Why Homeschool Teens?

When our children reach the high school years, we begin to question whether homeschooling can really provide them with what they need—spiritually, socially, and academically. But homeschooling is effective in high school for the same reasons it is effective in the younger grades. As a matter of fact, homeschooling in high school can yield great dividends in the life of your teen.

Here are 10 reasons why you might want to consider homeschooling your teen.
1. Continue the Family-Building Process
The teen years are a strategic time to cement relationships that last a lifetime. Parents can continue as the primary role models. You can make sure that your teen is instructed and discipled consistently each day with moral training and sound doctrine.
2. Cement Family Relationships
Relationships are the most important thing in family life. When teens are away from home for six-to-eight hours a day, subtle changes begin to erode relationships at home. Divided allegiance or "serving two masters" can shake their foundation. The result is weakened family ties and parental influence.
3. Provide an Excellent Learning Environment
Receiving one-on-one instruction is the most effective way to learn. At home, academics have priority, and there are no classroom distractions. Conversely, studies show that barely one third of the school day in traditional high schools is dedicated to academics.
4. Individualize Education Based on Needs
You can customize your teen's education to provide motivating opportunities to develop gifts and abilities. In areas of academic weakness, you can provide extra time and help. No classroom setting can offer this consistent and loving support.
5. Accelerate Academic Progress
Many homeschooled children are academically ready to do college-level work between the ages of 14 and 16. Additionally, researchers have found that age/grade isolation or segregation actually inhibits socialization. Available data demonstrates that homeschooled children are ahead of their public school counterparts in maturity, socialization, and vocabulary development.
6. Have Direct Influence over Peer Relationships
Homeschooling allows parents to fulfill their God-given responsibility to oversee the choices and amount of time spent outside the family. Parents can mentor their teens as they develop the important lifeskills of evaluating and choosing friends, resolving conflicts, and handling romantic relationships.
7. Protect from the Pressure to Conform
Teens feel strong pressure to compromise their standards and personal identity to conform to "the group." Few are mature enough to withstand constant pressure.
8. Maintain Flexibility
Homeschooling allows great flexibility for family plans and work or service opportunities. Through these venues, teens can gain valuable experience to help prepare them for future adult responsibilities.
9. Create a Safe Learning Environment
News headlines tell us that the presence of drugs and violence are escalating on high school campuses across the country. Homeschooling offers a safe haven for learning, and it provides more opportunity for parents to recognize and lovingly intervene if their child exhibits at-risk behavior

Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress

Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, best known as "La Bella Principessa", also called Profile of a Young Fiancée (Italian: La Bella Principessa), is a portrait whose attribution to Leonardo da Vinci is a matter of contention.^[1] The portrait is a mixed media drawing in chalk, pen, ink and wash tint on vellum, measuring 33 cm x by 22 cm.^[2]
It was purchased by the present owner in 2007. Lumière Technology in Paris performed a multi-spectral digital scan of the work.^[3] The spectral images were analysed by Peter Paul Biro, a forensic art examiner,^[4]St. Jerome in the Wilderness.^[4] who discovered a fingerprint "highly comparable" to a fingerprint on the unfinished
Martin Kemp, Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University, has written a book about the drawing and has identified the girl as Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis, and renamed the portrait La Bella Principessa, though Sforza ladies were not princesses.
his is a summary of Kemp's book, published in March 2009 by Hodder & Stoughton:
The portrait of a young lady on the cusp of maturity shows her with the fashionable costume and hairstyle of a Milanese court lady in the 1490s. By process of elimination involving the inner group of young Sforza women, Kemp concluded that she is probably Bianca Sforza, the illegitimate (but later legitimized) daughter of Ludovico Sforza ("Il Moro"), duke of Milan. In 1496, when Bianca was no more than 13, she was married to Galeazzo Sanseverino, captain of the duke’s Milanese forces. Galeazzo was a patron of Leonardo. Tragically, Bianca was dead within months of her marriage, suffering from a stomach complaint (possibly an ectopic pregnancy). Milanese princesses were the dedicatees of books of poetry on vellum: such a portrait of a "beloved lady" would have made a suitable frontispiece or main illustration for a set of verses produced on the occasion of her marriage or death (most probably the latter).
The physical and scientific evidence from multispectral analysis and first-hand study of La Bella Principessa may be summarized as follows:

