Homeschooling Is Backward?

I found this comment on Stateline.org in response to an article from April 2005 that covered challenges to No Child Left Behind:

I think the government and the parents of our children both need to look at their priorities or we will be going backward in time to home-schooling for everyone or private schools.

So, to choose homeschooling over a public school education, or even a private school education, is going back in time? Talk about chronological snobbery!!! According to the author of this comment, you would think that the quality of education in our past was somehow deficient. I am certain that is why homeschooling, mentor schooling, apprenticeships, and private educational institutions turned out the intellectual giants listed below (taken from Christian Homeschoolers.com). Without some of these people, their brilliant minds, and their capacity for service and community contribution, the world within which we live would look very different and many of the freedoms, modern conveniences, and social services that we take for granted would be non-existent.

I am going to assume that what the author really meant to say was: in the past, access to a high-quality education was limited to those who were able to teach themselves or their own children, or who were wealthy enough to hire private tutors or send their children to private schools.

FAMOUS HOMESCHOOLERS

Artists
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Claude Money
- Andrew Wyeth

Composers
- Irving Berlin
- Anton Bruckner
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Educators
- Frederick Terman (President, Stanford University)
- William Samuel Johnson (President, Columbia University)
- Frank Vandiver (President, Texas A&M University
- John Witherspoon (President, Princeton University)

Generals
- Stonewall Jackson
- Robert E. Lee
- Douglas MacArthur
- George Patton

Inventors
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Thomas Edison
- Orville & Wilbur Wright

Presidents
- George Washington
- Thomas Jefferson
- James Madison
- John Quincy Adams
- William Henry Harrison
- John Tyler
- Abraham Lincoln
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Woodrow Wilson

Preachers & Religious Leaders
- Moses
- John the Baptist
- Joan of Arc
- William Cary
- Philip Melanchthon
- Jonathan Edwards
- Dwight L. Moody
- John Newton
- John Owen
- Charles Wesley
- John Wesley
- Brigham Young

Scientists
- George Washington Carver
- Pierre Curie
- Albert Einstein
- Blaise Pascal
- Booker T. Washington

Statesmen
- Winston Churchill
- Benjamin Franklin
- Patrick Henry
- William Penn
- Henry Clay

U.S. Supreme Court Justices
- John Jay
- John Marshall
- John Rutledge
- Sandra Day O’Connor

Writers
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Pearl S. Buck
- Agatha Christie
- Charles Dickens
- C.S. Lewis
- George Bernard Shaw
- Mark Twain
- Daniel Webster
- Phillis Wheatley

Constitutional Convention Delegates
- Richard Basset (Governor, Delaware)
- William Blunt (U.S. Senator)
- George Clymer (U.S. Representative)
- William Few (U.S. Senator)
- Benjamin Franklin (Inventor & Statesman)
- William Houston (Lawyer)
- William S. Johnson (President, Colombia University)
- William Livingston (Governor, New Jersey)
- James Madison (President of United States, 1809-1817)
- George Mason
- John Francis Mercer (U.S. Representative)
- Charles Pickney III (Governor, South Carolina)
- John Rutledge (Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court)
- Richard D. Spaight (Governor, North Carolina)
- George Washington (President of United States, 1789-1797)
- John Witherspoon (President, Princeton University)
- George Wythe (Justice, Virginia High Court)

Others
- Abigail Adams (Wife, John Adams)
- Ansel Adams (Photographer)
- Clara Barton (Founder, Red Cross)
- John Burroughs (Naturalist)
- Andrew Carnegie (Industrialist)
- Charlie Chaplin (Actor)
- George Rogers Clark (Explorer)
- Noel Coward (Playwright)
- John Paul Jones (Father of American Navy)
- Tamara McKinney (World Cup Skier)
- John Stuart Mill (Economist)
- Charles Louis Montesquieu (Philosopher)
- Florence Nightingale (Nurse)
- Sally Ride (Astronaut)
- Bill Ridell (Newspaperman)
- Will Rogers (Humorist)
- Albert Schweitzer (Physician)
- Leo Tolstoy
- Martha Washington (Wife, George Washington)