Posts tagged family

Home schooling or homeschooling, if you want (in deed, you even see it hyphenated, as in home-schooling) has been about for about 30 years now, although, of course it was all parents had before state involvement in education. Remote thinly-populated places in large countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a large degree, although it is less difficult now with the wide-spread use of radio, television and the Internet. Video packages also have an important role, as do books still.

However, home schooling has become very popular in the cities as an alternative to inner city public schools, which are frequently seen as hotbeds of upheaval, violence and drugs, especially by the middle classes and not without some due reason, to be honest. Nonetheless, there are also other valid reasons for choosing home schooling, which we will go into later.

First, it must be pointed out that the decision to opt for home schooling must be a family one. This is because it will toss “normal family life” on its head and place an added monetary burden on the household purse. For example, one parent will need to stop work. This cannot be allowed to be a source of bad feeling, or both parents could take part-time employment and share the children’s tuition load. Whichever way you go, you will not have two full-time salaries any longer. Working at 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 note of caution could be useful at this point. Do not be tempted to compel your child to progress 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. Don’t forget that most pupils are just average. You must be on look out for signs of burn-out and stress 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.