Ultimate Home Schooling Guide For Parents, Recommended Methods, Ideas, Super Tips & Benefits
“Educating a child is a natural process. It’s nothing more than an extension of parenting” (Sue Maakestad). This cliché presents the idea of homeschooling in a nutshell.
Home Schooling – Scope, Tips, Useful Techniques, Pros & Cons
What is Homeschooling ?
For those who are not familiar with the concept of homeschooling, it means providing education to children at home instead of availing the services of the conventional system of education, which come with separate premises with its peculiar atmosphere. It is not an ahistorical concept, but in the wake of COVID-19 it emphatically comes in prominence. Historically, it has been one of the most natural and traditional ways of education for thousands of years. Even in the relatively recent past, during the industrial and colonial age, elites were used to educate their children by employing various variants of it. For the poor, the course was not feasible in terms of both time any money. So, they oftentimes hired a teacher, at the community level, to educate their children.
Scope of Homeschooling
In modern times, usually, parents who are not satisfied with the public education system are more inclined to follow the course of homeschooling; nonetheless, the concept of homeschooling cannot be limited to its full-time version. You can craft a tailored version that can work in tandem with the traditional school system. In recent times, we can see that schools have closed amidst coronavirus pandemic in many regions and parents around the world have been looking for some compatible and feasible alternatives, a variety of forms of homeschooling is a case in point. Here, compatible means partly implementing homeschooling in order to boost the grooming of your child into an energetic, exuberant and inquisitive individual. That is why it is essential for every parent to understand how it works, regardless of the fact of whether they would go for it on a permanent basis or not.
Homeschooling Pros and Cons
On the whole, homeschooling has its own advantages and disadvantages. It expects willing parents to have a certain set of personality traits conducive enough to let it be productive. As otherwise, it becomes liable to bring more harm than benefit.
Homeschooling Advantages
Customized Teaching Methodology
The single most important edge of homeschooling is that it provides a tremendous opportunity to employ customized teaching methods well-adapted to the aptitude and abilities of your children. Such approaches doubly benefit the learning process: bespoke methods not only help children by reducing unnecessary friction entails in standard methods but also by introducing much-needed momentum by exercising the way of teaching familiar to their inborn personality. This is quite contrary to the public education system where almost all children are effectively deemed alike, that is to say, children in conventional schools are treated in accordance with a standardized one-size approach or something along these lines which might be suitable for the majority of the students but by any means cannot be for all of them. So, it is the primary aspect that sets apart homeschooling from other contemporary methods. Individuality is always prone to be suppressed in general school systems since it is an obvious corollary of the system which treats all subjects uniformly and it is invariably thriving in well-oiled homeschooling.
Flexibility in Homeschooling Curriculum & Schedule
Apart from freedom in the approach, homeschooling offers a great deal of flexibility in other areas as well. It comes with greater freedom to choose the curriculum and presents deeper control over the schedule. Put simply, parents can go for a flexible schedule. For example, you can create schedule flexible to meet your family’s chemistry and needs. Children can enjoy the vocation when schools are on. Moreover, to instill knowledge in a meaningful sense, you can adjust the pace in various stages. In brief, the range of flexibilities available in homeschooling is far ahead of what you can imagine in traditional school systems.
Learning with Fun
Another key feature of homeschooling is education with fun. It provides plenty of room to blend fun with learning, which makes the assimilation of knowledge far easier. Learning for children is often rather boring and dull activity but by introducing the element of fun you can turn it into an exciting and fascinating activity: more they involve more they crave for it. All in all, students learn better when they have fun, and homeschooling not only presents an opportunity for the children to learn firsthand but also develops in them a life-long love for learning.
Homeschooling and Family Relationship
Homeschooling also acts as a catalyst to promote cohesion in the family. The bond between parents and children, even among the siblings as well, becomes much stronger. More the time they spend with each other better the mutual understanding it bounds to develop that leads to a more glued and happy family. You may find, and even can foster, shared interests and hobbies which can further cement the fabrics of family.
Broader Perspective
Parents have a better understanding of the various constraints, biases, and prejudices, which they have been schooled or have experienced in their lives, rooted from the unaddressed anomalies in society. So, they are in a much better position to discuss such controversial topics with children as compared to the paid school teachers. By incorporating this aspect into the overall program, you can play an unparalleled role in cultivating the objective mindset in your children. This not only guarantees a healthy and easygoing lifestyle but also protects them against the possibility to become victims of social, societal and cultural baggages.
Homeschooling Brings Forth a Positive Mindset
Another similar but prominent aspect of homeschooling is its potential to develop a robust, thriving and inquisitive mind. Traditional schools are usually driven by the competitive psyche that inhibits the natural growth of the mind. Children often unnoticeably suffer from depression, stress, anxiety that are chiefly induced by the unhealthy school environment. To make things worse, most of these issues are remained unspoken and unidentified thereby left unaddressed that later on culminate in different types of personality disorders. The convivial atmosphere of home and the level of personal intention that parents can provide serves as the most viable solution to ascertain and fix all such issues in the early stages once and for all.
