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Homeschooling is becoming a popular alternative to the deteriorating public government schools.

Raymond Moore, president of the Hewitt Research Center estimates that 1/4 to 1/2 million children are being homeschooled today and predicts that this number will grow to 1 million in the near future.

In the past, only hippies, religious fanatics and anti-social sects homeschooled their children. Today homeschooling crosses all demographics, income levels, age levels, and religious beliefs. These parents all have one common thread: they feel that they can educate their children better than the government.

The purpose of home schooling is to give the child the best education possible and create a successful learning environment for your child. Home schooling is a lot more than doing “school work” at home. It takes research, planning, a knowledge of your child’s abilities and interests, and a desire to instill in them an insatiable desire for knowledge.

The decision to homeschool should not be taken lightly. It takes time, focus, and commitment of the whole homeschooling family. It requires total commitment to your child’s education.

The primary reasons for homeschooling are security, morality and quality of education.

• Safety: When you look at public schools, very few cues convey that they are a place of education. Commonly they are surrounded by barbed wire fences, have police on campus, metal detectors at the entrance, “lock-down” drills, and tolerate unchecked intimidation by out-of-control kids represented by gangs and antisocial thugs.

• Morality: Homeschooling parents can structure and teach subjects that are in line with their own morals, values and tradition. They are able to model desirable behavior and correct undesirable behavior on a continual basis.

• Quality: The primary goal is to create an environment that is flexible enough to adjust to the natural ebb and flow of learning for the particular child. The flexibility of the curriculum can promote and encourage an intrinsic love of learning. The parents are not just lectures. They expand, explain, and encourage their children to be inquisitive and explore areas that interest them. Learning never stops in the homeschooling environment.

You only have to examine the quality of the curriculum along with the politically correct environment to see why the public schools are failing on every level.

Homeschooling is a great option today where public education is far from ideal. Prospective homeschooling parents have to consider how important their children’s education is and how much they are willing to sacrifice.

Pam Connolly is a professional educator with the San Diego School District. She
has been teaching kids how to type for over 11 years. To teach your child typing,
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Recently, I noticed that another new national initiative has emerged within our communities – Reading is Fundamental. Yes, reading is absolutely fundamental, but reading is not the only way we learn. Howard Gardner in his theory of multiple-intelligences has demonstrated that many human beings learn differently.

Years ago when I was a young child, I observed a distant family member who had an ear for music. As I grew older, I experienced others who had such a gift including my mother-in-law. Both could not read sheet music, however this lack of reading did not impede their performance. Sometimes we hear of individuals who demonstrate performance in the arts without any formalized training. I believe Grandma Moses was one of those individuals.

While we need to embrace reading or literacy for all of our citizens, we should not forget the desired end result. performance is everything because in life learning is fundamental for everyone or what I call the P.I.E. of L.I.F.F.E. I believe it is our continued performance as human beings that has allowed us to grow and evolve into the 21st century.

During the last several years while sharing performance improvement strategies with individuals, educational institutions and businesses, I have come to believe that many of us equate learning with performance. These two words are distinctly unique and most definitely related, but should not be considered or implied as synonyms. When these terms are used interchangeably, I believe this may help to explain the lack of sustainable change.

I would ask you to consider the following two simplified definitions for learning and performance. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge while performance is the application of knowledge. In school, we learn specific knowledge and skills. This learning usually is accompanied by textbooks that we read and why reading is fundamental within our educational structure.

For example, we learn that a simple complete sentence has a subject, verb and object. We also learn that an essay has a beginning, middle and conclusion. Performance is where we apply knowledge such as complete sentences to complete an essay with 3 parts. Unfortunately, application is where many students demonstrate a perceived lack of learning especially with regards to the numerous accountability tools such as state educational exams, IOWA Basic, etc.

To better understand the distinction between learning and performance, I employ a graphic tool called the