Thought on Home Schooling.
Home schooling or homeschooling, if you like (in fact, you even see it hyphenated, as in home-schooling) has been about for about 30 years now, although, of course it was all people had before state intervention in education. Out of the way rural places in huge countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a great degree, although it is less difficult now with the wide-spread use of radio, television and the Internet. Video cassettes also have an important role, as do books still.
Nevertheless, home schooling has become very popular in the cities as an alternative to urban public schools, which are often seen as hotbeds of upheaval, anger and narcotics, especially by the middle classes and not without some due reason, to be honest. Nonetheless, there are also other good reasons for deciding on home schooling, which we will go into at a later stage.
First, it must be pointed out that the decision to go for home schooling has to be a family one. This is because it will turn “normal family life” on its head and place an added monetary strain on the family purse. For instance, one parent will have to cease working. This cannot be allowed to be a cause of resentment, or both parents could take part-time employment and share the children’s educational time. Whichever way you decide, you will not have two full-time incomes any longer. Working from home on the Internet could be a partial solution here.
Home schooling will also disrupt everyone’s social life. So, the parents’ social life is restricted by not seeing work colleagues every day, but so is little Johnny’s, particularly if he has already spent some time in a normal classroom. He won’t see his pals from class as much and they may drift away from him or even be angry with him.
On the positive side is that the family will become a lot stronger as a unit by working together at home schooling. Both parents will have a thorough understanding of what their child is learning and will be learning. While following a broad-spectrum education, you may nevertheless opt to focus on points of, say, history or science, that particularly interest your child. It allows you the freedom to tailor your child’s education to his or her particular interests, something that state education cannot do well with over-sized classes. Your child will also come less under the influence of the rowdier elements in school and be able to concentrate more on studying.
A note of caution might be useful at this point. Do not be tempted to compel your child to learn too rapidly. It is tempting for a non-professional teacher-cum-proud parent in home schooling to push the child much harder than he can go. Remember that most people are just average. You ought to be on look out for signs of burn-out and stress at all times.
Once you decide to opt for home schooling, you will need to choose a basic programme, run through it yourself to familiarize yourself with it, purchase or find in the library any supplementary books, videos and software, make a lot of notes and stock up on pens and paper, folders, binders and filing cabinets and you’ll be ready for your first term at home schooling.
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