Pam Ponders

Home schooling or homeschooling, if you would rather (in fact, you even see it hyphenated, as in home-schooling) has been popular for about 30 years now, although, of course it was all pupils had before state involvement in education. Out of the way rural places in large countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a large degree, although it is less difficult now with the popularization of radio, television and the Internet. Video packages also play an essential role, as do books still.

Nevertheless, home schooling has become very popular in the cities as an alternative to urban public schools, which are often seen as hotbeds of upheaval, anger and narcotics, especially by the middle classes and not without some due reason, to be honest. Nonetheless, there are also other good reasons for deciding on home schooling, which we will go into at a later stage.

First, it should be stated that the decision to go for home schooling has to be a family one. This is because it will turn “normal family life” on its head and place an added monetary burden on the household budget. For example, one parent will need to cease work. This cannot be permitted to be a cause of resentment, or both parents could take part-time employment and share the children’s educational load. Whichever way you decide, you will not have two full-time salaries any longer. Working at home on the Internet could be a partial solution here.

Home schooling will also disrupt everyone’s social life. So, the parents’ social life is restricted by not seeing work colleagues every day, but so is little Johnny’s, particularly if he has already spent some time in a normal classroom. He won’t see his pals from class as much and they may drift away from him or even be angry with him.

On the positive side is that the family will become a lot more solid as a unit by working together at home schooling. Both parents will have a complete understanding of what their child is learning and will be learning. While following a broad-based education, you could however choose to focus on points of, say, history or science, that especially interest your child. It gives you the freedom to match your child’s education to his or her own interests, something that state education cannot do well with over-sized classes. Your child will also be less under the influence of the rowdier pupils in school and be able to concentrate more on studying.

A note of caution could be useful at this point. Do not be tempted to compel your child to learn too rapidly. It is tempting for a non-professional teacher-cum-proud parent in home schooling to push the child much harder than he can go. Don’t forget that most pupils are just average. You must be on look out for signs of burn-out and stress at all times.

Once you decide to opt for home schooling, you will need to pick a basic programme, go through it yourself to familiarize yourself with it, buy or find in the library any supplementary books, videos and software, make a load of notes and stock up on pens and paper, folders, binders and filing cabinets and you’ll be ready for your first term at home schooling.

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