Home schooling is a situation where some parents provide high school, middle school and elementary school education to children in their homes. Most of the parents who home-school cite control over curriculum and family togetherness as reasons for home-schooling. Parents should consider different factors before home-schooling their children. While there are a number of advantages of home schooling, there are also potential negative effects.
Home schooling offers freedom that the traditional school system does not permit. The home-school schedule varies from one family to another. Each family provides a timetable that best suits them. Homeschooling is an advantage to families that move regularly due to their jobs. Such families do not worry about children adjusting to new schools. It is also flexible, which allows accommodation for life activities such as vacations.
Home schooling is a system that is flexible for chronically ill students. In cases where a child has to attend treatments and appointments or go through fatigue or pain, deadlines set by schools can be inconvenient. This adds stress to children who have to cope with medical appointments that can affect their performance at school. Home schooling may be the best option for such students. They can fix their learning timetable to accommodate their appointments. The student and teacher can recover time spent doing other activities by completing extra lessons.
Parents should know their children the most and be the greatest supporters of them. Considering this, home schooling allows modification of education to fit the learning styles, gifts and abilities of each child. Home schooling gives students the opportunity to learn at their own pace instead of a pace set by teachers accommodating a large number of students. In case a student requires additional time to cover a topic, a parent can adjust to accommodate that.
Home schooling a child may lead to insufficient social interaction, which is a disadvantage to children. Home-schooled children do not have other pupils to socialize with while learning. On the other hand, children in normal traditional schools interact with students of different cultures each day. Home-schooled children do not get the opportunity of socializing with other students and may only do this at field trips and community activities.
In home schooling, one parent has to stay home to educate the children. This affects the income of the family, and many families may face difficulties in making ends meet when one parent is not working. When children attend traditional schools, both parents can work full time to increase the income of the family.
Some people who do not support homeschooling think that those who practice it are odd or religious fanatics. Home-schooled children may be considered isolated and socially inadequate. Families who practice homeschooling have to face the prejudice of those who doubt the well-being of homeschooling children and the ability of parents to home-school.
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