Major Reasons to Home School
If you’ve heard of home schoolers but wondered why some parents do it – keep their children at home to learn rather than educate them at a public or private school – this article addresses the major reasons to educate your children at home.
I will attempt to address pre-conceived notions, quell your concerns, and explain why so many of us are home schooling our children – the sons and daughters we strive to provide the very best for.
For many it began in the early grades. Frustrated with waking children up at 7 a.m., 5 days a week, just to bundle them up and shove them off on the school bus. Perfectly normal children, who spend a large part of their day tired, surrounded by negative influences, and exhausted by the sheer number of rules and instructions.
Rules Kill Creativity and Desire to Learn
Rules created by education-related corporate fat cats that don’t work with the children all day, yet make rules and restrictions that create insecurities and have little to do with schooling.
Schooling children at home, on the other hand, gives parents more control over the influences that affect their sons and daughters. Their growth and development, new habits and vocabulary are removed from unknown influencers.
If you home school your child, you, and you alone, decide what your child needs to do or learn and which facet of their social skills requires development at any stage of their lives.
Personally Tailored Education, Specific to Your Child
Tailoring a curriculum to suit the needs and interests of any one child is truly one of the most obvious benefits of home schooling.
Individual attention is another salient benefit of home schooling. As an example, if your daughter needs more time to learn math this month, a flexible schedule affords the luxury of putting aside English lessons. Fixed hours of study per subject are non-existent.
A child has the advantage of assigning a longer period of time to the subject that is challenging without additional pressure. The amount of time needed to learn each subject depends solely on the abilities, interests, and natural talents of the child.
Home schooling is an extended family activity. Parents are involved in every step of the learning abilities and practices of their children. Field trips and experiments become family activities – growing your family closer and building memories.
Makes Learning Fun
Education can be fun. Quality time with caring role models instead of a multitude of children with bad habits and perhaps foul language.
The entire family shares, learns, and explores through games, chores and projects. Family closeness becomes the focus instead of negative peer pressure while discovering personal likes, challenges, and talents.
Another strong benefit (and reason for parents to home school) is that competition is limited. No home schooled child needs to prove his talents and abilities while being measured against other children. This is far too often discouraging to a child – being pitted against his friend or peer and feeling inferior or (sometimes worse) superior to those around him.
Confidence remains intact while competition waits, being taught in itself, when appropriate.
Since parents have a deep understanding of their child, they can plan the learning program to pique the child’s interest further. It is also possible to intersperse difficult tasks with fun activities. A tough study hour can be followed by a trip to a museum or educational games at home.
Learning becomes fun and rewarding – never forced.
Parents can also tailor the curriculum to suit the learning style of each child. Some children learn through reading, while others need to write, and still others need to see an action or event to fully understand it.
Home schooling allows parents to take control over the moral and religious education of their sons and daughters. Parents have the flexibility to incorporate their beliefs and ideologies into the child’s curriculum. There is no confusion in the child’s mind either because there is no variation between what is being taught and what is being practiced.
Most Common Reason to Home School Children
Perhaps the biggest reason parents are turning to home schooling is that so many of us are becoming disillusioned with the public school system. They believe that their children are being pushed too hard or not challenged near enough. With inadequate personal attention or understanding of each child’s educational needs. Nonsensical school house rules are made by executives who sit in offices and never interact with children.
Motivating factors are as varied as the parents who teach at home and the children who learn at their sides. Many repudiate the educational philosophy of grouping children solely on the basis of their age while other parents have unhappy memories of their own public school experience.
Every parent who home schools will agree that educating children in this manner is the best way – if you have the time, the ability and the interest to follow through.
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