Homeschooling Quotes

My aim in homeschooling is to give my children the ability to be an adult learner, a skill set that will last the rest of their lives. ~ Nancy Pearcey

There is no other complex field in our society in which do-it-yourself beats out factory production or market production. Nobody makes his or her own car. But it is still the case that parents can perform the job of educating their children [homeschooling], in many cases better than our present education system. ~ Milton Friedman

The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs. ~ David Guterson

The biggest mistake new homeschooling parents make is going into it with an 'all or nothing' mentality. That's a lot of pressure for something you've never done before... ~ Jacqueline Wilson, The Homeschool Super Freak

In the average home there is much work to be done, and God does not approve of laziness. But beware thinking that your schedule (whether it is a homeschooling schedule or feeding-the-baby schedule) is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Life in our homes should be characterized by joy and thanksgiving so that children are taught and nourished in a way that takes their souls into account. ~ Nancy Wilson

As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. ~ John Taylor Gatto

You will not reap the fruit of individuality in your children if you clone their education. ~ Marilyn Howshall

For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them. ~ Anthony M. Esolen

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education. ~ Walter Scott

I've been homeschooling for eight years and have always received the best advice and encouragement from other homeschoolers, rather than a book or lecture. ~ Lisa Whelchel

Every new generation of women, it seems, feminist and housewife alike, is encouraged by popular culture to disavow its forebears and rebrand itself as an all-new, never-before-seen generational phenomenon, completely different in every way from what came before. The 'housewives' of the 1970s gave way to the Martha Stewart 'homemakers' of the 1980s, then the 'soccer moms' of the 1990s, then the stay-at-home moms of the 2000s. Next may come the homeschooling homesteaders of the impending post-apocalypse - who knows? What's significant is that the cycle of idealization, devaluation, and revision gives an appearance of progress, of superficial change, that distracts us from the big picture. ~ Carina Chocano

All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged. ~ Quinn Cummings

It was my assumption that skilled teachers spent their days imparting important and meaningful knowledge to eager students. I also believed, as many of you do, that I didn't remember or wasn't good at the things we learned in high school because I didn't pay close enough attention or didn't work hard enough. ~ Brian Huskie

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. ~ Julia Ward Howe

Going to school is rarely a choice at all, but rather just the thing you do because everyone else does it. ~ Brian Huskie

Paul's story is good news for those of us who are tempted to put our trust in ourselves, in our own ability to work hard enough to merit God's favor. Grace is so surprising! It's surprising because while it may seem likely that a prostitute would recognize her need for rescue, the homeschooling, bread-baking, devotion-reading mom who attends her local church faithfully (while trusting in her own goodness) will choke on the humiliating message of gospel rescue. Rescue? Why would she need rescuing? ~ Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

I'm not saying homeschooling will be easy. I am saying it will be worth it. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

I'm sure if Socrates were alive today, and had to sit through even a single meeting discussing how to use data to inform instruction, he'd kill himself all over again. ~ Brian Huskie

So it's really not true, after all, that the government has spared children from toil and instead lets them romp on the playgrounds. No, the government instead buses them into mass worker-training programs and is very resentful indeed when parents try to opt out of this arrangement, as in homeschooling. ~ Robert P. Murphy

Proverbs 16:3 'Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.' A great reminder when planning out the school year. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you're learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you've been leaning on and says, "Now, go it alone! ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders. ~ John Holt

Homeschooling is not a race ... You will not get behind nor do you have to live with guilt that you feel the need to catch up. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher. ~ John Holt

Without knowing it, I had stumbled upon one of the basic postulates of homeschooling: Anything you do with a home-schooled child outside the home can be described as a "field trip", thus rendering whatever activity you pursue a legitimate educational experience. ~ Quinn Cummings

Some issues lend themselves to grassroots campaigns - homeschooling works well - but others require contrivance and connivance to whip up support. Often, lobbyists will hire vendors to dispatch blast emails and robocalls in the hopes of bombarding Congressional offices with citizen fury. ~ Jack Abramoff

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is. ~ Ivan Illich

My mother, who taught me how to read and write and home-schooled me for the first 12 years of my life, whose presence shaped me as much as her absence did, who imbibed in me the values of empathy and fearlessness and hard work, looks down on me today with great pride. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

George dutifully dusted the marks from the expensive rug and retired to the kitchen to await a grave and disapproving Collins, wishing with all of his boyish heart that he had applied for the stables. Cleaning stalls had to be beneficial exercise, and surely one must become accustomed to the smells...eventually. ~ Sarah Brazytis

We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans. ~ Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

Homeschooling moms are what remains of the leisured classes in these hurried, frantic days. ~ Cindy Rollins

Homeschool Rules
1) Get out of your seat
2) Talk in class
3) Don't raise your hand
4) Kiss your teacher
5) Chew gum ~ Google Search Pictures "quotes"

