Low accountability plagues system
Freedom is the central value for many aspects of our lives, seen most clearly in our education system. Children under the age of 16 are required to be formally educated in our country, and while our current tax system provides education for them through public schools, parents still have the ability to choose what type of education is best for their children. One option for parents looking outside of the public school system is home school.
Home-schooling laws in South Carolina are weak at best. Parents are required to have only a high school degree or GED; this requirement can also be satisfied by a parent's membership in a home-school organization with at least 50 members. Students must be taught all of the core subjects, as well as attend school for at least 4.5 hours a day, 180 days a year.
That may come across as acceptable at first, but it's also important to note that school districts have no authority to require home visits. So who is keeping track? Can we just take on faith that parent-teachers keep impeccable records and are following protocol? This type of honor system for adults just isn't good enough. While I believe that there are some parents who are phenomenal teachers, there are also way too many who are awful and incapable of teaching their children the basic knowledge that schools are supposed to supply.
In order to be licensed for instruction, public school teachers are required to have at least a bachelor's degree, sufficient course background in each subject they are to teach and time spent as an instructor under an experienced teacher. As someone who has gone through it before, I can tell you that it's a grueling process. To believe that an uneducated parent who holds only a high school degree can teach just as effectively as a fully-trained educator is ludicrous.
Children who have grown up in the home-school system often lack many of the social skills required of them in the workplace. They often only socialize with others within their socio-economic status and are unprepared to deal with their college roommates, cubicle neighbors and even bosses. Without learning diversity, every single day they are being denied the skills necessary to deal with different lifestyles or beliefs that others may hold.
It is the responsibility of every American to ensure our children, who will be running our future, are taken care of as best as possible. The public school system currently does not have all of the answers, which is why it is important for educational reform and policy changes to happen. Leaving our future in incapable hands is irresponsible, and Americans are failing when it comes to the relaxed home-school system. Let's require more formal education and training from parents who wish to home school, or better yet, let's get rid of it altogether. It's difficult to standardize something we can't properly keep tabs on; instead, we should focus all our energies on making accountable system for educating our children.
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