Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Today on Home School Heartbeat , Home School Legal Defense Association Chairman and General Counsel Michael Farris reminds us to guard against an invisible enemy of homeschooling.

Michael Farris:
Success can breed complacency. Unfortunately, this attitude has already begun to creep into the homeschooling movement.


No one should think that their children will have a top academic education merely because the instruction takes place in the family home. Without hard work, rigor, and persistence, homeschooling can produce a mediocre result.


Over the last six or seven years, I have graded thousands of papers written by homeschooled high school students. About one-third of these papers were truly outstanding. About one-third were good or pretty good. About one-third needed a significant amount of work just in the area of basic writing.


Of course, these percentages are far better than the public school experience. I have even shown sample exams to top professors, who were amazed at the content and quality of the writing. In fact, one of the most highly regarded professors of constitutional law, who is a noted liberal, was quite surprised at the quality of legal analysis and writing I showed him in one exam written by a high school student. Still, we have to face the fact that not every homeschooler writes at this level.


And not every bright student at Patrick Henry College succeeds. We have had students with very high SATs do poorly. We have had students with modest SATs earn very high GPAs. What's the difference? Hard work. Laziness never leads to success. As my dad used to say, an attitude of "I will" beats IQ every time. I'm Mike Farris.