I'm pretty much using media all day because my school is online. It's sort of like homeschooling but also like going to real school - you log in and do all your work and email it to the teacher, and we have a teacher who oversees us on set. ~ Nolan Gould

On some intuitive level, I knew that learning had to be more than the mastery of facts. I've experienced it as an adult. I become consumed with a subject like quilting or preparing yogurt cultures, and that topic takes over my life - fabric scraps scattered on the floor, little jars of white sludge cuddled by blankets on my kitchen countertops. When I learned to play guitar in my thirties, no one had to schedule my practices. My guitar lived on a stand in the living room and I tormented our ears multiple times a day until my fingers bled. Passion for learning has that fiery, consuming, can't-stop quality. ~ Julie Bogart

Children are not only extremely good at learning; they are much better at it than we are. ~ John Holt

Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They're individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.
It's up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work. ~ Lori McWilliam Pickert

I wouldn't say I was bullied, but I was definitely a bit of an outcast. It was more the kids thinking I thought I was cool. I started homeschooling in fifth grade, and I was much happier. ~ Kaley Cuoco

I do a kind of homeschooling where some of it's on the computer and some of it's classes around the city. So sometimes I'll have a class in the morning or do school at home. ~ Lilla Crawford

Homeschooling? What was she thinking? All I could envision were those religious families, the ones with the little girls wearing Amish dresses and the boys with their slicked-back hair and matching polo shirts. I'd seen groups of them at the mall, following their mother single file, pretending it was a field trip. ~ Karen McQuestion

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony. ~ John Taylor Gatto

To be free, one must have the critical-thinking skills that inoculate against the alluring rhetoric that pervades contemporary society, rhetoric that is constantly seeking to undermine freedom for the sake of varied narrow interests. It is an old story, and Daniel Scoggin, the CEO of Great Hearts, recognizes this reality when he reminds his constituency that "each generation must earn its freedom anew". ~ Gene Edward Veith Jr.

What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all. ~ John Holt

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies. ~ Alfie Kohn

The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home. ~ David O. McKay

I was shocked, however, to discover that homeschooling is not allowed in the Netherlands. I could only imagine that after legalizing pot, prostitution and gambling, they had to outlaw something. ~ Quinn Cummings

Notice the difference: A child's disability is the focus in traditional classroom settings, but his abilities are the focus in the homeschool environment. ~ Sandra K. Cook

More important...you've assembled a curriculum that works for him. It's his education. I suspect he's more likely to have a real education, an education that sticks, if he's part of shaping it. ~ Quinn Cummings

[Homeschooling] ... recipe for genius: More of family and less of school, more of parents and less of peers, more creative freedom and less formal lessons. ~ Raymond S. Moore

All governments are ordained by God, but none compare to government by God, theocracy. ~ William R. Bowen

One of the goals of classical education is to discern the appropriate manner by which the mistreated and oppressed can challenge their oppressors without destroying their civilization. ~ Gene Edward Veith Jr.

How many of us have read history, and shook our heads and puffed our chest, and said, "If I were alive during that period, I would never have done those things to those people!" Yet here we are, doing those things to those people. ~ Brian Huskie

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today`s shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. ~ Gabor Mate

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Break the teacher certification monopoly so anyone with something valuable to teach can teach it. Nothing is more important than this. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Trying to get more learning out of the present system is like trying to get the Pony Express to compete with the telegraph by breeding faster ponies. ~ Edward Fiske

What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact.

"Why - why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. "you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table? ~ Dorothy Canfield

Homeschooling is not head-to-head, it's heart-to-heart. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

And the truth is that by homeschooling, you're doing something that a large part of society isn't doing. Being different is a ministry. ~ Jamerrill Stewart

It is no wonder that Satan hates the family and has hurled his venom against it in the form of Communism. ~ William R. Bowen

My best memory of school was probably leaving school. Because I hated that fucking place. ~ Troye Sivan

When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition. ~ Brian S. Wesbury

The real legacy of Christian homeschooling is people who grow to adulthood and influence a new generation of children. And the greatest tribute possible to the homeschooling parent is to see that work carry forward. ~ Alexandra Swann

Thank goodness my education was neglected. ~ Beatrix Potter

I was delighted to see him growing more cautious and skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And if it comes back to bite me from time to time, that's a price worth paying. ~ Martine Millman

Labels are OK for marketing something, but does the Unschooling philosophy of life need any marketing? No. In so many ways, Unschooling stands for a refusal of marketing and a rejection of any consumerist approach to learning.
Your learning IS your life, not something you purchase subject by subject in the big education supermarket to hang on the wall like a diploma or certificate. Unschooling by its nature does not need to set up an 'Institute of Unschooling' or an 'Unschooling Foundation': that would be the purest contradiction-in-terms, to institutionalize the very practice that most undermines institutionalization! ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

