, but also willful when she thought she was right.

“What’s this about, honey? What letter is Miss Johnson talking about.”

“Oh Daddy, I was so bored with her science class, I could just scream. Daddy, I want to learn science. I love it so much. You know that, don’t you?

“Of course sweetheart.”

“Well, Miss Johnson does the silliest, stupidest things in class. For a science project, she had the whole class pick up bird seed with the bottom of wet spoons, to show us how birds use their tongues. She makes us do projects like that all the time, and they’re all just as silly.”

“Then after we do these projects, she has all the kids sit in a circle holding hands, and each kid has to tell their feelings about the project. Daddy, I like the other kids in class, but I don’t care about their feelings when they pick up bird seed. Why is Ms. Johnson doing this? It’s stupid and a waste of time. I want to learn real science.” “And the textbook is so simple it bores me to death,” continued Mary. “I can’t sit still in class, and I annoy Miss Johnson by always raising my hand to ask questions. Daddy, I knew most of the stuff in that textbook when I was six years old from what I read myself and what you taught me. Here, look at the textbook, Daddy.”

Josh took the textbook and looked through it. He was appalled. The book was filled with pictures like baby books, and the reading level seemed geared to six-year-old kids just learning to read. Also, the book had too many stories about global warming, save-the-polar-bears, and other environmental propaganda. “Honey, do all the kids in all the science classes read textbooks like these?,” asked Josh.

“Yes, Daddy. The textbooks in the higher grades are a little harder, but not much. I know everything in those textbooks already. Daddy, I don’t want to spend three more years in science classes that bore me so much and where I don’t learn anything. I would rather be home with you. You could teach me so much more than I could ever learn in these stupid classes.”

“Honey,” Josh Hanlan said, “did you ask Miss Johnson if you could skip grades and go into the more advanced science classes for seniors, or a more advanced class in your grade?”

“Yes, Daddy. I asked her so many times. But she said they don’t have advanced classes anymore. She said the school doesn’t allow special classes for students who learn quickly. Ms. Johnson said it would be unfair to the other students if she put me in an advanced class or with the seniors. She said it would hurt the other students’ feelings. So they don’t allow it. And I’m stuck in this class with this same teacher for the next three years.”

Josh was shocked at what his daughter said. “They don’t let you take advanced classes because it would hurt the other students’ feelings? That’s what Miss Johnson said?”

He couldn’t believe his ears.

“Honey, do they follow this policy in all your classes, like math and English? You mean they don’t have any advanced classes for faster-learning kids anymore?”

“Yes, Daddy, the whole school works the same way. Every class I take bores me, but especially science. I got so mad that I sent Miss Johnson a note telling her how I feel. I thought maybe she would help me. This is the note I gave her.”

Josh took the note and read:

“Dear Miss Johnson,

I am so bored in your class. You are not teaching us real science. I think the projects you make us do are silly and such a waste of time. Why don’t you give us real science projects and teach us more difficult stuff? And why do we have to sit in circles and talk about our feelings? I want to learn science, Miss Johnson. Some day I will be a great scientist. And you are wasting my time. Please teach us real science that is challenging.”

Thank you. Mary Hanlan

Josh Hanlan threw his head back and laughed uproariously. He laughed for a long time, looking at his daughter with delight. He loved her spunk and her innocent directness.

Mary at first looked sternly at her father, because she thought this was no laughing matter. But then, because she loved her father so much, and she loved his infectious laugh, she started laughing also.

When they finished laughing, Josh re-read his daughter’s note, then read Miss Johnson’s letter again. Miss Johnson’s letter had something ominous about it that he didn’t like. He decided to take care of this matter immediately.

“O.K. sweetheart, we’ll go see Miss Johnson tomorrow. I don’t want you wasting your precious time either. But first I want to do a little research on public schools before we meet your teacher. Do you want to help me?”

“Yes, Daddy,” said Mary. She loved sitting with her father at the computer and loved especially when he asked her to help him. Her father did a search for “public schools” on Google and then Yahoo, and the two of them sat engrossed for the rest of the afternoon, absorbing everything they read like sponges.

The next day, they found themselves in a dingy office with green walls sitting across from Miss Johnson. She was in her mid-thirties, with loose brown hair down to her shoulders, and wearing a paisley print dress. Her eyes were brown, and she had a prim, tight little mouth.

Miss Johnson said, a little red in the face, “Mr. Hanlan, I asked you to come here to talk about Mary’s letter and her behavior. The letter she wrote me was absolutely incredible. I have been teaching for 15 years now, and I have never gotten such an insulting letter from one of my students. Most of my students enjoy my classes, so I was shocked at your daughter’s letter. Not only that she wrote the letter, but that she said such insulting things to me. I have talked to the principal and he has agreed with me that Mary must write an official apology letter before we can allow her back into my class. We cannot allow our students to insult teachers in this manner. And if Mary is not allowed back in class, she will fail this class and be left back.”

Josh Hanlan listened quietly to Miss Johnson. By the time she finished, his eyes had become a little colder and he felt anger rising in him.

