English

Home Schooling
Although education is compulsory in the United States, it is not compulsory for all children to get their education at school. A number of parents believe that they can provide abetter education for their children at home. Children who are educated at home are known as a “home-schoolers,” There are about 500,000 home-schoolers in the United States today. Some parents preferteaching their children at home because they do not believe that public schools teach the correct religious values; others believe they can provide a better educational experience for their childrenthemselves. Interestingly, results show that home-schooled children tend to do better than average on national tests in reading and math.
David Guterson is an American writer. He and his wife teach theirchildren themselves. Guterson says that his children learn very differently from children in regular school. Learning starts with the children´s interest and questions. For example, when there is aheavy snowfall on a winter day, it may start a discussion or reading about climate, snow removal equipment, Alaska, polar bears and winter tourism. Or a spring evening, when the family is watching thestars, is good time for setting up a telescope and asking questions about satellites, comets, meteors, and the space program. At dinner, if the Brazilian rain forests are on the news, it could be aperfect time to get out the atlas and encyclopedia. Then there might be 2 hours or more of eating, asking questions, looking up answers, discovering how the rain forest influence the climate, what the“green house effect” is, how desert are formed, and how the polar caps affect ocean levels.
Although home schooling offers and experience that is often more interesting than the regular school, criticspoint out that home-schoolers miss out on many important things. The home-schooler is an outsider who, because he or she never attended school, might be uncomfortable mixing with other people in...