What Every Parent Should Know About Home Schooling

Before choosing between home schooling and public schooling for your child, you need to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of both. Being well informed is very essential in making the correct choice.

Advantages of Public Schools

The main advantage of public schools is the constant social interaction that the child is exposed to. This develops and immeasurably improves his social skills. You can involve the child in social activities, while home schooling as well. However, none of this may provide all the different levels of interaction that a traditional school provides. Being part of the same group for several years and interacting with teachers, staff, seniors and peers, prepares the child for life in the adult world. Home schooling deprives the child of close interpersonal relationship with peers and possibly, lifelong friendships.

Sending the child to a traditional school also gives you more time for other things, like your career and household chores. Home schooling can be very time consuming, since the parents have to be with the child through the lessons, not to mention correcting the worksheets and designing activities and audiovisual aids. The expenditure incurred can pose a problem. Although home schooling is generally less expensive in terms of tuition fees, the time you require to spend with the child generally implies your staying at home. In families that need a double income to run smoothly or in event of a divorce marriage break-up etc, this might become a problem. Having to decide which parent sacrifices their career can also lead to mental and emotional stresses at home that are not good for the child.

Homeschooling Advantages

The main advantage of home based schooling flexibility. Learning periods can be adjusted to your schedule and lessons can be created to better suit your child's aptitude and learning style. Homeschooling s a dynamic process and allows changes to be made to the curriculum. This makes it easier for the child to learn at his/her own pace. The learning activities can be structured more practically. Being an unstructured program, it allows parents to develop lessons that are fun, increasing the childs eagerness to learn.

Homeschooling is also less expensive and public schools and especially private schools can be very costly. The money saved, can be used for social activities and field trips for the child to help develop their social skills. Socialization problems can be avoided by extending the program and allowing the child adequate interaction with other kids. A good idea is regular trips to a public park, or enrollment in a sports league.

Many parents in the US feel that public schools are inadequate and do not challenge the children enough. Their standards of education are also in question. In fact, there are many examples of kids having gone all the way through high school, and actually graduated, without even being able to read properly. Schools are increasingly seen as unsafe with kids bringing in guns and knives. There is also a raging debate over the gangs and the drug issues in most schools. In addition, the size of the classrooms has increased to the point of being impossible. No student can hope for any personal attention in such a large set-up. And finally, many faith-based families are being upset by sex education, handing out of condoms and abortions without parental notification in the public school system.