He said, “Ms. Johnson, my daughter is very bright. She loves science. She told me about the silly science projects you do in class, and about how you make the children sit in a circle and talk about their feelings. She’s also told me that your public school does not have advanced classes for faster-learning students anymore, that you frown on such classes because they might upset the feelings of the other children. She also showed me the textbook you use in your class, which looks like a baby book suitable for a six-year-old, not for bright ten-year old girls.”

“I have to say that I agree with my daughter completely. You are wasting her time, and the time of all your other students. Mary only wrote you that letter because she loves science so much and she wants to learn so much, and she doesn’t want to waste her time. She didn’t mean to insult you, but was asking for your help. She was just telling you the truth as she saw it. Are you or your principal so frightened of criticism that you want to expel my daughter for telling you how she feels about your class?”

“I’d also like to ask you why your textbooks and teaching methods seem so simple-minded? Why is the textbook so dumbed-down? These childrens’ time is as valuable as yours. These are their precious years in which they learn the basics of science and reading for their future life. If you don’t expect much from them, you are hurting them. If you teach them that learning is boring and something they have to endure, that attitude will affect them their whole lives. You are supposed to be challenging their minds, not teaching them meaningless drivel so their feelings don’t get hurt.”

As Josh spoke, Miss Johnson’s mouth got tighter and tighter, and her face got whiter and whiter. When Josh finished, she seemed ready to burst out like a steam kettle.

“Well,” she exploded, “I see where Mary gets her attitude from. Mr. Hanlan, I have been teaching for fifteen years. I went to teacher’s college. I have had the best teachers-ed training available. Whatever projects I give in class are for a good reason, based on the best-known educational theories. We don’t just teach dry facts or boring basics anymore, Mr. Hanlan. That went out thirty years ago. We now concentrate on our student’s feelings and their self-esteem. That’s why we have simple, fun projects. It’s why we sit around in circles telling each other about our feelings. We can’t make the textbook too difficult because the slowest children in the class would be upset that they couldn’t keep up with the rest of the class. It’s far more important that we protect the feelings of our slowest-learning children than give advanced classes to our faster students.”

“Why should children who are lucky enough to be born fast learners take advantage of the slower students? Why should we give them special privileges like putting them in advanced classes? Such uncaring ideas have been discarded by our public-school experts long ago. In fact, we now require our faster-learning students to tutor the slower students, so they learn to share their skills. The feelings of all our kids are much more important than the fact that Mary is bored in class because she is a fast learner. Our kids’ feelings are far more important than Mary thinking she is wasting her time. That’s also why no student ever fails in our school. We automatically advance them to the next grade, no matter how well they know the material from the previous grade. This makes all our kids happy.”

“And who does Mary or you think you are, criticizing our teaching methods? These methods have been approved by the best educational experts in the field, experts who devote their whole lives to finding the best ways to teach children. We will not have our teaching methods insulted and criticized by a mere girl like Mary or by any parent. We know what is best for your child, Mr. Hanlan, and the faster parents like you realize this, the better off you’ll be.”

“Now as I said in my letter, the principal has agreed with me that Mary has to submit a formal apology letter before we will let her back in class. Will you make Mary write that apology?”

Mary looked at her father. She was shocked. She had never seen that look of rage on her father’s face. In all her years with him, he had only looked at her with delight and serious attention. Even when he was arguing with someone from his company on the phone, she saw that it was a stimulating, challenging argument for her dad. She had never seen the murderous rage she now saw on her father’s face.

Josh Hanlan forced himself to control his feelings. He wanted to slap Miss Johnson’s face. Instead, after a few long moments, he said,

“Why certainly, Miss Johnson, I will write that apology letter. But my letter will be to Mary, not you. I have been almost criminally negligent with my child’s education. I will humbly apologize to her for not having investigated your school a long time ago. I will apologize to her for having let her remain in your school at all.”

“I have never heard such vicious horse manure in all my life as what you just told me. Regarding your so-called expertise in teaching, and the so-called quality of your teacher colleges, that is a joke. Most of your teacher colleges are the laughingstock of the academic community. Most student-teachers who graduate from these colleges have never majored in the subject they are supposed to teach our kids. I understand that they stopped teaching phonics instruction in these teacher colleges 30 years ago. How can student-teachers who never leaned phonics or majored in science, teach kids these subjects? It’s like the blind leading the blind. And I don’t blame these teachers. They can’t teach kids what their so-called teacher colleges never taught them.”

“And your so-called theories of education are just junk pseudo-science, psychological gibberish foisted on unsuspecting parents and children. Over the last 40 years, your public-school theorists have concocted one nonsense theory of education after another. After each one failed, your education bureaucrats then came up with yet another goofball theory with which to torture 40 million school kids around the country. Every so-called education theory your “experts” have tried has been a miserable failure. SAT scores in this country are near the lowest they have ever been. Our high-school kids place in the bottom third on standardized tests among all the industrial countries in reading, math, and science skills. Millions of kids who graduate from public schools can barely read a bus schedule or write simple paragraphs, and 30 to 50 percent of our children now drop out of school.”

“Your schools cripple our kids’ ability to read with whole-language or balanced-literacy reading-instruction methods, instead of teaching them intensive phonics. Our kids don’t learn basic arithmetic because you have them using calculators since kindergarten. That’s why so many kids can’t even figure out change when they buy something at the store for their mom.”

