History

I came across a great article in the Texas Homeschool Coalition Review Magazine. It's not earth-shattering, and I've seen similar things before, but I thought the author did a nice job of summarizing the point, and it was encouraging to me. He writes:

Keep a good historical perspective. Most people who have ever existed on this planet, including heroic men and women of the Bible and some of the greatest minds of all time, did not do school like you and I did school. None of the early Pilgrims, Puritans, or Founding Fathers of this country knew anything even close to the standardized, secularized, compartmentalized, age-segregated, government-controlled schools that most of us attended. Yet they gave us our rich Christian heritage, the Mayflower Compact, the Delcaration of Independence, and the Constitution! Do not let anyone make you feel guilty for not schooling your children the way you were schooled. There were godly, well-educated children long before someone invented yellow school buses, Friday night football, and the prom.

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is not meant as a knock against other forms of education, and I don't for a minute think we're among the "greatest minds of all time", but at the very least this demonstrates that home education has a pretty good track record throughout the centuries.