Home Schooling
By B. Dear

A few years ago, my wife and I got frustrated with the public school system and made the decision to try home schooling our children. My younger son was preschool aged and my older was in elementary school.

If you are considering home schooling, realize that it will impact your life in a couple of different ways. When you decide to home school, you will have to absorb the cost for curriculum. You will have to create lesson plans, buy books, worksheets and other curriculum. There are a lot of Christian organizations that provide curriculum, but if you don’t want the religious indoctrination, you are pretty much on your own.

At least one parent will need to make lesson plans and keep records on the children’s progress. Both parents will need to be involved with the schooling. You will need to set time aside each day for this.

You will also need to have an area in your home that you can dedicate for home schooling only. This will be a separate room with no TV, radio, or other distractions. It will contain all the items needed for school. We tried doing it around the dinner table, but it doesn’t work very well if the kids can be distracted by other activities in room such as cooking, phone calls, discussions, or TV.

I have seen two types of children who are home schooled. There are those who do well with it, and there are children who would do better in a more structured school setting. Home schooling is somewhat personality dependent. You know your children best and you’ll have to decide whether your kids will do better in a home environment.

There are a number of advantages to home schooling. Home schooled kids seem to be more outgoing and free spirited.  They are more likely to ask questions and enjoy schoolwork since they receive so much one-on-one attention and study in a familiar setting. There are fewer distractions during the school day and they can maximize learning time. You also get to be a part of your child’s educational development which can be very rewarding.

There are also some downsides to home schooling. Home schooled children can have difficulty when they are in settings where they are not receiving as much attention as they are used to. Some children can also be somewhat under socialized since they don’t interact with as many people as children in more structured educational systems.

There also is a bit of a stigma attached to home schooling. Many people can’t understand it, especially people living more demanding lifestyles where both parents work. They simply assume that these parents couldn’t possibly be teaching their children anything. Parents just don’t have the time to do that. They don’t understand that home schooled children can actually be much smarter and independent in the way they think.

There are also families who give home schooling a bad name because they don’t do any schooling at all. In these cases, the kids should definitely be in a structured school setting.