“You claim that you want to protect our kids’ self-esteem by using easy textbooks and not failing the kids if they don’t do their work or pass tests. You do just the opposite. You give them a false sense of self-esteem. When these kids hit college, or worse yet, when they apply for a job, then reality hits them—the reality you tried to fake for them by “protecting” their feelings and self-esteem.”

“Real self-esteem comes from working hard to meet challenges. By testing yourself. By persevering to learn difficult material. By not giving up. By being held accountable for the work you do. By achieving real learning skills and real goals from personal effort, and by gaining real self-confidence in your ability to learn and solve problems. Instead, your so-called teaching methods destroy children’s real self-esteem and cripple their minds. Only you delay their day of reckoning, which can ruin the rest of their lives.”

“I don’t know why you use these idiotic teaching methods. I think you get away with it because your public schools are government-run monopolies. Most everything government controls turns to poison, and I don’t see why public schools should be any different. Public schools don’t go out of business no matter how bad they are or how stupid their teaching methods because they are government monopolies. That’s a prescription for education disaster. If you really cared about our kids, you would agree with me that your public schools should be shut down and education turned over to the free-market.”

“I know that you and your principals and administrators don’t agree with that, right? Because of tenure rules, you get job security, good salaries, and fat pensions and benefits, whether our kids get a good education or not. That’s why you can be so arrogant or condescending with parents. Parents can complain till they are blue in the face, but your compulsory, tax-supported schools don’t have to give our kids a decent education, right?”

“I know there are many good teachers in your schools, but many of your best teachers quit after a while because they can’t stand the strangling regulations they work under. I see now that your public schools are like education prisons that promote mediocrity and dumb-down our kids’ education to the lowest level.”

“Well, not with my child. I am hereby immediately withdrawing Mary from your school. I’ll teach her at home or send her to a private school, even if I have to work two jobs to pay for that private school. I’m also going to get a little more active on this issue. I am going to tell every parent I know about your public schools. Maybe I can shake things up a bit so more parents take their children out of public school, permanently.”

“Let’s go, Mary,” Josh said, as Mary beamed up at her father with adoration. As they got up and left the room, Miss Johnson had a look of utter shock and rage on her face.

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At least ten of our presidents were home-schooled. James Madison’s mother taught him to read and write. John Quincy Adams was educated at home until he was twelve years old. At age fourteen, he entered Harvard. Abraham Lincoln, except for fifty weeks in a grammar school, learned at home from books he borrowed. He learned law by reading law books, and became an apprentice to a practicing lawyer in Illinois.

Other great Americans were similarly educated. John Rutledge, a chief justice of the Supreme Court, was taught at home by his father until he was eleven years old. Patrick Henry, one of our great Founding Fathers and the governor of colonial Virginia, learned English grammar, the Bible, history, French, Latin, Greek, and the classics from his father.

Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, and Florence Nightingale were all taught at home by their mothers or fathers. John Jay was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a governor of New York. His mother taught him reading, grammar, and Latin before he was eight years old. John Marshall, our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, was home-schooled by his father until age fourteen. Robert E. Lee, Thomas Stonewall Jackson, George Patton, and General Douglas MacArthur were also educated at home. Booker T. Washington, helped by his mother, taught himself to read by using Noah Webster’s Blue Back Speller.

Thomas Edison’s public school expelled him at age seven because his teacher thought he was feeble-minded. Edison, one of our greatest inventors, had only three months of formal schooling. After leaving school, his mother taught him the basics at home over the next three years. Under his mother’s care and instruction, young Edison thrived. If Thomas Edison was alive today as that child of seven, school authorities would probably claim he had ADHD and stick him in special-education classes. Poor Thomas would have wasted his precious mind and 12 years of his life being bored to death in public-school classrooms until they released him from public-school prison at age sixteen.

So it turns out that many of the famous Americans our children now read about in their dumbed-down public-schools textbooks were either home schooled, never set foot in a government-controlled public school, or thankfully only went to a public school for a very short period of time.

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The following letter to College Admission boards by Caitlin Guthrie Freeman describes her experiences as a homeschooled student. Her letter will give you an idea of what homeschooling (or low-cost Internet private schools) can be like for your children. This is just one homeschooling student’s experience, but it reveals the typical enthusiasm and passion for learning that your child can get from homeschooling:

“I am writing this letter in the hope of answering the two questions that you might have for any homeschooler: Why do I homeschool, and How do I do it?

After graduating from the Antioch School, a private alternative school connected with Antioch College, I decided to spend my seventh grade year at Ridgewood, a private prep school. This was instead of going on to Yellow Springs Junior High like most of my friends. I chose Ridgewood primarily for one reason: the students. They were happy, lively, accepting, and seemed very interested in their work.

Although I received very good grades, and did very well academically at Ridgewood, I found that my learning was very controlled and prescribed. At the Antioch School I had always been encouraged to take charge of my own learning. But at Ridgewood everyone was expected to move along with everyone else, plodding at a universal pace that was too fast for some and infinitely too slow for others. It was expected that we would accommodate our learning for the good of the class; no one was allowed to move out of the mundane rhythm and learn for themselves. Our minds were not our property, they belonged to a communal brain bank and no one could make a withdrawal without their other classmates taking out the exact same amount. For example, although grammar had always been very easy for me, and though I had always received “A”s, I was still often expected to complete four grammar assignments per night along with everyone else in the class, whether or not I needed them. I often found I did not have the time for my own interests or my own learning.

