I can't because . . .

Parents aren't qualified.
Twenty-five years ago, when the home school movement was new, the major objection was that untrained parents couldn't successfully teach all the difficult material covered in public schools.  Today that argument is seldom raised, partly because of the well publicized success of home schoolers, partly because of the increasing academic failure of the public school system.  Today the curriculum is so poor that parents who send their children to school will often have to teach them math, reading, and correct history at home.   

My children need to be socialized.
The academic argument of the past has been replaced with, "What about their socialization?"   First, we must differentiate between social skills and social interaction.  Social skills -- manners, conversation skills, acceptance, comfort with various age groups, mature handling of friction, the ability to stand up to peer pressure, and leadership -- are skills best taught in the family.  The social skills learned in large groups of  same-age children without meaningful leadership are survival, conformity, and mob behavior skills.  Social contact is also best handled by the family where choices can be made about friendships, classmates, and teachers.

University of Toronto researcher J. Gary Knowles, a former Utahn, found that home schoolers "tend to be more mature, self-motivated and responsible" and they "experienced far less conflict with their parents during the teen years."  As college students, he found "homeschoolers are better at staying focused and dealing well with the pressures of college life."  He asks, "Where did we ever get the idea that 2,000 13-year-olds were the ideal people with which to socialize other 13-year-olds?"  

If we are sending children to school for "socialization," we could save the taxpayers a lot of money if we would simply build playgrounds and football fields.

I can't teach.
Many mothers feel themselves unqualified to teach their children.  They "don't know math," "haven't got the patience," or "don't know where to start."  They misunderstand that their home is the intended laboratory for their personal growth and fulfillment.  Mothers can learn math with their children; there is plenty of help available.  Mothers can develop patience.  They can develop a love of learning.  Later, they can look back and say, "I gave my best to my children.  I stretched, I grew, I learned.  I did more than make the beds and take cupcakes to school on Valentine's day."  What mothers invest in their children in the first 20 years will come back to bless and comfort them for the next 70!

Mothers, by nature, are excellent teachers.  They think nothing of teaching a child to speak the family language, to dress himself, to work household appliances, to worship, to shop, and a myriad of other skills.  But when it comes to long division . . . .?  

Mothers have been disempowered by a cultural mindset that only the properly trained can teach little children and that only colleges can properly train teachers.  

And parents don't have to do it all.  College students and grandparents make wonderful tutors.  Correspondence classes and early college are also possibilities.

My child won't learn from me.
How sad!  Don't you want to fix that?  Home schooling is a family-saving movement.  It's an opportunity for parents to repair and strengthen the family ties.  This may be the most important benefit of home schooling. 

I can't find the time.
Home schooling does take time, but often it is simply a matter of getting rid of lesser things and using other time blocks more productively.  Many parents of public school children are already spending the evening hours on homework, and the activity is seldom pleasant.  The same number of hours spent in the morning studying together from books of the family's own choice can be far more happy and productive.  The afternoon hours can be spent on independent projects.  Sometimes parents think home schooling means they must sit with their children for 6 or 7 hours a day of one-on-one time; but what school teacher spends more than a few minutes a day in direct interaction with a student?  The efficiency of home schooling  makes it possible to accomplish much more in much less time, especially if a parent is wise enough to allow the child to develop responsibility for his own education.

Homeschoolers can also learn to upgrade their time.  Television can become an educational tool.  Dinner conversations become more meaningful.  Family nights become times for reports and recitations.  It's a refining process that will go on through years and generations.

My child needs a high school diploma to get into college.
Not so.  The most efficient way to enter college is to take college-credit courses during the high school years, either by correspondence or at a jr. college.  Then enter a four-year college as a transfer student.  

My child needs to be an example.
Why just in one place?  Why not also a strip bar?  Why not a nudist camp?  How about a job at Playboy?  Do adults pick jobs in the worst possible conditions so they can be examples?  When churches send out missionaries they send them out to teach and serve, not to be taught and controlled and to have their value system changed.  

If you don't send your child to R-rated movies or to pornographic websites, why would you send him to jr. high?

OK, we recognize that most parents are sending their children to school because they think the benefit outweighs the risk.  But in many situations the benefit has diminished to a minus and the risk has increased to an intolerable level.  It's time for parents to do their homework and gather their courage.

I want my child to play sports.
Can't help you there.  Nothing is more important than football.

It's unpatriotic to abandon the public schools.
 We hear, "The public school system made America great."  It didn't.  Moms and dads who taught their children to read from the Bible, and ministers who gathered up groups of teens and mentored them in the classics, and craftsmen who taught young men trades -- this is the educational system that made America great.  This is how the American Founding Fathers were taught.  This is the system that made American citizens of their day far more literate than those of our day. 

When mandatory public schooling was introduced, it was the fine teachers of that day and the supportive, moral community that made it great.  As the quality of the community and the number of quality teachers has dwindled, it has become ever more evident that systems of compulsion and systems without religious foundations can not produce academic, moral, or spiritual excellence.

When the Founders encouraged public schooling for the poor they were talking about schooling based on religion and morality.  They expected the Bible to be the basic text.  They expected the Constitution to be taught.  They recognized that the survival of our Constitutional Republic depended on an educated citizenry.  They would not have favored compulsory education, nor would they be pleased with today's curriculum.  They didn't believe in education at public expense as an entitlement for the students' social pleasure or for job skills; they were only concerned that students learn religious truths and the proper, Biblical role of government in order to preserve our American system.

Utah's first governor, Brigham Young, recognized the drift that had taken place and warned the citizens of his day.  "I am opposed to free education as much as I am proposed to taking property from one man and giving it to another . . . Would I encourage free schools by taxation?  No!"

Parents do not need to put their children at spiritual, moral, and academic risk out of a sense of patriotic duty or because they fear the unknown.  The answers will come.  What this country needs most right now is strong, capable, educated, self-sufficient, bonded families and an enlightened citizenry.