• The technique of the portrait is black, red and white chalks (trois crayons, a French medium), with pen and ink.
• The drawing and hatching was carried out entirely by a left-handed artist, as we know Leonardo to have been.
• There are significant pentimenti throughout.
• The portrait is characterized by particularly subtle details, such as the relief of the ear hinted at below the hair, and the amber of the sitter’s iris.
• There are strong stylistic parallels with the Windsor silverpoint drawing of A Woman in Profile, which, like other head studies by Leonardo, features comparable delicate pentimenti to the profile.
• The members of the Sforza family were always portrayed in profile, whereas Ludovico’s mistresses were not.
• The proportions of the head and face reflect the rules that Leonardo articulated in his notebooks.
• The interlace or knotwork ornament in the costume and caul corresponds to patterns that Leonardo explored in other works and in the logo designs for his Academy.
• The portrait was executed on vellum—unknown in the surviving work of Leonardo—though we know from his writings that he was interested in the French technique of dry colouring on parchment (vellum). He specifically noted that he should ask the French artist, Jean Perréal, who was in Milan in 1494 and perhaps on other occasions, about the method of colouring in dry chalks.
• The format of the vellum support is that of a √2 rectangle, a format used for several of his portraits.
• The vellum sheet was cut from a codex, probably a volume of poetry of the kind presented to mark major events in the Sforza women’s lives.
• The vellum bears a fingerprint near the upper left edge, which features a distinctive "island" ridge and closely matches a fingerprint in the unfinished St Jerome by Leonardo. It also includes a palmprint in the chalk pigment on the neck of the sitter, which is characteristic of Leonardo's technique.
• The green of the sitter’s costume was originally obtained with a simple diffusion of black chalk applied on top of the yellowish tone of the vellum support.
• The nuances of the flesh tints were also achieved by exploiting the tone of the vellum and allowing it to show through the transparent media.
• There are noteworthy similarities between La Bella and the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, including the handling of the eyes, the modelling of flesh tones using the palm of the hand, the intricacy of the patterns of the knotwork ornament and the treatment of the contours.
• The now somewhat pale original hatching in pen and ink was retouched in ink in a later restoration, which is far less fluid, precise and rhythmic.
• There have been some diplomatic re-touchings over the years, most extensively in the costume and headdress, but the restoration has not affected the expression and physiognomy of the face to a significant degree, and has not seriously affected the overall impact of the portrait.

