Libraries and Home Schooling by L Stinson

I have personal experience with Home Schooling children and how the public or community library is an essential to homeschooling families. We would go to the library every other week to look at books, get ideas of projects and check out books to read and movies to watch.  Libraries and Homeschoolers our Shared Common Ground states that in 2008 there were 50,000 home schoolers just in the state of Florida.  When we homeschooled it was in its beginning stages and did not have the school district organized programs as now. The neighbor children told my children that we were going to go to jail because it was against the law but at that time there were no laws for or against homeschooling. I homeschooled in our home for 5 years. My 2 oldest children when returning to school where very advanced in math and were placed in advance math classes along with all honors classes in high school. They took math classes at a junior college when the high school ran out of math classes for them. All 4 have college degrees, 2 of them have a master’s degree and one of those also has a doctorate.  

Homeschooling has become very popular in the last 15 years. Across our country it is now widely accepted that homeschooling really works well in place of the traditional classroom which is a great leap from the old thoughts that homeschooling would not only be detrimental to the children but they could never measure up to classroom students. It is known now that home schoolers will outperform other students. Now, “Savvy public libraries cater to homeschool users by developing daytime programs to serve them.” (T. Willingham). These programs range from book clubs, discussion groups to choirs. Having these supportive programs help the families by giving them more interaction with other children but it is often a wider range of age groups which is quite acceptable in homeschooling families as the students in the home are usually a variety of ages but they do many activities and studies together. These libraries have also contributed to the lifelong learning process that all teachers hope to plant the seeds for in the traditional classroom.

References:

Willingham, T. (2008). Libraries and Homeschoolers. Knowledge Quest, 37(1), 58-63.