Why homeschool?

The short answer for why I homeschool is here.   It's a list of benefits stated in simple one-line sentences.  

The longer version is: 
*Homeschooling fosters a strong sibling relationship.
*Nurture love of learning
"The class is talking about spring, flowers blooming, rain falling, may be rabbit and easter. A child hears a fire engine sirene and asks what that is. Teacher answers : Fire engine, then goes back to talking about spring. But the child mind is still with the fire engine. He wants to know more about it. But he has to wait until everybody else is done with spring."
There are many things about learning that are not going to be fun. The multiplication tables for most kids are not fun, no matter how you slice it. But learning, and the love of learning, can be enjoyable. Learning should be a lifelong pursuit. It shouldn’t stop when you graduate. If you can teach your kids to learn how to learn (and to love it), they can do anything.

*"A child can't see the difference between I (upper case i) and l (lowercase L). Others in her class can. Everybody reads but she. She's too embarrassed to ask for help and thinks she's stupid. Now she hates reading."
Every child is different. They learn differently. But all children want to learn so we have to nurture that. By homeschooling my children, I believe I'm nurturing their love of learning.

*Improved family relationships. Homeschooling allows family members to understand one another more holistically. For parents, watching their children progress academically and watching them occasionally struggle, allows for a more compassionate view of their efforts. Children being schooled by parents get a new appreciation and respect for the skills, knowledge and patience which parents can impart. While there is always the danger of having too much of a good thing, the end result of homeschooling seems likely to improve rather than damage family relationships.



*To eliminate so many of the negative behaviors picked up from peers.

*Personal Safety: With every week bringing another report of school violence, sexual abuse by school personnel and transport accidents, the anxiety of parents of public school children increases.

*Use of Available Expertise-One can make the best use of available expertise in all fields of learning. Teachers in public schools must be certified to teach at a particular grade level and in a particular subject area. Homeschooling children allows parents to seek out true expertise in all fields, but especially in the subject area the child enjoys most. The child is able to receive instruction beyond the standard levels and will likely find his or her interest in a subject area enhanced.


*Variety of Scheduling: Homeschooling allows parents to generate their own schedule which effectively means that every day is not like every other day. Time spent on one subject area can be lengthened or curtailed as the needs or interests of the studentdictate. Public schools by necessity must adhere to a relatively rigid schedule.
*Building Diversity Through effective networking, parents can achieve diversity. Too often public school children go to school with children who come from the same socio economic backgrounds and live very similar lifestyles to everyone else in the class. Home schooling gives parents the option to put a little effort into creating learning situations that promote education thorough diversity.

*Providing Moral Training: By taking responsibility for homeschooling, parents make it possible to nurture and oversee the moral development of their children. Reprimands, directives, interaction can all take place within the moral framework set by the parents, not by disconnected teachers. Children benefit by the consistency of demands made upon them for honest, caring , fairness, self- control and other parent determined values throughout the entire day.

*On Site Learning (especially from the children's point of view) is a system which allows for and even encourages, on site learning experiences. For children, this can mean time spent in the woods, at the seashore, in a museum , maybe even in a mall. With homeschooling, there really are no limits on the places where you can go to learn.

*More time to concentrate on what children like and enjoy

If a child is interested in collecting rock, he/she can spend all the time learning about the different rocks there are.
* No limit on how much materials and time, you can follow their passion!
You can go all out finding informations about rocks(or whatever) on the internet, at the library, ask the experts, spend your whole day (even week) learning about rocks.

* Integrating Learning into Life. One of the more subtle reasons for homeschooling children is that the homeschooling system helps parents to integrate learning and intellectual curiosity into a child's daily living. Those who attend public school may come to the conclusion that education only happens from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Homeschooled children will discover that learning is not on the clock.


*Parents Learn Too. Homeschooling gives parents an opportunity to continue their own learning process along with their children. Self education may not start out as the most important reason to home school but often turns up as an unplanned bonus in the process.

*lack of play time in elementary school

*.You can sleep in. (School kids typically get less sleep than the recommended amount for healthy development.)

*Fewer back injuries. (Homeschooled students don't have to haul around 22% of their body weight in textbook-laden backpacks.


*No debt-inducing back-to-school sales. (Who knew parents are racking up credit card debt to outfit their kids for school?) You can wear whatever you want!

*No need for "socialization" as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary -- a verb meaning, "To place under government or group ownership or control."