I left Ridgewood for the last time in June of 1993 with a firm idea in my head: I was not going back the next year; I was going to homeschool. My parents and I had discussed this at length during the second half of my seventh grade year. There was so much I wanted to do, so many things I wanted to accomplish that I knew would not be possible if I remained at Ridgewood. So, that last day, after saying farewell to my friends and telling them I would not be returning the next year, I finally started to live my life.

That first year of homeschool was filled with such an incredible sense of elation. I had the sense of limitless time, and the feeling I could learn everything and accomplish anything. Each day I had hundreds of little grab bags set before me, each filled with something new to experience, new to learn. I was free and encouraged to plunge my eager hands into as many of these grab bags of knowledge as I could. I became enamored of archaeology and paleontology, and poured at length over my many references and fact finders.

I read Isaac Asimov’s The Realm of Algebra as part of my math course. I discovered a love of Shakespeare and that I had a knack for learning and comprehending his rich language after being cast in Twelfth Night. I worked on a public access television show and got to conduct a special television interview with children’s author, Virginia Hamilton. I began singing with the Dayton Choral Academy. I also discovered opera that year, and found that I could not get enough of Le Nozze di Figaro, Faust, and Die Zauberflote. I became a member of the Yellow Springs High School Drama Club, and acted in my first pre-professional musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar, under the superb direction of Marcia C. Nowik. It was an amazing year, filled with freedom, learning, field trips, theatre performances, and all sorts of other experiences.

Today, as I look back on that first homeschool year, I realize that, although I have matured and changed, my love and drive for acquiring knowledge is still as strong — I am still as elated by the process of learning as I was in eighth grade. I am still just as busy; my days are still as packed with activity as when I was fourteen.

This I hope, gives a sense of why I home school. Now let me explain how I do it. In between the intense bursts of driven energy that make up all my classes, I relax, or read, or work with my friends. Some are homeschoolers, some are not, some live in Yellow Springs, and some live hundreds or even thousands of miles away and keep in touch with me over the Internet. My life is far from being socially empty as some believe homeschoolers’ lives must be. I converse on-line each day with people I met while at Interlochen Arts Camp, and consider them to be some of my best friends. Really good friends are hard to come by, and it really doesn’t matter whether they are across the country or right next door.

My homeschooling friends have taught me that there are about as many ways to homeschool as there are homeschoolers. I have one friend whose work is completely unstructured. She learns by employing only hands on techniques (creating a budget or measuring ingredients to bake a cake is her math program; her English and grammar come from reading and writing). There are many homeschoolers who employ this unschooling approach to learning, and for many it is very successful.

I have another friend, however, whose entire life is structure. She works completely out of text books and school curricula, reading only to write book reports, studying and learning only for the next homework assignment. She studied at home with an extremely accelerated curriculum for two years, and then graduated to go to college at the age of fifteen.

Although I chose to homeschool to free my schedule, to open up new possibilities for learning, and to allow myself more time to accomplish my own work, being busy creates its own schedule. I have to have a definite routine to accomplish what I want to. It is a routine I set for myself — or that is often set for me by my many outside classes: French, Italian, voice lessons, Shakespeare, Theatre, and Horseback.

If I do have a free space that has not been scheduled with a class or my homework, I always seem to find something to fill it. I keep to a regular practice schedule for voice, and always do math and French each weekday morning. I read, write, do science or history, and often do more French in the afternoon. In addition, I have my lessons.

It is a bit of a paradox. I both have what seems like unlimited time to complete projects, and extreme time constraints brought on by my homework, lessons, and classes. However, I do have a flexibility which allows me to prioritize and alter my schedule when some opportunity comes up. This January, for instance, I may be traveling to New York City to attend the 10th Anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But there is always daily practice and the responsibilities of classes, homework, rehearsals and performances. I am always busy.

Many of my classes are basically self taught in that I am both the teacher and the student, although they are supported by my parents or by weekly lessons with a teacher or tutor. But I have to find a way to use and build on what we’ve done together between my lessons.

An example of how I organize my homeschool is the way in which my writing course is done. My parents assign me essay topics or research projects, and help provide some of the information or books I might need to get started. I am currently researching the English translations of Le Fantome de l’Opera (The Phantom of the Opera) by Gaston Leroux. Over eighty pages were omitted in the Alexander Teixeiros de Mattos translation, and I am trying to find out why. In addition, in the different translations that I have read, each translator seems to have a different style and a different understanding of the French language which colors the way the story is perceived by the reader.

I am also working on translating part of the original text into English. I would like to be able to find the time to translate the entire book and create my own definitive translation of Le Fantome. This is something that I am really looking forward to.

I believe choosing to homeschool has been one of the most positive decisions I have made in my life. It has given me freedom of time and choice, the freedom with which to explore my interests, to follow tangents and delve into a subject. Because of homeschooling I have been able to focus on the theatre and music and language in a way that is denied to most people my age. I have learned early to appreciate the wisdom of Shakespeare, the beauty of opera, and the heart and soul of theatre. I know I would not have been able to do this without the vehicle of homeschool supporting and carrying me along the way.”

