How do you make children feel about learning at home? How do parents teach the upper grades? Won’t homeschoolers miss out on socializing? Will it affect their character and social skills? What if I start homeschooling my child after elementary school?
Homeschoolers are asked these questions all the time.
I would like to be able to offer a short and dry answer to these common questions asked of homeschoolers. There isn’t (simply because every home is different), although it’s probably safe to say that there are some commonalities across the board. Also, there are no perfect situations, only opportunities. Parents who homeschool their own children hope and pray that their children do well. The truth is that the journey has just begun. Our homeschooling children are at different points and milestones along the way, and it is simply developing who they are or what they will become. So we are all a work in progress, both parents and their children, counted as “saints” by our heavenly Father, but saints in the making.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about homeschooling is that schooling takes place at home. The image, therefore, is of a conventional classroom now reduced but imported or adapted to the living room or the kitchen table. Some parents have the idea that the individual situation with mom as a tutor and junior as a student is an attractive proposition because, a) a lot of attention will be paid to the student b) there will be much more Junior will absorb in the personal tutoring process, and c) obviously, the potential for academic excellence will be well advanced.
Talking like a former teenager is as much fun as a torture chamber. So why bother with homeschooling? He might as well stay in a conventional school.
Some families may be able to homeschool in this way (I say to each on their own), but that is not how I understand homeschooling to be, nor is that how it is practiced in most homes. , if not all of the homeschoolers I know. My own home would certainly be dismissed as a bum’s paradise; Parents who imagine homeschooling to be a miniature academy populated by diligent children sitting like drumsticks at their desks studying will be deeply disappointed if they visit our home.
First of all, homeschooling is more than academic apprenticeship or formal scheduled study. Provides the child with a safe home to fully realize their potential. It is preparing her for self-directed learning, training her to be resourceful and independent.
Viewed this way, the homeschooling parent does not see himself as a guardian but as a facilitator. We seek a balance. Life itself is a great classroom or laboratory for creativity, discovery, a safe place to learn from one’s mistakes. Conventional schools with their overemphasis on tests, books, and tuition offer little time or space for self-discovery and imagination. The difference between a happy 4-year-old preschooler and an anxious, bored, school-aged 7-year-old is staggering. Which is tragic considering how many great minds, inventors, and writers owe their greatness not to hours of heist, but to playing and frolicking while in their formative years as young children.
Certainly there are meeting periods, but informal learning is an important part of a homeschooler’s education. Over time, the role of parents as facilitators of their child is reduced until personal participation is no longer necessary or a primary concern. Instill this attitude and perspective in a child when he is younger in the field when he grows up. Parents will quickly discover that their initial fear of not being able to teach the “difficult” subjects becomes irrelevant because the homeschooled child will, and often will, outperform his tutor.
It is not uncommon to take a child out of school at age 13 for homeschooling, but some parents admit that they have a difficult time weaning the adolescent from a lifestyle that is ingrained and generally dependent on their peers. Many families succeed in “unschooling” a child for homeschooling, but it takes more effort as a new circle of friends develops as a new culture of learning is acquired.
Then there is the whole subject of learning styles and gender. Children learn differently according to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (among others) (Frames of Mind, 1983). Again, boys are psychologically and evolutionarily different from girls. Given these variables, parents are doing their children no favors when their idea of education is unique to all. It is not and it is not. The great thing about homeschooling is that a child learns at his or her own pace and style.
By now it should be clear that homeschooling is a radically different way of looking at learning. I often tell my friends that it is a completely new lifestyle that requires a drastic makeover in my expectations and value system. But what about socializing, people ask? Simple observation confirms that socialization in all its negative modes is precisely the reason why our current schools and society have so many problems. The correct question should be, what kind of socialization do I want?
Homeschooling promotes positive socialization. It is isolation (as opposed to isolation) during a child’s most impressionable years. And contrary to popular myths about homeschooling, it takes place in a real world rather than an artificial one that is simply made up of children of the same age. In that unreal and walled world called ‘school’ with its sterile classrooms, children wear the same uniform, read the same books, acquire the same bad habits and prejudices, conditioned by a system that evaluates their self-esteem against the test scores , and discourages anything but conformity. Urgh. Then there’s that nagging bell of interruption that only Pavlov’s dog could love!
As this is happening, our homeschoolers read a variety of books, participate in community service, interact with people of different ages, build rafts and swim in the river, travel, climb Maxwell Hill by themselves, help with the zoo. and participate in debates and mock trials. Of course, families have to do it ourselves for all this to happen. But that’s where the pleasure lies! Above all, as parents, we have the time to provide firm influence, shape, moderate, and interpret life’s challenges in life against an agenda set by other parties, institutions, and vested interests.
Finally, I would like to be able to conclude that homeschooling is the answer to our educational and institutional ills. It is not. And it won’t be for everyone. Other families and children may do well by following conventional routes: national schools or private, international schools or learning centers.
But those of us who have chosen to homeschool our children believe that it is the best way. It is more worthwhile to adopt a radical alternative that matches the values we have, including our love for God, that we hope to pass on to our children. We do this in the process of equipping them with skills to engage the world with more than paper credentials. Research seems to be on our side, because homeschoolers are generally academically above the national average, they assimilate well into society, and are not afraid to march to the beat of a different drummer.
Homeschooling is a long way from becoming mainstream, at least not in Malaysia, where I come from. But things are changing and opportunities for tertiary education are already opening up. Technology and community resources are making homeschooling increasingly viable and accessible. So should you homeschool? Can you home school? The question our family would ask is, why won’t you?