*No peer pressure

No 'everybody else in the class does it' problem
Most of our modem school-based socialization is of the foolish, harmful sort. Pooled ignorance leads to poor taste in clothing, music, films, and TV - the kind of people who read the grocery store tabloids and believe them. But the harm is far more than cultural. Disinterest in school, disrespect for teachers, rapacious dating, promiscuity, substance abuse, and gang violence also come in waves-- pounding waves of youth culture that erode moral standards. Good socialization is primarily age-integrated. It occurs when the young are included in the lives of older and wiser people, especially parents and other family members at home and the spiritual family of one\'s local church. Walking with the wise is a lifestyle, not a program. It is a club of fellow enthusiasts, not a class of uninterested age-mates.
*Children can retain their innocense and grow at their own 'speed', no pressure from school friends.

*By participating in community life, homeschooled children feel comfortable with a wide variety of people. Without the social pressure from peers and age-segregated classrooms, kids feel more comfortable forming friendships. At our family baseball games, we see kids of all ages — siblings, friends, and newcomers — playing with each other and with adults in an unself-conscious way. Many people who come into contact with homeschooled kids remark on how easy it is to talk with them.

*Less stress caused by school demands (largely homework)  Families can practically become strangers to each other-sharing hurried breakfasts, chaotic suppers, and struggles over homework. With independent learning, they have more time to talk and listen; more time to spend in libraries, museums, and concert halls; or to hike, ride bikes, read, or think. These changes are what happens when family life is driven by the needs of families, rather than the needs of institutions.

*Pure selfishness on my part. I don’t want to miss any of the milestones in their lives. I want to see them learn to read, excel in sports and even eat lunch with them each day. I get to see their faces light up when something finally “clicks” for them. Plus I will have the pleasure of knowing I had helped with that!


*
*You're in the driver's seat when it comes to your children's education. They can go at a pace appropriate to their wishes and needs rather than to a state-imposed idea of what should be learned when. You can enjoy child-led learning, if that's what suits you. You can hunker down with some good old-fashioned basics, if that's what your family likes and needs.You emphasize what you feel is important for academic promotion and success in life.  You can also encourage your child's exploration of passionate interests and spend more time in the areas in which he needs extra help.

*Even if there is support and resources available, ultimately, homeschoolers have to shovel most of their own snow. In other words, homeschoolers have to be willing to stop complaining about what’s not working, and instead focus on finding what does work. Strength of character, creativity, and tears may result.  Ultimately good for the kids too!! 

*Your principles, morality, ethics, and ideas about appropriate behavior have a really good chance of becoming your children's, too. Your kids aren't being fed the idea that their peer group is the arbiter of standards. You have the chance to model the kind of behavior and philosophy you want them to learn, and you've got plenty of time in which to do that.

*Your child's social life will be just fine — better than ever, if you have the schoolyard jungle to compare it to. You're right there to keep a sharp eye out for bullying and other problems. You can guide your little ones through successful conflict resolution by teaching them skills they'll actually be able to use as adults.

*You and your family have lots of time to just be together. You get to learn who your children really are: their interests, passions, hopes, and dreams. You're all about family togetherness.

*Homeschooling familes are forced to learn confidence, self-acceptance, and acceptance of others because the world is an unforgiving place for those who do not blend in.

*Unlike kids who are either at school or doing homework all day, your kids have the time and opportunity to learn the work that goes into running a household. If your local educational authority requires you to keep records, you can record time spent teaching them how to do laundry and other important household tasks under the heading of Social Studies, Health, or Life Skills.

*Your kids won't be bringing home lovely new words they learned from that adorable little sailor every classroom has at least one of.

*If your child learns primarily by doing, rather than hearing or seeing, then you can structure the lessons in home school so he learns in the mode in which he is best suited. (This is especially important for children who are not highly verbal--the population on which traditional school places its focus. If your child is a slow learner, it may be because his is more visually or kinesthetically oriented.)

*you can include important subjects that are often neglected in traditional school.

*In a home school environment, you can insulate your children from bullying, teasing, foul language and other inappropriate behaviors.  By homeschooling your kids, you'll have more control over the influences to which your child is exposed.
*Another advantage of homeschooling is that the family can take a break and go on vacation whenever it's convenient. This means that you can travel off-season and take advantage of reduced airfare and hotel costs. You can make travel a part of your child's studies. If you can afford to take a road trip or travel internationally, you can make it a fun, but educational trip. This is a great way to expose your child to different regions and cultures. Rather than just reading about these places, your child wil be mired in the experience. This will open his eyes to the world.
 
*No one's telling you what to do. It's all you.  (This is a con as well as a pro: No one's telling you what to do. It's all you!  egads!).