Caitlin’s letter should give you some idea of the options and flexibility you have in designing a homeschooling program for your kids, as well as how exiting, rewarding, and effective homeschooling can be for your children. Every child’s interests will be different, but that is the beauty of homeschooling. After learning to read and write, each child can study whatever subjects excite them. Learning by homeschooling can become a joyful and rewarding experience, instead of 12 years of mindless drudgery in public schools.

Also, low-cost Internet private schools can give your kids the same, great homeschooling education, yet do 90 percent of the homeschooling work for you. These quality, accredited, internet private schools are therefore great for working parents who have less free time for homeschooling than a stay-at-home parent. Best of all, many of these internet private schools cost less than $1000 a year tuition (that’s only about $85 a month, or $22 a week!).

Many of the homeschooling, general information, and parent-organization websites listed in the Resource section of my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” can also give you an idea of what homeschooling can be like. These websites have many true stories by parents who describe their homeschooling experiences, and offer homeschooling tips. Also, two wonderful books I can recommend will also give you an idea of what homeschooling can be like for you and your children. They are: Homeschooling For Excellence, by David and Micki Colfax (Warner Books), and The Unschooling Handbook, by Mary Griffith (Prima Publishing).

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Home-schooling removes children from public school. That alone makes home-schooling worthwhile. Unlike public-school children, home-schooled kids are not prisoners of a system that can wreck their self-esteem, ability to read, and love of learning.

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“Were the colonists geniuses? [i.e., why did our colonial forefathers have literacy rates close to 90 percent?]. No, the truth is that reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about 100 hours [italics added] to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn. . . . Millions of people teach themselves these things. It really isn’t very hard. . .”

To be conservative, let’s assume that because you’re not an experienced teacher it takes you three hundred hours to teach your child these skills with the help of learn-to-read phonics workbooks and computer software. Three hundred hours, divided by the average six-hour public school day, comes out to fifty school days, which is about ten weeks or three months.

Let me emphasize this point – it could take you, or a tutor you pay, as little as three months to teach your child to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. Again, to be even more conservative, most children could learn these skills in one year if you (or a tutor) concentrated your instruction on these basics. Public schools take eight to twelve years of children’s lives, yet they turn out millions of high-school graduates who can barely read their own diploma or multiply 12 x15 without a calculator.

David Colfax and his wife Micki were public-school teachers turned ranchers who taught their four sons at home in the 1970s and 1980s, and three of their sons eventually went to Harvard. They co-authored a book titled Homeschooling For Excellence, which describes their home-schooling experience. In their book, they compared the time a child wastes in public school to the time average home-schooling parents need to teach their children the basics. Here’s what they wrote:

“The numbers are straightforward and irrefutable. The child who attends public school typically spends approximately 1100 hours a year there, but only twenty percent of these-220-are spent, as the educators say, ‘on task.’ Nearly 900 hours, or eighty percent, are squandered on what are essentially organizational matters.”

“In contrast, the homeschooled child who spends only two hours per day, seven days a week, year-round, on basics alone, logs over three times as many hours ‘on task’ in a given year than does his public school counterpart. Moreover, unlike the public school child, whose day is largely taken up by non-task activities, the homeschooled child has ample time left each day to take part in other activities – athletics, art, history, etc. . .”

So, according to the authors, if home-schooled children study for only two hours a day, year round, they will get three times more educational hours on academic basics like reading, writing, and arithmetic than public-school students get.

Not only does teaching your child the basics at home take far less time than you thought, but teaching these skills is even easier today because parents now have all the educational resources available to them that we’ve already noted. Also, bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders have whole sections full of books about teaching your child to read, write, and do basic math, as well as books that will interest and challenge young readers.

Once your children learn to read well, the whole world of learning opens to them. They can explore any subject that interests them, and read ever more difficult material by themselves in books or on the computer. For a small subscription fee, your children can study the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on the Internet. They can access almost every major library in the world through the Internet, including the Library of Congress. If your kids love to read and learn, the Internet provides unlimited resources.

Once your children read fluently, you can point them towards your local library or bookstore, supervise their studies, and see where their interests lie. Your job is to introduce your kids to as many different subjects and resources as possible. Have them take art classes at the local YMCA, library, or arts and crafts store. Introduce them to different kinds of music. See if they enjoy a music lesson on the piano, guitar, or drums. Give them classic novels by great authors to read.

Most home-schooling parents spend about three to four hours a day homeschooling their kids. The key point to remember is that you have many options and a vast amount of educational resource material available to help you homeschool your children and quickly teach them the basics. When you take advantage of this material, home-schooling can be fairly easy and take much less time than you think.

Joel Turtel

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

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Many studies confirm that home-schooled kids learn more, learn better, and learn faster than public-school children. Christopher J. Klicka, author of “The Right Choice: Homeschooling,” cites a nationwide study of more than 2,163 home-schooling families conducted in 1990 by the National Home Education Research Institute: “The study found the average scores of the home school students were at or above the 80th percentile in all categories.” This means that the homeschoolers scored, on the average, higher than 80 percent of the students in the nation. The home schooler’s national percentile mean was 84 for reading, 80 for language, 81 for math, 84 for science, and 83 for social studies.

