According to the Education Resource Centre, Home schooling is providing education to children based at home as opposed to public and private schools. It used to be the only means of education.By 1918 laws were passed in the United States for forced public schooling. Many Americans believed in the new system trusting that better training would be facilitated. Their attitude later changed and preferred to have their children taught at home.
In the year 1980 some movement advocated earlier system of learning which led to enacting of laws to adapt to it. Reasons for choosing home learning basically fall into two groupings; religious values and problems underpinning schools. Many parents believe that they can enforce their religious values on their children better at home. Others have bad experience with the school based system believing that it cannot satisfy their needs. Information on home schooling helps provide guardians with relevant information on how this system works and its drawbacks.
According to Brenda Hoffman’s (2008), challenges encountered in home schooling include exhaustion of parents. Furthermore parents would be living in isolation because of limited interaction. Legal risks are inevitable for educating children with unique requirements; therefore one requires to be acquainted with necessary knowledge of regulations.
The benefits of home schooling include; its flexible in adjusting to children’s learning methods, enables children to adjust new trends in life,nartures intimate friendly relationship between the parents and the children, kids are well supervised, increases family cohesiveness, parents are able to provide guidelines on matters of morality, gives kids enough time to engage in many activities,opportuniy to interact with individuals of different age the children can work under the protection of their parents, parents may instill moral values in their children, brings bonding in family and close relatives.
The reasons why parents prefer home learning are: there is protection of children, creates learning opportunity for both parties, brings about cohesiveness between the child and parent, sense of achievement when children succeed, children with special needs are well taken care of. On the other hand Pamela Connolly contributes that there is no interaction with their age mates, home based system does not have sporting facilities such as gyms. Requires a lot of effort from parents especially financial and emotionally to arrange for external activities to develop interests, and buy learning materials needed for schooling. Other benefits: parents can supervise what kids learn, support children’s interests, selects friends on their behalf; parents are able to adjust changes in the environment (Allied National High School, 2003).
Drawbacks of such programs include reduction in income, the costs of carrying out programs is high, contributes to stress due to inability to cope with increased responsibilities (Sonlight Curriculum, 2008). Information collected proves that home based programs plays a significant role in molding children’s future but needs to be balanced to ensure balanced growth.
References
- Allied National High School. The Benefits of Home Schooling. 2008.
- Brenda Hoffman. Challenges of Home schooling.
- Sonlight Curriculum. The Benefits (and Disadvantages) of Home schooling. 2008.