A teenager's nature is not laziness, their preferred state is not ignorance, and it is not necessary for extrinsic motivation to be delivered by trained professionals in order to prevent them from bareknuckle boxing under a bridge in exchange for drugs and money. ~ Brian Huskie

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it. ~ William Howard Taft

Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system. ~ Richard Mitchell

Let early education be a sort of amusement. You will then be better able to find out the natural bent. ~ Plato

Schooling that children are forced to endure - in which the subject matter is imposed by others and the "learning" is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children's true interests - turns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm in our society, suppresses curiosity and overrides children's natural ways of learning. It also promotes anxiety, depression and feelings of helplessness that all too often reach pathological levels. ~ Peter Gray

You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words. ~ Jane Austen

Trust in families and in neighborhoods and individuals to make sense of the important question, 'What is education for?' If some of them answer differently from what you might prefer, that's really not your business, and it shouldn't be your problem. Our type of schooling has deliberately concealed the fact that such a question must be framed and not taken for granted if anything beyond a mockery of democracy is to be nurtured. It is illegitimate to have an expert answer that question for you. ~ John Taylor Gatto

The Lord calls each one of His children, no matter what his occupation-lawyer, doctor, maintenance man, carpenter, accountant, athlete, musician, teacher, homeschooling mom, and so on-to have a real prayer life. ~ Mike Bickle

And there you sit, atop the smoking mountain of rubble that was once your home, covered in gray dust, cradling the mangled corpse of your little girl in your arms, looking south to a Mexican people who, in solidarity with you, have stopped riding Uber. ~ Brian Huskie

When the atmosphere encourages learning, the learning is inevitable. ~ Elizabeth Foss

One of the beauties of homeschooling is that it allows us to recognize and nurture each one of our very special individual children. ~ Anonymous

Know what you're working toward and eliminate debt, so that if you change your mind later it doesn't kill you to know you have a hundred thousand dollar biology degree hanging in the kitchen of the tapas restaurant you just opened. ~ Brian Huskie

Homeschooling is more than Latin and Logic. It is a way of life. And that way of life includes having disciplined children, and encouraging loving relationships within the family. We want peace in our homes. ~ Laurie Bluedorn

Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places. ~ John Holt

Maybe you've noticed what I've noticed, and thought it strange, or dismissed it as youthful foolishness or that you were missing some critical piece of information that would reveal itself with age and wisdom – that is: every single teacher believes feverishly in the importance of the content of their class, and furthermore, believes that their assessment of you in their class is a direct measure of your capacity for future success, while simultaneously not having a clue as to the content of virtually any other discipline in the school. They will boldly state things like, That's math, I'm an English teacher or That's literature, I'm a biology teacher, practically admitting out loud that nothing learned in school is important (except, of course, the course they are teaching). ~ Brian Huskie

Each of us is born with a crazy passion to learn. Each of us craves knowledge of our world and our place within it. We learn because we want to learn, because it's important to us, because it's natural, and because it's impossible to live in the world and not learn. Then along comes school to mess up a beautiful thing. ~ Ps Pirro

An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected. ~ Thomas Moore

From my great-grandfather: not to have attended schools for the public; to have had good teachers at home, and to realize that this is the sort of thing on which one should spend lavishly. ~ Marcus Aurelius

It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

I LOVE homeschooling and want others who have been led to do it to love it, too. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

Homeschooling is a journey not a destination, always seek to improve what you are doing and teach with a mind that is open to new possibilities and experiences. ~ Tina Razzell

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else. ~ John W. Gardner

The times I am most frustrated in homeschooling is when I become focused more on my plans than His plans. I must spend more time daily looking up for his divine direction than I do looking down at my lesson plans. ~ Tamara L. Chilver

Homeschooling will certainly produce some socially awkward adults, but the odds are good they would have been just as quirky had they spent twelve years raising their hand for permission to go to the bathroom. ~ Quinn Cummings

My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit. ~ Grover Norquist

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding. ~ Ezra Pound

So you think the best way to prepare kids for the real world is to bus them to a government institution where they're forced to spend all day isolated with children of their own age and adults who are paid to be with them, placed in classes that are too big to allow more than a few minutes of personal interaction with the teacher-then spend probably an hour or more everyday waiting in lunch lines, car lines, bathroom lines, recess lines, classroom lines, and are forced to progress at the speed of the slowest child in class? ~ Steven James

Homeschooling and public schooling are as opposite as two sides of a coin. In a homeschooling environment, the teacher need not be certified, but the child MUST learn. In a public school environment, the teacher MUST be certified, but the child need NOT learn. ~ Gene Royer

I tend to agree with Robert Frost when he says, 'Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.' By this definition, I don't think anyone can claim that we are successfully educating this next generation. ~ Brian Huskie

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [ the book]ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling. ~ Emma Donoghue

Learning and education are a normal part of everyday life and do not need a vast expensive bureaucracy to force them to happen. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek