Home Schooling – The Best Education Option

by Lisa R Preston

Home schooling allows parents to utilize the best teaching and learning practices (such as one-on-one learning instruction) and to implement unique brain strategies. And since you don’t have a classroom of 25 children to manage, you can allow your child to pursue areas of his own interest. This freedom skyrockets motivation!

A home schooled child can have a customized, tailor-made education. How freeing to learn at his own pace, not hurried and frustrated or twiddling thumbs while waiting for others to listen or catch up.

Homeschooling also allows for a breadth and depth of curriculum that isn’t available in the public school. For instance, recent studies show that listening to a foreign language before the age of two gives a child the ability to later learn and speak that language like a native. You don’t have to wait until age 14 to begin Spanish! Many home schooled children learn real-life skills – they can cook, grow their own vegetables, build a house –and they develop musical and artistic talents, too. Some even start their own businesses as early as age 8!

Also, when a person is schooled at home, and there is an emphasis on meaning and understanding. Learning isn’t just a bag of trivial facts, it becomes an entire dimension when you’re home schooling.

Home schooled children are likely to become independent, creative thinkers. They feel free to search for truth and question opinions stated as facts.

Most of a child’s day in the public school is spent trying to fit in, and that interferes with the learning process. Children who don’t have to take the time to develop and use survival mechanisms to keep from being made fun of or bullied, develop strong, confident self-concepts. Moms and Dads are thrilled at their children’s creativity, and at home no one is criticized for having a unique idea.

This relaxed atmosphere allows learning to catapult to heights that just aren’t possible when you have to create ways to survive, and plan ways to belong.

One of the most profound benefits of homeschooling is the strong family relationships that are forged. Respect and manners can be not only taught, but modeled again and again. Service to others just becomes a part of life. Strong families work through their problems together. The companionship and gift of time with our children takes precedence over the frantic pace of the treadmill.

Mae Shell, a homeschooled young lady, is quoted in The Homeschooling Book of Answers (by Linda Dobson). Her words say it better than I ever could. When asked what she’d most remember about being homeschooled, Mae replied, “The first thing that comes to mind is the importance of my family life. And I mean this in every sense you can imagine, not simply loving, but being friends with my family, enjoying their company, supporting them and knowing they support me no matter what happens…More than being just parents, they are my friends, mentors, teachers, and counselors. I also cherish the friendship of my three younger sisters and older half-brother and sister. I know I will always have these rich, wonderful relationships with my siblings.” Mae goes on to speak of what her family means to her. “I value being a part of this intricate living quilt above everything else.” (pg.222) Can you put a price tag on this type of family strength and love? It’s worth everything!

Yes, but are they socialized??  I find that home schooled children tend to be more mature, sensitive to others, caring and ministry oriented. For people who question the socialization aspect of home schooling- socialization is not taught at school. There may be character curriculum in a public school, but its teaching comprises a tiny part of the child’s week. Character isn’t integrated into life as it can be in a home setting – it’s just presented as another lesson. As a public school teacher for 16 years, I depended on parents to teach kindness self control, caring for others, manners, and appropriate behavior. In order for my classroom to be effective, those social skills already needed to be learned at home. Bottom line - moms and dads are the molders of social skills.

Homeschooled children are among the most considerate, sensitive, mannerly children I have ever come in contact with. Someone asked me if not sending a child to public school would be detrimental. I replied, “Imagine never having to deal with being pushed into your place in the hierarchy based on what clothes you wear, what you look like, and how much of a clone of your peers you become. Imagine never having to worry about being bullied, not having to hear obscenities or witness fist fights. I know many people who have gone through years of therapy to try to get beyond ways they were treated as children in public school. Imagine being so free that that whole “you don’t belong here” worry is like a foreign land.”


Do I think the public school has a place in educating our children? Yes, but I believe it is primarily for those children whose home life is abusive –horrible things are witnessed at home, and their only way of escape is coming to school. Many children live in these situations and, for them, school is a godsend. No, it’s not the very best educationally and emotionally, but it’s far better than what they could have at home. So while the public school has its place, I believe it’s secondary in quality to the type of education that can occur in the home.

 

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