Is Homeschooling Legal?
Most often, yes.
Now that is deliberately vague because this is something that you have to research for your district and province/state and country.
Homeschooling is not universally accepted and in some countries, for example some of the European countries, homeschoolers are actually jailed for teaching things not sanctioned by the state. There have been examples of children being removed from their parents because the parents were teaching their children ‘things’.
Ontario’s Law:
Section 21 (2) of the Ontario Education Act states that a child of school age is excused from compulsory attendance in a public school if the child is receiving satisfactory instruction “at home or elsewhere.”
Now there are a lot of questions and thoughts about this and there is an excellent link here that does a very good job outlining these questions and answers. No need to rewrite them all here.
Some personal questions I ask about public schools:
1. What is the purpose of public education? Is it to ensure that every child has equal opportunities to receive an education?
Do I endorse the reason for public education? Can I achieve the same goals in an other method (private school, tutoring, homeschooling)?
2. What are the goals of public education specific to my child? More specifically, what is the education that my child will receive via this method of education?
What *are* they teaching my child? Is it reading, writing and ‘rithmetic? Or is there a whole lot more? Are they really teaching the 3 R’s? How well are the ‘majority’ of the students achieving the goals?
3. How are they teaching my child?
for example: lecture, drills, worksheets, hands-on-experience, group work, classroom, textbooks …
4. What is the philosophy that influences the education my child receives and do I subscribe to these core philosophies myself?
As a Christian, I have an issue with many subjects taught in the public school system. Ask yourself, do you believe what is being taught by the school, if you don’t are you explaining this to your child?
Canadian Homeschooling Information
Wikipedia on Homeschooling in the USA
HSLDA on Homeschooling in the USA
More legal questions on Homeschooling in general can be researched on the Home School Legal Defense Association
