Information on Home Schooling

by Owen Jones

Home schooling or homeschooling, if you like (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 people had before state intervention in education. Remote rural areas in large countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a large extent, although it is easier now with the popularization of radio, television and the Internet. Video packages also play an important role in providing information on home schooling, as do books still.

However, home schooling has become really popular in the cities as an alternative to urban public schools, which are often seen as hotbeds of disruption, violence and drugs, especially by the middle classes and not without some due cause, to be fair. However, there are also other good reasons for choosing home schooling, which we will go into later.

Firstly, it must be pointed out that the decision to opt formore information on home schooling has to be a family one. This is because it will turn "normal family life" on its head and place an added financial strain on the household budget. For example, one parent will have to stop working. This cannot be allowed to be a source of resentment, or both parents could take part-time jobs and share the children's tuition load. Whichever way you go, you will not have two full-time incomes any longer. Working from 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 meeting work colleagues every day, but so is little Johnny's, especially if he has already spent some time in a conventional classroom. He won't see his friends in class as much and they may drift away from him or even resent him.

On the plus side is that the family will become much stronger as a unit through working together seeking information on home schooling. Both parents will have a complete knowledge of what their child is learning and will be learning. While maintaining a broad-spectrum education, you could nevertheless choose to focus on aspects of, say, history or science, that particularly interest your child. It gives you the freedom to tailor your child's education to his or her particular interests, something that state education cannot do well with over-sized classes. Your child will also be less under the influence of the rowdier elements in school and be able to concentrate more on studying.

A word of caution might be useful at this point - a gold nugget of information on home schooling. Do not be tempted to force your child to learn too quickly. 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 peole are only average. You must be on the look out for signs of burn-out and resentment at all times.

Once you decide to get more information on home schooling, you will need to pick a basic curriculum, run through it yourself to familiarize yourself with it, purchase or locate in the library any additional books, videos and software, make a load of notes and stock up on pens and paper, folders, binders and filing cabinets and you're ready for your first semester at home schooling.