Several state departments of education also conducted their own surveys on the academic achievement of home-schooled students. In 1987, much to its embarrassment, “the Tennessee Department of Education found that home-schooled children in second grade, on the average, scored in the 93rd percentile, while their public school counterparts, on the average, scored in the 52nd percentile on the Stanford Achievement Test.” (The SAT-9 is a well-respected battery of multiple-choice academic achievement tests for public-school students) These studies, and many others, confirm the fact that home-schooling parents can give their kids a superior education. This shouldn’t surprise us. Home-schooling parents succeed where public schools fail because parents give loving, personalized attention to their children, use innovative free-market educational materials, and nourish a love of learning in their kids.

By Joel Turtel

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Home-schooling is a great success. That’s why many public-school authorities hate home-schooling parents.

Home-schoolers are a direct challenge to the public-school monopoly. This monopoly makes it almost impossible to fire tenured public-school teachers or principals. As a result, tenure gives most teachers life-time guaranteed jobs. They get this incredible benefit only because public schools have a lock on our children’s education.

If public-school employees had to work for private schools and compete for their jobs in the real world, they would lose their security-blanket tenure. That’s why school authorities view home-schooling parents who challenge their monopoly as a serious threat.

Many school officials also can’t stand the fact that average parents who never went to college give their kids a better education than so-called public-school experts. Successful home-schooling parents therefore humiliate the failed public schools by comparison.

Home-schooling parents also humiliate school authorities who claim that only certified or licensed teachers are qualified to teach children. Most home-schooling parents thankfully never stepped foot inside a so-called teacher college or university department of education. Yet these parents give their children a superior education compared to public-school educated kids.

Also, many public-school officials resent home-schoolers because the typical public school loses about $7500 a year in tax money for each child that leaves the system. Tax money is the life blood of the public-school system. Tax money pays for public-school employees’ generous salaries, benefits, and pensions. Is it any wonder why school authorities don’t want to lose their gravy train?

For these reasons, until fairly recently, most state legislatures either outlawed homeschooling or tried to strangle it to death with regulations. In 1980, only Utah, Ohio, and Nevada officially recognized parents’ rights to homeschool their children. In most other states, legislators continually harassed or prosecuted home-schoolers under criminal truancy laws and educational neglect charges.

By 2004, however, pressure from parents, Christian home-schooling organizations, and recent court rulings pushed all fifty states to enact statutes that allow home-schooling, as long as certain requirements are met. These requirements vary for each state.

In spite of these statutes, many states and school authorities still harass home-schooling parents. That is because the Supreme Court slapped parents in the face when they gave local governments the right to regulate home-schooling. As a result, many home-schooling parents are still harassed by local school officials.

If you are a homeschooling parent, you must know how to protect your legal rights. To do this, you should seriously consider joining the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Founded in 1983, HSDLA provides its members with legal representation against local school officials who might harass you, demand to supervise your home-schooling, or demand to periodically test your home-schooled children. You can join at their web site, http://www.hslda.org.

The Rutherford Institute is another well-known organization dedicated to protecting parents’ rights and providing legal help to home-schooling parents. Their website is http://www.rutherford.org.

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

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The answer to this concern is, can you risk not trying? Isn’t your child’s future worth the risk? If you see that your child is getting a bad education in public school, the worst thing to do is nothing. Then there is no chance of improvement. If you leave your children in public school, chances are great that their ability to read, self-esteem, and love of learning may be damaged, and they can waste twelve years of their lives. Look at the potential consequences to your child if you don’t try other education alternatives.

The real question is this: Is good enough, good enough for your child? Your child is unique and precious. He or she is born with a love of learning and a unique potential. Your child’s love of learning, self-confidence, and potential can be squashed in the rigid atmosphere of public schools. Is a third-rate public-school education good enough for your child. If you could give your child a rich, fun, rewarding education that will make your child’s mind and future blossom, isn’t that worth the risk of trying?

Money Doesn’t Have To Stop You Anymore

If the only problem is money because you can’t afford $8000 a year private schools, then happily there is a great new option for you-Internet private schools. These schools are low-cost and can give your child a fun, quality, and rewarding education. Many of these schools cost less than $850 a year tuition, which is less than $85 a month for a ten-month school year.

While no one can guarantee you success, like anything else in life, if you keep trying, you will probably succeed in giving your child a great education at home. If you say to yourself, “I will make this work, for my child’s sake,” you’ll be surprised at what you can accomplish. Tell yourself what Gene Kranz, actor Ed Harris’s character in the movie Apollo 13, said to his Houston crew about rescuing the astronauts in trouble: “Failure is not an option.” If you say this and mean it, you’re halfway to success for yourself and your child.

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When your children grow up and get careers of their own, that doesn’t mean you have to be lonely in a big, empty house and lose contact with your kids. Helping to homeschool your grandchildren can be a wonderful way for you to stay in close and loving contact with your grown children and grandchildren. You can be a loving part of the family again.

If you read our book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” tell your grown children about how your grandkids are in real danger by going to public schools. Don’t let your grandchildren’s mind’s, self-confidence, and love of learning go to waste in public schools. Give your grown children the book to read. Even better, then offer to help watch the grandkids and homeschool them if your grown children and their spouses work. Who better to help your children and adorable grandchildren than you? Doing so could make your retirement years the happiest years of your life.