*Time.  "school is a waste of time." This isn’t to say that people don’t learn important things in school, or that school is a total and complete waste of time. It is simply that, from an instructional perspective, too much of the precious time allotted to childhood is wasted in school, primarily because of the two reasons stated above (poor instruction, and learning outcomes that are not worthwhile). A simple way to conceptualize the amount of time spent engaged in meaningful, purposeful and effective learning-related activity is to think about a typical student in a typical day at school. Imagine how much time this child might spend throughout the school day practicing worthwhile skills while receiving personal feedback. Although there are other factors related to effective instruction, none are more important than practice with adequate and timely feedback. I have actually used a stopwatch while observing classrooms to measure the amount of time individual students spent actively engaged in practice over worthwhile skills throughout an entire day in school. Believe it or not, I have never observed more than 30 minutes of effective practice experienced by an individual learner within the six hours constituting a school day. It was usually closer to 10 minutes. On a more grand scale, I asked education graduate students (enrolled in one of my instructional design courses) who took four years of Spanish in high school to complete a basic assessment of conversational Spanish skills (translating common Spanish phrases into English). In most cases, their scores were not significantly higher than those of the students in my class who had never taken Spanish. I then helped them calculate the amount of time spent in high school studying the Spanish language. Five hours per week in class, plus two hours per week doing homework, multiplied by 36 weeks per academic year, multiplied by four years. This equals 1008 hours devoted to Spanish. I asked my students if they felt this was a good use of their time during their teen years, considering their level of Spanish proficiency as adults. Most agreed that, in fact, it was a rather significant waste of time.........It isn’t just the amount and type of learning that doesn’t take place IN school because of ineffectual instruction that leaves me such a strong sense of time wasting. I also recognize that quite a bit of learning cannot occur OUTSIDE school because of the limited number of hours in the day.


Other related stuff:
*We all went to school and we're all right.
Gosh, do you really think so? I think that, as a society, we are most emphatically NOT all right, and I think that a lot of it has to do with school. We are a fragmented, narcissistic bunch, with a strong tendency to submit to the authority of "experts". We have little connection to or compassion for others, especially between generations. Old people are largely disregarded, children viewed with contempt. It is quite fashionable to speak of children, even one's own children, even in their presence, as though they were revolting and scarcely human. The same people who talk like this often have the colossal nerve to wonder why teenagers are so bloody hostile. Hubris is like that.
It's worth noting, too, that every generation of schooling takes up more and more of the child's life. Kids today spend more of their time in and about school than you did, you spent more time than your parents did, and so forth. Just over a hundred years ago, the "school year" was only a few weeks long. Now, in addition to the increasing presence of school, families are shrinking and children's access to other adults becomes less and less, while television absorbs available "free" time. If children are segregated from adult life, it is absolutely to be expected that they will become preoccupied with "peer pressure", no surprise at all that they find it difficult to take their places in adult society when the time comes, having had no experience of it, and sadly predictable that they should exclude and ignore old people, those being the very people who excluded and ignored them. Is this a healthy society? I think not.

*From an article about why so many teachers choose to homeschool:
"I didn't want my children to be treated the way I treated some kids," the teacher volunteered apologetically. It's not that she was mean or uncaring, but in order to run a class with so many children, she had no choice but to engage in some form of manipulation, however subtle and well-intentioned it was......"
".....school is mostly day care and most parents are more concerned about the time table and schedule than about the contents of the school day. School is so entrenched in our culture that most parents do not fully appreciate that there are alternatives. For their family, learning takes place all the time and everywhere, and school has no special magic with which to educate children. The school system repeats the mantra "We are the magic place where it happens, you people just don't know how." Then people send off their kids to this "magic place". But teachers, however sincere and hard-working, cannot accommodate all the learning styles and end up being burned out by the process. Kids quickly get labeled as "can't read", but Francine insists that many children are simply not ready to learn because of extenuating circumstances. She recalls one child in Grade 1 who was asthmatic and allergy sensitive; the child reeked of smoke, obviously in a smoking environment at home. She looked pale, tired, and unhealthy. What this child needed was rest, food and love, and only then could she be ready to learn.

Francine thinks school should not take all day; at most, it should take half a day. Children need time to play and time in which they have "nothing to do". She recommends switching off the TV and the computer. Kids need time to run, sing, play and day dream.
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Teachers are not mean and they do care; they are passionate about education. They want the best for their students and their own children. With work experience, they know the limitations of the class room and school setting. In a very difficult decision, risking ostracism and labels of hypocrisy by their colleagues, they choose to have their children learn outside the public school system. The names and locations in this article have been changed to protect the careers and privacy of the individuals."



 
Quote:  Mary said: Homeschooling is forging your own path. That absolutely takes a degree of courage, confidence and fortitude. Because we must be firm in our resolve (even when feeling doubts), it may come off as arrogance.