Thousands of members
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are choosing to educate their
children at home. The list of home educators includes many Church and
government leaders and public school teachers.
The Church maintains
an official position of neutrality, supporting public education, private education (BYU is the
largest church affiliated private school in the country), and home education.
Parents are encouraged to make their own prayerful choices.
Nothing in the doctrine of the Church is in opposition to home education.
When there is criticism, it is often the result of misunderstanding and is culturally
based rather than doctrinally based.
Latter-day Saints home school for many reasons:
For academic
advantages
Families can accomplish far more in a daily hour or two at
home than can be accomplished in a whole school day in an over-crowded,
out-of-control classroom.It seems obvious that young children had
computer training before they came here; the home computer makes most
classroom learning obsolete. Children were also ordained to
perform an earthly mission, and home school gives them time and
opportunity to discover and develop the talents they will need.
Home school empowers students to take responsibility for their own education.
Employers and colleges have come to appreciate this; they
welcome, and often recruit, home schoolers.
For safety reasons
Schools are so burdened
with remedial programs, school-based health/contraceptive clinics, and
school-to-work programs and teachers are so burdened with environmentalism,
revisionist history, deviant lifestyles, political correctness, and anti-family
curriculum that the best of them can neither teach basic skills nor protect children
from grave danger. Most students are physically, emotionally,
socially, morally, and spiritually "at risk" in the public school system.
For social advantages
All parents want their
children to have strong moral values and mature social skills, but charitable
behavior, principled relationship skills, and good manners are seldom modeled
in our failing society. Children left to peer groups without mature leadership
often adopt the degenerative values of the group. Children raised in healthy,
uplifting atmospheres where their social development is fostered by direct teaching
and by the good example of
family members and carefully chosen friends tend to remain strong when they do
leave home for social contact.
Some feel that children need to be in the public school system to
be examples, or missionaries, and to experience the "real world."
Yet, these same parents often want their children to attend BYU because they
value a religious education and a like-minded peer group. The best
preparation for a BYU education is a religious high school education. (BYU
would not recruit for its football team players who had never played
football.) Children who attend public schools are being influenced far more than they are able to influence;
often they are being
sacrificed. LDS children should have LDS educations, either in private
or home schools.
Author Tony Robbins said, "I used to think the best way to help poor
people was to become one of them. I found out the opposite may be true.
The best way to help poor people is to be a model of other possibilities,
to let them know there is another set of choices available..." Families who
set out to become the best possible example of gospel principles will find many
ways to be an influence for good.
Home school families tend to be close-knit,
and the children tend to be sweet-spirited, obedient, and best friends.
To preserve
our heritage
The Founders taught that an educated populace was the
best protection of our
Constitutional freedoms. They were deeply
religious men who believed that every school should have a Bible-based, moral curriculum.
Today our schools have become agents for social change instead of
stewards of our legacy. Through forced attendance, forced curriculum,
and "cradle to grave" monitoring of the entire family, the schools are actually
working models of the very principles against which the Constitution stands.
Sensing that the day is fast approaching when the Latter-day Saints will be
held responsible to help rescue the Constitution from peril, and that the plagues and
pestilence will get much worse before they get better, some parents are bringing
their children home for family remedial work in the Constitution and the Book of
Mormon.
For religious and family reasons
An artist goes to art school; a truck driver
goes to trucking school, a Latter-day Saint goes to. . . . certainly not to a Protestant
school where he might be taught false doctrines about baptism. Why, then, an
atheistic
school?
The fact that the Church saw the need to issue the
Proclamation on the Family tells us where Satan is concentrating his evil forces
and where we'd better build our trenches and strengthen our forces.
Brigham Young and other Church leaders of his day warned against adoption of
tax-supported schools, and now we are reaping the harvest that they predicted.
Since home education will be the way of Zion societies, it makes sense
for us to make course corrections now.
For the vast majority of families, homeschooling brings greater academic and personal growth and welcomed
family peace. Sure, there are some limitations and some failures; but the
rate and height and breadth of homeschooling's successes make it a far better
option than taking the risks associated with forced government schooling.
To preserve our
political and religious heritage and build close families with faith sufficient to meet
the challenges of the last days, many families are deciding that there's just
no place like
home!