Homeschooling: an educational alternative

Traditional schools have always been top in the educational system. For years, formal education has been referred as the only sort of education that matters or that has a true and solid value when facing how children will learn. The kind of education that parents choose for their children affects directly the way these children see the world, how they will face difficulties, and how they will acquire the required knowledge to move along in their lives. During the past twenty years many new models of educational systems have been drawn out due to the burden that is to educate an infant. However, there is one model that has been tested in different contexts and it has had varied results. It is the homeschooling educational model. Homeschooling has as many advantages as flaws. In this paper, a dissection of both will be performed to know whether Colombia is suitable for homeschooling or not.

 Formal education is commonly delivered by trained teachers. These teachers and professor have proper degrees in education and pedagogical knowledge behind them but when it comes to teaching, there is more than one way of teaching and learning and not all of them are related to formal education.  Homeschooling is often seen as a not very reliable alternative to formal education due to the fact that the way contents are taught varies according to the necessities of each pupil. Homeschooling is a non-formal education way of teaching children in their own homes. It is known due to the freedom involved in the creation of a personalized curriculum, the strengthening of bond between parent and child, and the decision of what the child is willing to learn. Even though homeschooling is still relatively new compared to the traditional systems, it does not mean that it does not work at all. During many years in the modern society, it was thought that formal education was the only way in which children could learn about the world and get the tools to learn in the future on their own.  It seems that there are more than one path to choose when it comes to achieve good education.

            During recent years, homeschooling has increased its popularity around the world in all five continents. In places like United States and Great Britain the number of homeschoolers has increased to almost 1.4 million (Shulammite, 2015.)  This result may be due to the lack of flexibility in the formal educational system not only from places like Europe and North America, but also in Latin America in which the public schools are highly standardized and rule by a very strict system of assessment and content instruction.  Therefore, homeschooling may be an attractive option to go for.

            One of the reasons of the increasing interest on this educational model is related to the syllabus creation and content selection. The creation of a syllabus is usually restrained by the rules of the formal education system of the country the children are from, limiting their curiosity and the topics they learn. “The child soon learns not to ask questions - the teacher isn’t there to satisfy his curiosity. Having learned to hide his curiosity, he later learns to be ashamed of it. Given no chance to find out who he is – and to develop that person, whoever it is – he soon comes to accept the adult’s evaluation of him”. John, H. (1969, February 8, ‘School Is Bad for Children’) Curiosity is the primary fuel a kid has during its most valuable years to learn and gather information they need. Therefore, it is hearth-breaking that, indisputably, standard education causes children to lose interest in the wonders that the world has to offer if they are not motivated in the adequate way. Also, it is frequently requested that a specific number of topics and units are taught during the academic year. The failure of them may cause a delay in the academic life of the child. It will not only affect their self-esteem, but the capacity of them to hold on to information by any other way besides memorization. Compared to the homeschooling process, it is harsh towards the child. In the homeschooling educational process, the syllabus is often made relying on the weaknesses of the child, and working them out using different approaches. However, this does not mean that the topics are not challenging or that they do not look for a personal -as well as an intellectual- growth in the student. This personalized syllabus mixes those difficult topics with activities in which the children have good affinity and performance to help them while they go through the topic.

Although, there are schools in which they have more flexible syllabuses planned for their students that cover a wider number of necessities, it is often not enough due to the lack of time to get truly involved with every kid. Some teachers are likely to impose, pressure, and discourage their own student’s thoughts about the knowledge being acquired. “If a student disagrees with something the professor said, they are taught to think that they must be wrong or to ignore the thought.” Stephanie. L. (June, 2010), The Democratic Classroom: Challenging Traditional Teaching Methods While Challenging the status Quo of Inequality. This is one of the reasons of why homeschooling is quite appealing for many parents around the globe. The parents may never refute everything that their offspring has to tell them about what they are being taught, because the parents are the first ones to know what their children had difficulties in learning to. They know what their kids need to practice, so they can dominate the subjects and fully understand the themes. “Homeschooling allows a child to be asynchronous, learn at their own pace, explore topics they are interested in, when they are interested in them” (Muszalski, 2018).

