You are sitting in school, end of the day on Friday, watching the clock tick tick tick. You can’t wait for the bell to ring for school to be over so you and all your friends can get ready for that nights football game against your school’s biggest rival. But what if you weren’t able to do all that? What if you didn’t have a football team, or didn’t have to sit and wait for the school bell to ring, or didn’t have tons of school friends? That’s what it’s like for a homeschooler. Most children who are homeschooled lack life experience, independence and are deprived of normal school activities, all because of untrained parents who are selfish and overprotective.

Homeschooled kids don’t develop life experiences or independence that children who go to a public school would. When kids are homeschooled, they are surrounded by adults and are very sheltered from the outside world. Besides siblings, if they have them, homeschoolers don’t get interaction with others and don’t build essential problem-solving skills. If a mother bird kept a baby bird in the nest all the time, the bird will never be able to spread its wing and learn to fly. If a parent keeps their kid at home to educate them, then their child won’t be able to become independent or learn to fly. When homeschoolers get out into college or into the real world that they have been sheltered from, they are in a shock. They won’t be able to control every aspect of their lives and what people are doing around them. How will a child who is at home all day gain the same experiences or independence as a public schooled child?

Kids who are schooled through a public education system have many more activities that they can participate in over a homeschooler. Public schools have professional teacher to teach extracurricular classes such as Art, Drama, Gym, Orchestra, Band, Choir, Librarians, and much more. There are also many clubs and sports that homeschooled kids don’t have access to either, like soccer team, football teams, cross country, ski club, chess club, teen institute, and mentoring. In most high schools it is required that you have at least one year of a foreign language taken to graduate, and you have many options by professionals in that language, but as a homeschooler you normally have only one option taught by your mom or whoever your teacher is. By attending a public school, kids have more opportunities to participate in something they enjoy and have the possibility to be accepted into college over a homeschooler who didn’t.

Many parents who homeschool they child is for their own selfish reasons. Parents don’t want their kid to be around others that may be inappropriate who go to a public school. If they don’t experience it through their years of schooling, when they go out into the real world they will be in total shock from what they have been sheltered from. It is estimated that in Scotland there are 5,000 children being homeschooled, yet only 350 are registered with local authorities (Bowditch). Parents who are the ones that actually teach their children should need a teaching degree. You don’t see parents going around doing surgery or filling the teeth of their children. It is illegal to pretend to be a doctor or nurse without a degree, so why are parents who are untrained or don’t have a degree able to teach their children at home? Adults are criminals, posing as a teacher and teaching without letting authorities know. If your kid has a learning disability then a school is a much better place for them. Schools have professionals trained to be patient with kids with mild disabilities like stuttering or dyslexia, or severe disabilities like down syndrome. A study done at Harvard University said on average kids that are homeschooled do not do any better at college level as kids that were publically educated (Boyce). Parents homeschool their kids to say “Look at my child, isn’t she smart? I taught her everything she knows.” But when it comes to schooling a child, it shouldn’t be done to have a parent show off their teaching abilities, it should be to help educate a child so they can become the best they can be.

Homeschooling is a bad option of schooling because those kids lack life experiences, independence and they don’t have school activities available to them. Parents can be selfish for homeschooling and shouldn’t be allowed to teach without a teacher’s degree. There’s nothing better than waiting at the end of a long Friday at school, and hanging with all your friends. Why would you give up, or make you child give up, all the wonderful high school experiences to become a sheltered homeschooler?