Home: The Best Place to Learn

Here's a compilation of quotes (that I will continue adding to) about the importance of teaching children at home. Some of them are by leaders in the Mormon church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints). To be clear, I'm not, and these quotes are not necessarily saying homeschool is the answer for everyone. Nevertheless, these are great quotes for any parent to ponder as they decide on the best type of schooling for their children.

“The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.”
― David O. McKay

"Unfortunately, far too many parents in today's world have abdicated the responsibility to teach these values and other Church doctrines to their families, believing that others will do it: the peer group, the school, Church leaders and teachers, or even the media. Every day our children are learning, filling their minds and hearts with experiences and perceptions that deeply influence personal value systems." M. Russell Ballard, Like A Flame Unquenchable, Church News, April 4, 1999
(Link to "Like A Flame Unquenchable")

"Teaching in the home is becoming increasingly important in today's world, where the influence of the adversary is so widespread and he is attacking, attempting to erode and destroy the very foundation of our society, even the family. Parents must resolve that teaching in the home is a most sacred and important responsibility." Here is the full talk: "Mothers Teaching Children in the Home," by Elder L. Tom Perry, General Conference April 2010

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.”
― John Holt

"More important...you've assembled a curriculum that works for him. It's his education. I suspect he's more likely to have a real education, an education that sticks, if he's part of shaping it.”
― Quinn Cummings, The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling

Why Formal School Is Not The Answer For Us

This is a collection of quotes (that I will continue to add to) which focuses on the negative aspects of public schooling. Of course there are positives as well, which aren't listed here. This page was created to shed some light on the negative aspects of public school which many people may not have considered before sending their children to school. For the enlightenment of all, whether you agree or disagree....

Public school is not the best way for everyone to learn:

“So you think the best way to prepare kids for the real world is to bus them to a government institution where they're forced to spend all day isolated with children of their own age and adults who are paid to be with them, placed in classes that are too big to allow more than a few minutes of personal interaction with the teacher-then spend probably an hour or more everyday waiting in lunch lines, car lines, bathroom lines, recess lines, classroom lines, and are forced to progress at the speed of the slowest child in class?”
― Steven James, Placebo

“You will not reap the fruit of individuality in your children if you clone their education.”
― Marilyn Howshall

“Homeschooling and public schooling are as opposite as two sides of a coin. In a homeschooling environment, the teacher need not be certified, but the child MUST learn. In a public school environment, the teacher MUST be certified, but the child need NOT learn.”
― Gene Royer

  “To learn how to do, we need something real to focus on — not a task assigned by someone else, but something we want to create, something we want to understand. Not an empty exercise but a meaningful, self-chosen undertaking.”
― Lori McWilliam Pickert

“Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They’re individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.
It’s up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work.”
― Lori McWilliam Pickert

Could be boring, not mentally stimulating:

“You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey 
 
“Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.”
― Roger Lewin

“To confuse compulsory schooling with equal educational opportunity is like confusing organized religion with spirituality. One does not necessarily lead to the other. Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.”
― Wendy Priesnitz

Confines "learning" to inside school buildings:

“The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.”
― John W. Gardner

Brainwashing- teaches ideas of men, instead of how to think for self: 

“An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected.”
― Thomas Moore

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”
― James Beattie

“Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.”
― Richard Mitchell

“Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.”
― Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"

Supresses moral courage: 

“As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.”
― William Howard Taft

Homeschool: The Possibilities Are Endless!

One of my favorite things about homeschooling are the limitless possibilities of what can be learned, and how. This can be a bit overwhelming, but at the same time, feels very liberating. My children are individuals and as I seek guidance from our Heavenly Father who sent them to me, I know He will guide me in the right direction. Of course we will stumble at times, and make mistakes.  When something is not working or doesn't feel right, we will reassess and try something new, always making educational decisions a matter of personal study as well as prayer.

I really like what Linda Dobson said in her book "Homeschooling the Early Years" :

"Once off the public school learning path, your family creates its own educational path, going wherever you want to go. Admittedly, this thought can be overwhelming. The public school learning path is clear and well worn with use. Your family has yet to determine its direction or mark out the route you intend to travel. A homeschool learning journey looms over the horizon as a never-before-attempted experiment with unknown results.

"The very nature of the freedom inherent in accepting educational responsibility through homeschooling creates an infinite variety of ways your family may go about its learning day. Indeed, the act can be so fluid as to dramatically change direction within the same household from one day--or one hour-- to the next. It can be so fluid as to transcend a mere means of acquiring an education and lead your family straight to a satisfying new lifestyle." (p. 6-7)