            Other reason that explains why homeschooling is becoming so popular, is the allowance this kind of education brings to the parents to get closer to their kids. Homeschooling allows parents to work more in the values and emotions of their kids towards their interpersonal relationships and their contact with the world. “Demonstrate to their kids that education is fun, adapt teaching methods best suiting how their children learn and create strong bonds with their children” (Loveless, 2018). These are just some of the reasons regarding a better connection with the children. Also, being a homeschooling family gives a unique advantage for finding the time and opportunity to integrate EQ learning into their days. EQ stands for Emotional Intelligence as said by Gardner (2018) “Your EQ is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them”. Homeschooling opens to the parents the opportunity to work directly and in team with their kids to understand and enhance their emotional capacities. “A kid with a high emotional intelligence is capable of (…recognize and manage emotions and be able to overcome negative ones such as fear and anxiety, enabling one to perform well in varied life situations” (“EnfagrowA”, 2014). What is more, a child with this emotional capacity will have the facility at the moment of interacting with other children, not necessarily other homeschoolers. Which means that social skills and capacities are not being damaged severely, even though parents have to keep an eye constantly on this aspect, so the kids can comfortably go back to a normal social interaction more easily when the time requires it.

           However, even when parents can give to their kids a more intimate education about their feelings, there is a slight isolation being imposed to the children.  “All children need to learn how to have relationships with their peers, and home schoolers are sometimes at a disadvantage in this area because they do not have as many opportunities for forming friendships.” (“AllAboutParenting”, 2018).  Although, homeschoolers can arrange meetings with other homeschoolers and their parents, these are not spontaneous encounters. It limits the amount of social connection the kid can develop with the others homeschoolers. At last the kid may not develop a good social interaction skill and that lack of this social dimension may be troublesome for him in the future when the puberty hits and the necessity of forming a group of friends or close peers becomes inevitable. This is in fact the most relevant disadvantage in the homeschooling model. But, once again time in family is obviously highly valuable and something that most of the kids lack this days. The additional interaction with the parents has good outcomes such as a better comprehension of their own feelings, the acceptance of criticism and also a higher tolerance to others opinions and believes. All this achieved thanks to the correct application of time in family, support and values that are implanted during the education process.

            The last two reasons for what homeschooling is becoming more popular is the freedom regarding time management, and homeschooling not as a single non-formal education model but as a complement to formal education. When parents teach children at home there is not a compulsory schedule of how many hours should be spent on each subject. The parents had the liberty of choosing how much time of the day they are willing to spend in certain activities or themes, allowing kids to review as many times if necessary a topic so they can assimilate it completely without pressure. However, this not-pressure system has a problem in which if the kid is not pressured even a little or on the contrary their parent pressures him even more than normal teachers may do it: they work really slowly because of not being worried to accomplish things in a good amount of time or directly not trying as hard as they could because they know their teachers are their parents. On the contrary, working too fast and having stress or anxiety even in an environment that is supposed to fight against that in first place is actually leading to misbehavior and demotivation.

            Then, homeschooling as a complement of formal education could be a more subtle use for this educational proposal. Formal education leaks things that we touched before, such as bond and EQ. Mixing formal with non-formal could be a way in which both systems complement each other in what they lack or have difficulties achieving in their students.

            To conclude, Homeschooling is a resourceful educative proposal with a lot of freedom disposal and various points of view available for the parents. Thus, they can achieve what they feel will be necessary for the educational life of their offspring. However, homeschooling by itself may not be enough to educate a child into achieving a high scholar level efficiently due to the great amount of subjects that the parents will also be in charge of studying. Homeschooling should not be completely misestimated for its flaws because as any other educational system it is not perfect. Educative methods can always be improved, enhanced or even mixed with other methodologies and pedagogies to get a better and more consistent result. After all, the aim of all methods is to give children the most rich academically environments, as well as current and reliable information to expand the mind of the students. At last, all that matters is the aim that should be adopted by parents, so that children are able to acquire the necessary knowledge to live their lives as productive when they are adults. Children who grow up to develop their own believes, opinions and perceptions about what surrounds them and what they interact with. People who achieve the crafting of good values and behaviors that will help them construct their own mentality. Even if it is formal education, private education or homeschooling, education is what help us get into the world with the bases to develop ourselves as beings and giving the children the best chances to accomplish their goals and that is in fact the most important thing of all.

References:

Shulammite, Hu. (2015). Retrieve from https://www.quora.com/Is-homeschooling-on-its-way-to-be-being-more-popular-in-the-future .

Muszalski, Jamie. (2018) Retrieve from https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-of-homeschooling

Gardner, Howard.   (N.D). Retrieve from  https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-emotional-intelligence-eq/

Loveless, Becton. (2019). Retrieve from https://www.educationcorner.com/benefits-disadvantages-of-homeschooling.html

EnfagrowA https://www.enfagrow.com.my/articles/does-your-child-have-high-eq-emotional-intelligence

Holt, John. (1969). Retrieve from www.rougeforum.org/newspaper/winter2003/HoltJohn1969.htm

Draft #1

Is homeschooling a good educational alternative?

