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 should be said that the decision to opt 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 burden on the family budget. For example, one parent will need to cease working. This cannot be permitted to be a cause of bad feeling, or both parents could take part-time employment and share the children’s educational time. Whichever way you go, you will not have two full-time incomes any longer. Working from home on the Internet could be a partial help 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 plus side is that the family will become a lot stronger as a unit by studying together at home schooling. Both parents will have a complete knowledge of what their child is learning and will be learning. While maintaining a broad-spectrum education, you may however opt to focus on aspects of, say, history or science, that particularly interest your child. It allows you the freedom to match your child’s education to his or her own interests, something that state education cannot do well with large classes. Your child will also be less under the influence of the rowdier elements in school and be able to concentrate more on studying.

A word of caution could be useful at this point. Do not be tempted to compel your child to progress too quickly. It is tempting for a non-professional teacher-cum-proud parent in home schooling to push the child a lot harder than he can go. Remember that most people are only average. You must be on look out for signs of burn-out and resentment at all times.

Once you decide to opt for home schooling, you will have to choose a basic curriculum, run through it yourself to familiarize yourself with it, buy or locate in the library any supplementary books, videos and software, make a load of notes and stock up on pens and paper, folders, binders and filing cabinets and you’ll be ready for your first semester at home schooling.

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