You have so much wisdom and knowledge that you have accumulated over the years. You have so much love you still have to give. How your children would appreciate your love and help with your grandchildren! If you helped homeschool your grandchildren, what a wonderful gift that would be for your children, your grandkids, and most of all, yourself. Think about it.

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Do you have children who do poorly in school, or are bored or frustrated with their classes or teachers? In contrast to what most public-school officials will tell you, in most cases the problem lies with the schools, not with your children. It turns out that millions of children, including yours, have good reasons to hate public school, reasons that you as a parent should not ignore.

Does your child show any of these danger signals? If so, your local public school (even in “good” neighborhoods) may be crippling your child’s ability to read, hurting their self-esteem, wasting your child’s precious time or destroying their love of learning.

Great News

Our book will tell you about many excellent private schools that charge less than $975 a year tuition. You can enroll your child in these schools, no matter where you live.

In a survey, over 60 percent of parents said they would send their children to a private school if they could afford it. Up to now, money has stopped many parents from giving their children the quality, rewarding education they deserve. Not any more. Expensive private-school tuition doesn’t have to stop you any longer.

New, low-cost Internet private schools let you give your child a quality elementary school, middle school, or high school education right now. You can choose from dozens of accredited K-12 Internet private schools that give your children academic excellence, great teachers, a wide choice of curriculum, old-fashioned American values, and safety in the classroom.

Also, you can enroll your child in any of these schools, no matter where you live, because these schools are on the Internet. Best of all, many of these quality Internet private schools cost less than $975 a year tuition!

The Resources section in “Public Schools, Public Menace” has a special list of these K-12 private schools. “Public Schools, Public Menace” will tell you about new, low-cost education alternatives for your kids, such as:

The Good News

You do not have to settle for 12 years of a mind-numbing, third-rate public-school education for your child any longer. With low-cost K-12 Internet private schools, you can now give your child a quality elementary school, middle school, or high school education right now. You now have real school choice. Our book, “Public Schools, Public Menace” shows you how.

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Most Public Schools Do Not Offer Quality Education

Because the government runs public schooling, there is simply no incentive to change or excel. First of all, consider the fact that public schools get their students by compulsion. There are compulsory attendance laws, and parents can be arrested if they don’t send their children to public school–even if their children are being bullied and exposed to dangerous influences.

Second, parents have no say in determining what teachers are worth. The incentive for teachers is corrupted because great teachers are not rewarded commensurately and mediocre and poor teachers with tenure simply keep rising on the pay scale without improving. Your taxes still pay these teachers, no matter how poor a job they are doing for your children.

Private education is the exact opposite. Schools and teachers both need to be good in order to stay in the education business. Schools are competing for students, and are constantly working to improve. If you read Public Schools, Public Menace, you will find out more about getting a quality education for your child through internet private schools for less than $950 per year! Whether you home school your child with online assistance or your child benefits from one-on-one instruction from an exceptional teacher, you will find that he or she regains an interest in learning, becomes happier and healthier, and achieves greater success.

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The book Public Schools, Public Menace is the resource that you need. If you are a parent looking for a private school and want to know about costs, location, curricula, and teacher qualifications, this is where you will find all of that–and more. You don’t have to limit yourself to brick and mortar private schools. If you include internet private schools, your options increase and costs decrease significantly.

A Quality Private School List

In the Resources section of Public Schools, Public Menace, you’ll find an extensive private school list. The focus is on affordable internet private schools–almost always less than $1,000 per year for tuition. Some internet private schools teach K-12th grade, while others focus on high school instruction. With a good private school list, you can find what you need, confident that budget and location are no object in getting the best for your kids.

Different parents have different values. Some are especially concerned with the religious orientation of a school’s curriculum–you can easily use Public Schools, Public Menace to find a Christian school if that is your top priority. If you simply don’t want your child’s time wasted with poor teachers or pointless classes he or she doesn’t need, you can also find a private school which has a curriculum that is entirely practical and which challenges and excites your child. You’ll be amazed at the difference in your child once he or she gets excited about learning!

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However, for those parents who have little time to spare, or don’t yet feel confident in home-schooling their children, Internet private schools are a wonderful new alternative. These schools take most of the home-schooling burden off parents’ backs, yet can give children a low-cost, quality education at home.

Low-cost Internet Private Schools

An Internet private school for children is similar to the Internet college-degree programs that many universities around the country now offer adults. There are many good Internet schools parents can choose from. Some schools only offer high-school programs while others offer a complete, 1st through 12th grade education. Many Internet private schools give a course of study similar to traditional private schools. They take children thorough a progressive curriculum in math, science, reading and writing, social studies, and many other subjects.

This structured, comprehensive program is like having a personal teacher and private school in a parents own living room. As a result, these schools can relieve parents of most of the home-schooling burden, while giving children a high-quality education. This setup is especially helpful for single-working moms, or families where both mother and father work. Since Internet-school teachers supervise the childs education, its less likely that parents will have to take time from work or quit their job to homeschool their kids.

