Can homeschooling be the future of education?
Homeschooling is a form of education involving the study of general education programs outside of school. In the case of homeschooling, the right to choose a curriculum, specifics of studying, and a number of hours for mastering a given material remain at the discretion of parents.
In today’s article, we are going to take a close look at homeschooling and see if this type of education could become our future replacing regular school education.
Who can benefit from online homeschooling?
Different people opt for this type of education for different reasons: some believe that it is the future of education whereas others choose it because of certain circumstances.
Here are some reasons as to why parents choose home school tutoring:
- Desire to provide a better education for a kid;
- Willingness to ensure more harmonious development of a kid;
- Need to strengthen the health of a kid;
- Desire to bear personal responsibility for the education of a kid;
- Search for an individual approach to a kid;
- Unwillingness to set a kid a negative example from peers.
How does homeschooling work?
Let us look at the changes in the life of children whose parents opted for homeschooling.
Environment
First, a child is not constrained by a narrow framework of their peers being able to communicate with others regardless of their age. From the very beginning, they do not consider themselves a part of the peer group, which excludes the emergence of the same aspirations as those their peers have.
Time management
Simple joys of life in the form of visiting a zoo, a swimming pool, a museum are available at any time of the year. A homeschooling kid has much more opportunities to be outdoors while also visiting various interesting places, whether it is mother’s work or father’s garage, a water park or a trip to a grandmother’s archaeologist friend. A child can be around close people more often.
Grades
Practically any kinds of assessment, questions, and testing can pose the risk of destroying motivation for learning. The level of stress hormones increases in a kid in response to almost any examination. In the case of homeschooling, a child does not have to wait for someone else’s assessment of their abilities and be somehow dependent on them.
Personal qualities
Often, children who find themselves outside the framework of school, can relax and be themselves, which might enable them to realize their own needs for getting knowledge. Thus, gradually, a child learns to be themselves, while getting the education they need.
A sense of responsibility
Many parents worry that by choosing homeschooling, they create a certain artificial world for a child, where everything is calm and peaceful unlike things in the real world. However, homeschooling does not prevent children from becoming happy and independent people. They will still socialize and be as ready for adulthood as their peers.
Advantages of education at home
- Personal learning pace. Parents can set a schedule for their child independently. If they learn badly, they choose the method of teaching so that children understand everything to the smallest detail.
- Violence by teachers and peers is excluded.
- A child can live according to the natural biological clock. They can wake up when they want to and study at a certain time thus managing their time better as opposed to regular students who are often faced with the problem of meeting a deadline and thus googling “best research paper writing services”.
- Parents are able to take into account all the individual characteristics of their child and channel their development and learning in a course that will be useful to them in the future.
- A child has the opportunity to study rare subjects that are not taught in schools – exotic languages, architecture, art, etc.
- Homeschooling will help a child in the future cope with choosing an occupation.
- Studies take place at home, so a child will not have to follow school rules and rituals, which makes their life freer and more natural.
- There are more opportunities to take up a hobby, as children will have more time left.
- Parents can monitor the personal development of their child. In addition, parents can monitor closely the health of their kids.
- Parents can choose proper nutrition for their child.
- Such learning is aimed at a child’s natural cognitive interest, and not at obtaining good marks.
Difficulties parents can face when opting for homeschooling
Almost all parents, one way or another, face similar difficulties in this type of education. Here are some of them:
- Lack of vision for solving discipline-related issues;
- Choosing a suitable educational program and teaching methods;
- Lack of parental skill to work with normative documents (for example, with educational standards), with education programs, methodological aids, in order to most effectively implement learning.
Summing up, it is safe to say that homeschool is indeed the future of education despite having some shortcomings due to the flexibility it provides as well as overall educational effectiveness for your kid.