Home School – A Viable Alternative
As this site is primarily about living in the country, and secondary about raising children in the country, one of the first aspects to your new country home that you’ll investigate is the quality of schools in the area.
How far are they away from your home? What of their reputations? What alternative services are available locally for children?
Local isn’t always best though – especially if your child has special needs, is gifted, or you’re attempting to raise your son or daughter differently than the norm. After all, not one of us wants to raise children to grow to be like the average teenager – sassy at the least, exploratory in drugs and alcohol at the moderate, and pregnant by 15 at the worst!
It doesn’t have to be that way, normal, average, you know. You don’t have to suffer with standard services for your child either when you live in the country. There is a viable alternative! Home schooling.
More Reasons To Home School
Perhaps the school bus won’t come within miles of your country home driveway. Or maybe you have become disillusioned with the ’system’ of school. Whatever your reasons might be to further investigate home-schooling, with a little investigation you will quickly discover that many top notch child experts (a large part of them retired school teachers) now agree that home-based education is the most beneficial method for educating children of any age or ability.
One of the most ground-breaking discoveries due to the popularity of home schooling in the last 20 years or so, is the incredible success observed by something called self-directed learning. This is where you allow your child to decide what they want to learn about next, and by doing so, they approach their studies with gusto.
I read a piece a while back about how the parents of a 7 year old boy had not forced reading on the lad but ensured that he had the very basics down. That boy took an interest in flight and airplanes and wanted to learn more – yet the subject was out of the mother and father’s knowledge zone. The child, eager to learn more, gathered books from the library on his topic and spent days pouring over those books until his thirst was quenched. And in the end he had surpassed a Grade 4 level of reading comprehension!
The Viable Alternative
Home-schooling. With the availability of information at your fingertips (Internet, Encyclopedia CD’s, etc) and correspondence courses home-schooling is more than attainable – technology makes it downright simple. And, if you’re worried about bucking the trend and people looking at you strangely when you tell them you home school your child, recent stats say that over 1 million families world-wide are teaching nearly 3 million children at home!
Worried about College Admission for Your Home Schooled Child?
Many home schooling teenagers are breaking the misconception today that many people have. Namely, if you are home schooled you’ll never be accepted into university or college.
Ha! Most home schooled children, upon writing their University admissions test pass with flying colors! Some of them 3-4 years younger than their traditionally schooled counterparts!
Parents are Tutors Too!
Learning at Home – Instilling the love of learning is the greatest gift you could ever give a child. If your child is struggling with reading, math, science, languages, etc. at any level, I suggest clicking this link: (find slightly or never used study materials in our country catalog – check the categories on the right on that page for various subjects and age groups).
Laura Childs
This article on home schooling was originally published on GoodByeCityLife.com in 2000.
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