Traditional schools have always been in top of the educational system. Formal education is often referred as the only type of education that matters or has a truth and solid value at the moment of facing the world, its difficulties, and requirements to get a place in superior education or well paid jobs. Plus, formal education is commonly delivered by trained teachers but when it comes to teaching, there is more than one way of teaching and learning and not all of them are related to formal education.  Home schooling is often seen as the alternative to FE. Homeschooling is a Non-formal education way of teaching children in their own homes. It is known due to the freedom involved in the creation of a personalized curriculum, the strengthening of bond between parent and child and the decision of what the child is willing to learn. Even, when Homeschooling is still relatively new compared to the traditional systems it does not mean that it does not work at all. During many years it was thought that formal education was the only way in which children could learn about the world and get the tools to learn by their own even though it seems there are more than one path to follow to achieve a good education.

            During recent years Homeschooling has increased its popularity around the world in all five continents. In places like United States and Great Britain the number of homeschoolers has increased to almost 1.4 million (Shulammite,2015).  This result may be due to the lack of flexibility in the formal educational system. Not only from places like Europe and North America but also in Latin America in which the formal systems is highly standardized, Homeschooling may be an attractive option.

            One of the reasons to the increase interest on this educational model is related to the syllabus creation and content selection. The creation of a syllabus is usually restrained by the rules of the formal education system of the country the children are from. It is frequently requested that a specific number of topics and units are taught during the academic year and the failure of this itself may cause a delay in the academic life of the child. This compared to the Homeschooling process is not that harsh towards the child. In the Homeschooling educational process the syllabus is made often relying in the weaknesses of the children while at the same time it mix those difficult topics with activities in which they are good or have a better performance.

Although, when there are schools in which they have more flexible syllabus planned for their students and cover a wider number of necessities, this is often not enough due to the lack of time to get truly involve with every kid. However even with this more flexible institutions sometimes it is not enough and even when is frequently debated, parents are the ones who know what their children are weak at and what they need to be better in order to progress and advance in their educational process. “Homeschooling allows a child to be asynchronous, learn at their own pace, explore topics they are interested in, when they are interested in them” (Muszalski, 2018).

            Other reason that may explain why Homeschooling is becoming so popular has to do with the allowance this kind of education bring to the parents to get closer to their kids. Homeschooling allow parents to work more in the values and emotions of their kids towards their interpersonal relationships and the world. “Demonstrate to their kids that education is fun, adapt teaching methods best suiting how their children learn and create strong bonds with their children” (Loveless, 2018). As said by Loveless, these are just some of the reasons regarding a better connection with the children.

            Also homeschooling families, there is a real advantage for finding the time and opportunity to integrate EQ learning into our days. EQ stands for Emotional Intelligence as said by Gardner (2018) “Your EQ is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them”. Homeschooling opens to the parents the opportunity to work directly and in team with their kids to understands and enhance their emotional capacities. A kid with a high emotional intelligence is capable of (…recognize and manage emotions and be able to overcome negative ones such as fear and anxiety, enabling one to perform well in varied life situations” (“EnfagrowA”, 2014). What is more, a child with this emotional capacities will have a facility at the moment of interacting with other children, not necessarily other homeschoolers.

            In contrast, even though parents can give their kids a more intimate education about their feelings, there is a slight isolation being imposed to the children.  “All children need to learn how to have relationships with their peers, and home schoolers are sometimes at a disadvantage in this area because they do not have as many opportunities for forming friendships.” (“AllAboutParenting”, 2018).  Although, homeschoolers can arrange meetings with other homeschoolers and their parents this are not spontaneous encounters. At last the kid may not develop a good social interaction skill and that lack of this social dimension may be troublesome for him in the future when the puberty hits and the necessity of forming a group of friends or close peers becomes inevitable. But, after all of this, time if family is highly valuable and also has good outcomes such as a better comprehension of others feelings and criticism and also a higher tolerance to others opinions. All this achieved thanks to the correct application of time in family.

