Is Homeschooling Beneficial or Harmful for Children?
The CQ Researcher journal published the article “The U.S. Homeschooling Boom: Is more regulation and oversight needed?” on July 19, 2024. It included a Pro/Con debate to answer the question, “Is homeschooling harmful for children?”
Dr. Brian Ray was the invited author replying that home education is beneficial for children, and not harmful. His brief piece is below.
The person writing the “Pro” argument that homeschooling is harmful hedged herself in her opening two sentences, as follows:
“In the absence of sufficient legal oversight, homeschooling has the capacity to be greatly dangerous for children [e.g., abuse, neglect]. This does not mean, however, that homeschooling is intrinsically harmful.”
She then proceeded to offer no empirical research-based evidence that less government control of homeschooling increases harm or that more government control and regulation decreases harm. She also stated, “For homeschooling to be absolutely safe, it is first necessary to devise basic protections and protect the right of all children to an education.” Any reader should realize that no educational or schooling situation – whether public school, private school, or homeschooling – is “absolutely safe.” Overall, the debater did not argue that homeschooling is harmful to children.
Homeschooling is Beneficial, and Not Harmful, to Children.
Brian Ray
President, National Home Education Research Institute. Written for CQ Researcher, July 2024
History consistently shows that children benefit from homeschooling. Millions of business owners, artists, lawyers, farmers, architects, bakers, carpenters, politicians, singers and inventors were homeschooled and have been successful due to their focused learning lifestyle. Today, some 3.1 million U.S. children are experiencing the benefits of homeschooling.
Parent-directed family-based education fills the child’s primary need for parental involvement and strong family bonds. Parents love their child and know their children’s interests, strengths and weaknesses more than any outside educator.
Homeschooling offers what educators know creates good learning and social development: small group instruction and tutoring, mastery learning, social capital, cooperative groups, freedom from bullying, violence and peer dependence, and plenty of time to read, explore nature, ponder, dream and create. Every home-educated child — not just those gifted or learning-challenged — can have an “individualized education program.”
When accounting for actual instructional time in the classroom, homeschooling accomplishes in two to three hours what it takes traditional schools four to six hours to do. Institutional schools are driven by testing and pleasing governments; homeschooling focuses on the child’s needs and interests.
Diversity in homeschooling is broad. There are atheists, secularists and religious parents with General Educational Development diplomas (GEDs) and PhDs, single- and two-parent families, high- and low-income families and rapidly growing portions of Black and Hispanic families.
Parents may expose their children to a wide variety of curriculum, more individually focused and stimulating than the normative curriculum of schools. Homeschool children can socialize with people of a wide range of ages, ideas and life backgrounds through vibrant homeschool communities. These communities have a plethora of resources available to them: learning co-operatives, scouting programs, city and school sports teams, museum programs, curricula, online forums and courses, statewide and regional conferences and special needs services.
The body of empirical research shows that 63 percent of published peer-reviewed studies on academic achievement, 64 percent on social-emotional development and 50 percent on success in adulthood and college find those homeschooled perform statistically significantly better than those who attended public school. Research also shows there is no difference in the rate of abuse or neglect for the two groups of students. All these benefits come without the $18,000 of tax dollars spent annually per public school child and without professionally trained and state-licensed teachers. While 69 percent and 74 percent of public school eighth-grade students are below proficient in reading and math, homeschooled children excel.
There is no body of evidence that homeschooling harms children.