I would give the caveat though, that there are many parents that have no business homeschooling. Now, before you react to that, I will say that I believe, for those qualified, capable, and willing, homeschooling is the best option.

That said, there are many parents that aren’t willing to put in the proper effort and/or time into properly educating their children, and there are some that are incapable because of their own level of education. This is likely to be more often the case in low income families. Now, I don’t believe a parent needs a college education to be able to teach their children, but if they can’t really master elementary concepts themselves, they certainly can’t teach them to their children.

I’ve known more than a few children that would’ve received a significantly better education had they gone to public school instead of being homeschooled as they were. It’s definitely not for everyone.

Capable and qualified means, at least one parent is motivated and disciplined enough to provide the means necessary to make sure the children receive a proper education. This might mean getting assistance from others in areas where they don’t have the necessary expertise. For example, even though I took two semesters of Calculus in college, I would never attempt to teach it to anyone.

Before I go into my review of the article you linked, I want to say that although these children were successful in teaching themselves, the fact is a good number of children are not self-motivated enough to do that. I have a 3.7GPA in college right now, yet there are at least 3 classes that I would’ve done better in had I been more self-disciplined.

I’ve known several parents that homeschooled their children, but were very undisciplined about it, and their children were not self-learners. This turned out to be a complete disaster to their educational process.

Now for the article review. One of my primary concerns with this article is that it makes several claims without backing them up. For instance,

The academic quality of most schools has deteriorated to the point that American students are literally the world’s largest group of dunces.

This is a gross exaggeration and unsubstantiated claim. I have three teenagers in school, and I volunteer at the schools. I can tell you from first-hand experience this is most certainly not true.

In test after test of academic abilities, American students score last or near-last in comparison with students from the other twenty or so advanced countries.

Yet those same tests show that American students test the highest in after college, university, or trade school. Some believe it is due to student burnout in these other countries by pressing too hard for early academic excellence. Students in the U.S. are more well-rounded with the arts and sports activities. This serves them well later in life.

I’m going to be honest, I only skimmed the rest of the article due to current time constraints. I think it’s great that this solution worked for these children, but for every success story I can share a disastrous one.

What we really need in the area of education is choices. The government has a compelling interest in assuring a literate populace. Where we have a problem today is that the government wants to dictate how the populace is educated. We need to get the government out of the education business. Standardized testing can assure the methods used are meeting their goals. If parents have true choice in education, most of them will choose the best option for themselves and their children.