Preserve and Pass on Identity Values
Homeschooling can assist the families belong to minority groups who often tend to sensitive regarding their values. The generalize educational system and curriculum usually do not take into account such concerns. Here homeschooling comes to play a vital role to seamlessly address this issue because parents can add the very touch at will.
A Barrier to Untoward Traits
Last but not least, homeschooling also limits the possibility of children’s exposure to bad and undesired habits like violence, aggression, bullying, drugs and sexual abuse.
Challenges and Disadvantages of Homeschooling
It is important to understand that homeschooling is not all about advantages. It has its own drawbacks and challenges as well that you must understand before making any opinion and decision about it, which I highlighted in the following section.
Homeschooling is Hard
One of the biggest challenges is that you should have commendable self-control. It is a fairly tedious job to deal with the children all day long with patience. You should know how to show restraint even when it becomes harder to do so despite the fact that it can be quite taxing and draining.
Homeschooling Demands Continuous Motivation
Secondly, homeschooling demands you to keep it inspiring, motivational and encouraging. Children may feel uncomfortable regarding their different upbringings. So it needs to cope with wisdom so that it would not become baggage to them. They must not have anything in their mind prone to breed some sort of complex.
You have to keep yourself posted on the latest developments
You should understand that now you are playing the role of a teacher as well. This comes with some job-specific responsibilities. The single most important is that you need to keep yourself abreast of the latest updates in the field. You constantly need to find ways to sustain and enhance the motivation level of your children. In case of failing to keep update yourself with the contemporary methods, the outdated techniques may work regressively and children would lag behind in meeting the needs of the time.
Wondering, what do you need to cope with it? Fortunately, it is not a big deal in the tech era we are living in. You can take assistance from online resources to improve both the quality and methods used for homeschooling. Nowadays, the materials related to homeschooling are in abundant supply on the internet. Wondering, what do you need to cope with it?
Homeschooling and Socialization Issues
The homeschooler’s vulnerability to isolationism is another drawback it carries. This is the darkest side of it which cannot be downplayed or left unaddressed. Parents should look for alternate opportunities, events, and activities to groom their children as social as other school-going children. Most importantly, you should also keep in mind that real socialization is never enforced: “Forced association is not socialization.” (Adele Carroll).
Homeschooling and Fitting in All Issue
Another similar criticism concerning homeschooled children is that they feel difficulty while adjusting in the modern, competitive world. Despite the fact that that this is right to a certain extent, you need to understand that this is not directly related to the concept of homeschooling but it is how well or poorly you materialize the idea. Yes, there is the possibility that your children may groom in reclusive and less sociable personality, as we discussed earlier, but it only happens when you do not factor in this aspect while arranging the activities for your children. Moreover, by encouraging outdoor activities, such possibilities can be eliminated effectively.
Absence of Evaluation Mechanism
Another problem you may find with homeschooling is that it is also not easy to quantify students’ performance in it. Yes, it is true that learning in its true essence starts beyond the grades and frenzy of testing, which are deeply ingrained characteristics of the common school system. But having said that, the need for some sort of evaluation mechanism cannot be denied. Fortunately, a myriad of resources available online with tried and tested solutions to lend you a hand with this issue.
Homeschooling and Nourishing Inherent Talent
As I mentioned earlier that in homeschooling it is highly probable that you would ascertain the inherent tendency that children have towards a specific profession or field. Once it is found, it demands you to channelize efforts into that area to fully capitalize on it. You should take encouraging measures conducive to learning based on their interests and to draw more focus on their strength. By doing so, you pave the path for your children leading to the profession for that they have profound interests, which increases the possibility of success in their practical life in enormous proportions.
Reinventing the Wheel
It is often argued that homeschooling is not more than reinventing the wheel, but it does not hold water when one minutely analyses the real objectives work behind it and striking features it introduces in children.
Imperils the Conventional Educational System
Some critics also argue that homeschooling poses a threat to the traditional educational system. But I, for one, do not ready to give it any credence, for the fact that the proponents of this philosophy fail to understand the value that variation renders in all spheres of life.
Final Thoughts
Taking everything into account, it is evident that homeschooling is not for all parents. It may not require deep pockets, but the trials and tribulations that are involved in it demand a certain type of personality traits and resources like a great deal of commitment, energy, dedication, perseverance, effort and time. Therefore, you cannot just plunge in thoughtlessly. You must have to analyze yourself first thoroughly against the parameters discussed above to make a well-informed decision otherwise you could unwittingly land in fairly intractable trouble. Even in the case if you do not find yourself able enough to meet its criterion, you can figure out and exercise a helpful subset of it. On the other hand, if you find yourself suitable enough for it and willing to allocate resources to galvanize you into action then you must pursue it. It will enable you to raise your children in a way most of us just can imagine that aims at organic growth far different from the traditional conveyor-belt system that produces proto-humans: some sort of robotic products. Share your experiences too about homeschooling.
TeleSchool Tv Channel-Watch Lectures of Class 1 to 12th For Home Schooling