Many Internet private schools charge much lower tuition rates than brick-and-mortar, secular private schools, and sometimes thousands of dollars a year less than Catholic or Protestant-affiliated schools. Tuition costs vary with each school, from as low as $450 a year to $2000 or more a year. Many quality Internet private schools charge less than $1000 a year. Internet schools are a great resource for parents with a limited budget who also want to escape the public schools and give their kids a great education.

Also, parents can now give their kids a low-cost, quality education, no matter where they live. There are no geographic limitations with Internet private schools. For example, parents living in Virginia can enroll their children in an Internet private school based in California because instruction is done over the Internet. No more having to drive your children back and forth from school. No more time wasted in travel. Parents or their children simply log onto the Internet private school’s website in the safety of their own home, and school begins for the day.

“Public Schools, Public Menace” has a whole Resource section devoted to Internet private schools and other education options for parents.

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Let’s consider the differences in how a typical child (we’ll call her Jenny) learns when she uses Google or Yahoo, compared to how she learns in her public- school classroom.

First, with Google or Yahoo, Jenny can explore any subject that fascinates her. She literally has the whole world at her fingertips. She can learn about tulips, cooking, dinosaurs, fashion, arithmetic, model airplanes, how to play the piano, or story books by thousands of authors.

When she is older, she can search dozens of Internet libraries, including the Library of Congress, for information on any subject under the sun.

In contrast, in her public-school classroom, Jenny must study only the subjects the teacher or school principal says she must study, even though these subjects might bore her to death.

Second, with Google or Yahoo at home, Jenny can spend as many hours as she wants studying any subject that fascinates her. If she likes flowers, she can spend all day learning about different flowers, how they grow, the best season to plant them, how sunlight helps them, or how much water each flower needs.

In contrast, in public school, Jenny usually spends about 50 minutes on each subject the school forces her to study. She has to go to a different class on a different subject every 50 minutes, even if she was interested in the subject she was studying in her previous class. This can strangle her interest in any one subject. For Jenny, public school turns learning into broken, disconnected bits of knowledge on subjects that often bore her.

Third, with Google and Yahoo, Jenny learns at her own pace. If she doesn’t understand something she reads about, she can ask her Mom or search Google and Yahoo to find the answer. She can spend as much time as she wants with a problem that intrigues her. Because she can learn at her own pace, she feels safe and comfortable learning with Google and Yahoo.

In her public-school class, however, Jenny has to learn all the material the teacher gives her in the specific time the teacher allows. Then (in later grades) the teachers will test her. If Jenny didn’t like to study the subjects the teacher told her to learn and did bad on her test, she can feel hurt and humiliated. She then associates learning with pain and humiliation. This in turn can extinguish Jenny’s joy in learning.

With Google and Yahoo, Jenny finds learning a constant joy. With public schools, more often than not, learning becomes a boring drudge or worse.

Government-controlled public schools will never give your kids the kind of joyous education they deserve, the kind your children can get in a homeschooling environment. At home, your kids can learn from Google, Yahoo, learning software, or hundreds of other low-cost education resources available to you right now.

So how can we Google and Yahoo our children’s education? Parents, you might seriously consider taking your children out of public school, permanently. Let your kids once again discover the joy of learning with education alternatives like Google and Yahoo, homeschooling, or low-cost, quality, Internet private schools.

I talk about all these great education alternatives for your children in my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children.”

Joel Turtel

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

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Public schools have twelve years to teach children to read even at a basic level, yet can’t seem to manage this simple task. The reason? — the whole-language reading method (sometimes called “balanced reading instruction”) used by most public schools today. Whole-language instruction forces students to “read” my memorizing words, like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese picture-words.

Instead of having students use our miraculous and convenient alphabet to sound out each letter of a word and put the sounds together, the school tells students to make believe the word is a picture. Instead of sounding-out each letter in m-o-t-h-e-r and putting the sounds together, our public-school “experts” make kids look at and say the word “mother” over and over again from dumbed-down reading books, and memorize what the word “looks” like. Sound absurd? Yes, it is, yet this is the reading method public schools inflict on your children.

The solution, of course, is to teach children using a strict phonics method. The genius of the English language (and other European languages) is the way it simplifies learning to read by using an alphabet of only 26 letters. The letters really stand for sounds. Sound out each letter or letter-combination, put the sounds together, and a child can “read” the word. In fact, once the child learns the phonics method well, he or she can sound-out and then “read” ANY word. Powerful stuff. Children whose reading ability is crippled by whole-language instruction can usually memorize only a few hundred words. A child who learns to read with phonics, can read hundreds of thousands of words.

The proof is in the pudding. Aspen Learning Systems, a subsidiary of Knowledge Universe company, recently opened Colorado’s first privately-run reading center in Denver. Yes, that’s right, a school that concentrates on teaching kids to read. Aspen’s reading center gives kids a nine-week reading course that emphasizes heavy phonics. The result? In the first quarter of 1999, students gained an average of two years and four months in reading ability after they completed the course. Only nine weeks. Compare that to the twelve years your kids have to suffer through in public school, and still graduate with poor reading skills.

As usual, free-market, competitive schools that must prove themselves to parents who pay them directly, put public schools to shame. Parents, don’t settle for public schools when there are far better alternatives available to you in the free-market.

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