Disagreement with attribution

A number of Leonardo experts have concurred with Kemps's conclusions, including Carlo Pedretti, Nicholas Turner, Alessandro Vezzosi, who is the director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci in Vinci, Italy, Dr. Christina Geddo, Dr. Claudio Strinati of the Italian Ministry of Culture, and Mina Gregori, professor emerita at the University of Florence
However, the attribution to Leonardo is not unchallenged, with other connoisseurs expressing reservations. Among the reasons for doubt are the lack of provenance prior to the 20th century – unusual given Leonardo's renown dating from his own lifetime, as well as the fame of the purported subject's family^[7] – and the fact that vellum lasts for centuries, which would facilitate a forger's acquisition of old sheets.^[1] Further, there exist around 4,000 drawings by Leonardo, none of which feature vellum as a surface.^[7] Leonardo scholar Pietro C. Marani discounts the significance of the drawing being made by a left-handed artist, noting that imitators of Leonardo's work have emulated this characteristic in the past.^[7] Marani is also troubled by the vellum surface, 'monotonous' detail, use of colored pigments in specific areas, lack of craquelure, and firmness of touch.^[7] A museum director who wished to remain anonymous believes the drawing is "a screaming 20th-century fake," and finds the damages and repair to the drawing suspicious.^[7] Planning an exhibition of Leonardo's work, Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, said simply "We have not asked to borrow it."^[7]
Klaus Albrecht Schröder, director of the Albertina, Vienna, said "No one is convinced it is a Leonardo," and David Ekserdjian, a scholar of 16th century Italian drawings, wrote that he suspects the work is a "counterfeit."^[1] Neither does one of the primary scholars of Leonardo's drawings, Carmen Bambach of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, nor her colleague at the Metropolitan, Everett Fahy, accept the attribution to Leonardo.^[1][7]
Several forensic experts on fingerprints have discounted Biro's conclusions, finding the partial fingerprint taken from the drawing too poorly detailed to offer conclusive evidence.^[1] Biro's description of the print as being "highly comparable" to a known fingerprint of Leonardo's has similarly been discounted by fingerprint examiners as being too vague an assessment to establish authorship.^[1] When asked if he may have been mistaken to suggest that the fingerprint was Leonardo's, Biro answered "It's possible. Yes."^[1]
Noting the lack of inclusion of dissenting opinion in Kemp's publication, Richard Dorment wrote in the Telegraph: "Although purporting to be a work of scholarship, his book has none of the balanced analysis you would expect from such an acclaimed historian. For La Bella Principessa, as he called the girl in the study, is not art history – it is advocacy."^[7]
Fred R. Kline, an independent art historian known for discoveries of "lost art" among the Nazarene Brotherhood of German painters^[8] suggested in a front page article in The Santa Fe New Mexican,^[9] that the creator of the drawing may actually be Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872), circa 1820, one of the Nazarene Brotherhood working in Rome during the early 19th century who revived the styles and subjects of Italian Renaissance masters. Kline found a related drawing on vellum by Schnorr, Half-nude Female, in the collection of the State Art Museum in Mannheim, Germany, as well as two other drawings on vellum by Schnorr. Kline suggests the La Bella Principessa depicts the same model who appears in the Mannheim drawing, but an idealized version of her in the manner of a Renaissance engagement portrait.
Comparative material-testing of the vellum supports of the Mannheim Schnorr and "La Bella Principessa" may occur in a New York federal court in the pending lawsuit, Marchig v. Christie's, brought on by the original owner of "La Bella Principessa" who is accusing Christie's of negligent misattribution and other damages. Christie's had auctioned Mrs. Marchig's drawing in 1998 as "German School, early 19th century".

Dress Like That

How do 12–13 year-old girls dress for a party? In “mini-dresses, perilously high heels, and glittery, dangling earrings, their eyes heavily shadowed in black-pearl and jade,” says Mrs. Jennifer Moses in a recent Wall Street Journal article. “They look like a flock of tropical birds.” Then she asked the question many are asking, “Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we're being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards?”
Mrs. Moses provided little analysis of this phenomenon in answering her own question before giving own opinion. Her theory—“It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, ‘If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?’”
Moses continues, “We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control…. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations, but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that’s certainly the norm among my peers.”
But following that “norm” did not produce happiness. Speaking of her own friends, Moses says, “I don't know one of them who doesn’t have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I've ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she’d ‘experimented’ more.”
Mrs. Moses’ article opened up a forum in the WSJ for over 600 comments in response. Some of them addressed the moral values implicit in her question. One person wrote, “Why do we let them dress like that? We don’t. It’s important to emphasize the differences between beauty and attractiveness at a young age. Being more involved in our children’s lives will strengthen various values, it will also (hopefully) put us in the position to be the role models we need to be and provide us with a better chance to block negative influences.”
Another wrote, “It is sad to see girls give away something so precious. Our daughters need our loving guidance toward living well-adjusted lives away from the call for promiscuity from all over. They need to enjoy being young women of character. It is hard for a teenager to look to her future life, but parents must guide them to protect that future by how they present themselves now. If we require modesty in the workplace, why can't we require modesty in our most precious young daughters?”
 A homeschooling parent wrote: “The socialization offered by the public and by public school is exactly what we are trying to avoid….  The [popularized] view of the opposite sex as sex objects is the central social message of public school children, the main-stream-media, movies, and most TV. It may be the single most destructive thing many Christian homeschoolers are trying to avoid, and rightly so. … maybe you can't control who your children become, but while they live in your home you can do your best to protect them from this destructive message and group-think.”
This is exactly the message that I’ve been sharing at recent homeschool conventions—homeschooling provides the best cultural medium for parents to protect their children from the toxic effects of a media and entertainment culture that produces hyper-sexualized and often obscene materials.

Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?

In the pale-turquoise ladies' room, they congregate in front of the mirror, re-applying mascara and lip gloss, brushing their hair, straightening panty hose and gossiping: This one is "skanky," that one is "really cute," and so forth. Dressed in minidresses, perilously high heels, and glittery, dangling earrings, their eyes heavily shadowed in black-pearl and jade, they look like a flock of tropical birds. A few minutes later, they return to the dance floor, where they shake everything they've got under the party lights.
But for the most part, there isn't all that much to shake. This particular group of party-goers consists of 12- and 13-year-old girls. Along with their male counterparts, they are celebrating the bat mitzvah of a classmate in a cushy East Coast suburb.

Jennifer Moses, author of a recent WSJ article "Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?" talks with Kelsey Hubbard about the tempest her piece has provoked.

Today's teen and preteen girls are bombarded with images and products that tout the benefits of sexual attraction. But must we as parents, give in to their desire to "dress like everyone else?" asks author Jennifer Moses. She talks with WSJ's Kelsey Hubbard.

In a few years, their attention will turn to the annual ritual of shopping for a prom dress, and by then their fashion tastes will have advanced still more. Having done this now for two years with my own daughter, I continue to be amazed by the plunging necklines, built-in push-up bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos. And try finding a pair of sufficiently "prommish" shoes designed with less than a 2-inch heel.
All of which brings me to a question: Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we're being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards?
I posed this question to a friend whose teenage daughter goes to an all-girls private school in New York. "It isn't that different from when we were kids," she said. "The girls in the sexy clothes are the fast girls. They'll have Facebook pictures of themselves opening a bottle of Champagne, like Paris Hilton. And sometimes the moms and dads are out there contributing to it, shopping with them, throwing them parties at clubs. It's almost like they're saying, 'Look how hot my daughter is.'" But why? "I think it's a bonding thing," she said. "It starts with the mommy-daughter manicure and goes on from there."

Live Chat

Join author Jennifer Moses on Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET for a conversation about her essay. Ask your questions now.

I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, "If I could do it again, I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?"
We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn't have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that's certainly the norm among my peers.
So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn't), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don't know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We're embarrassed, and we don't want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.
Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don't know one of them who doesn't have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I've ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she'd "experimented" more.
As for the girls themselves, if you ask them why they dress the way they do, they'll say (roughly) the same things I said to my mother: "What's the big deal?" "But it's the style." "Could you be any more out of it?" What teenage girl doesn't want to be attractive, sought-after and popular?
And what mom doesn't want to help that cause? In my own case, when I see my daughter in drop-dead gorgeous mode, I experience something akin to a thrill—especially since I myself am somewhat past the age to turn heads.
In recent years, of course, promiscuity has hit new heights (it always does!), with "sexting" among preteens, "hooking up" among teens and college students, and a constant stream of semi-pornography from just about every media outlet. Varied sexual experiences—the more the better—are the current social norm.
I wouldn't want us to return to the age of the corset or even of the double standard, because a double standard that lets the promiscuous male off the hook while condemning his female counterpart is both stupid and destructive. If you're the campus mattress, chances are that you need therapy more than you need condemnation.
But it's easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn't dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: "Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven's sake, get laid!" But that's essentially what we're saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they're still living under our own roofs.
—Jennifer Moses is the author of "Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou" and "Food and Whine: Confessions of a New Millennium Mom."