           

            The last two reasons for what Homeschooling should be becoming more popular is the freedom regarding time management and Homeschooling not as a single non-formal education model but as a complement to formal education. When parents teach children at home there is not a compulsory schedule of how many hours should be spend on each subject. The parents had the liberty of choosing how much time of the day they are willing to spend in certain activities or themes, allowing kids to review as many times is necessary a topic so they can assimilate it completely without pressure. However, this not-pressure systems has a problem in which if the kid is not pressure even a little or on the contrary their parent pressures him even more than normal teachers he may: Work really slowly not being worried of accomplish things in a good amount of time or directly not trying as hard as they could because they know their teachers are their parents. Or on the contrary, working too fast and having stress or anxiety even in an environment that is supposed to fight against that in first place leading to misbehavior and demotivation.

            Then, Homeschooling as a complement could be another use for this educational proposal. Formal education leaks things that we touched before, such as bond and EQ. Mixing Formal with non-formal could be a way in which both systems complement each other in what they lack or have difficulties achieving on students.

            To summarize, Homeschooling is a good educative proposal but just by itself may not be enough to educate a child achieving secondary level. Yet, Homeschooling should not be completely misestimate for its failures because as every other educational system is not perfect and always can be improved or mixed with other to get a better result. At last, all what matters is that children acquire the enough knowledge towards the education system chosen by parents in accordance with what they think is the best for him/ her. Education is what help us get into the world with the bases to develop ourselves as beings and giving the children the best chances is probably the most important things of all.

           

Conclusion:  Home schooling seems to have positive sides regarding personal growt and personal interests but especialized knowledge may not be taught efficiently.

References :

Shulammite, Hu. (2015). Retrieve from https://www.quora.com/Is-homeschooling-on-its-way-to-be-being-more-popular-in-the-future .

Muszalski https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-of-homeschooling

Gardner https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-emotional-intelligence-eq/

Loveless https://www.educationcorner.com/benefits-disadvantages-of-homeschooling.html

EnfagrowA https://www.enfagrow.com.my/articles/does-your-child-have-high-eq-emotional-intelligence
https://members.classicalconversations.com/public-school-vs-homeschooling.htm
https://www.parents.com/kids/education/home-schooling/homeschooling-101-what-is-homeschooling/
http://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext

Essay outline

Question: Is homeschooling a good educational aternative?

Thesis: Looking into the homeschooling advantages and disadvantages, does this type of education really works?

Introduction:

Topic sentence: Home schooling is usually see as an the alternative to the "formal education".

Background information: It is reasonable to ask, given advances in education over the last century, what are the advantages of home schooling? - 2002 - 2018 AllAboutParenting.org

Thesis: During many years it was thought that formal education was the only way in which children could learn about the world and get the tools to learn by their own even though it seems there are more that 1 path to follow to achieve education.

Body (1):

Topic sentence: During the recent years home schooling has increased it's popularity  around the world.

Supporting sentence: Opening new alternatives related to syllabus and content creation.

Opposing opinion: Some schools have great planning to cover all the necesities of the students they take in.

 Counter-argument: althought the institutions have good study plans for their kids. It is believe that parents are the only ones who know what their children truly need.

Body (2):

Topic sentence: Homeschooling allow parents to work more in the values and emotions of their kids towards the exterior world.

Supporting sentence: As homeschooling families,there is a real advantage for finding the time and opportunity to integrate EQ learning into our days.

Opposing opinion:  Even though parents can give their kids a more intimate education about their feelings, there is a slight isolation being imposed on the children.


 Counter-argument: But, at last time in family can forge a good confidence to help children face the world without to much hesitation about the critics and opinions of others.

Body (3):

Topic sentence: Homeschooling also could be a good alternative to those families with low resources.

Supporting sentence:  More than the X% of children in Colombia are not studying or reciving any kind of education. Which, withdraw the idea of taking a book and teach by themselves to their kids the necessary to live.

Opposing opinion: There are subsidies from the govermnet to help children study in a formal school.


 Counter-argument: But, at last, There is not certance that the money given will be used in the education and not all families are chosen to receive this help.

Conclusion:  Home schooling seems to have positive sides regarding personal growt and personal interests but especialized knowledge may not be taught efficiently.

Answer to: How do you think we could empower our Colombian students to critically spot fake news?

In today's class we talked about what critical literacy was by Ira Shore. Following we read an article called "Fake news: improved critical literacy skills are key to telling fact from fiction." by Jonathan Douglas.

The first thing I will say we can do as future teachers to empower our Colombian students to critically spot fake news, is to teach through common sense. We need to spread the knowledge that they need to not believe straight away what they read or watch on internet. Also, that as they see how the social networks  behave is implicit that anyone can spread viral fake content and even if they read those fake news, they are the ones who will decide if that is true for them.

The second thing I will write about is related to what I.Shore said "When they lose touch with purpose in speaking or writing, they struggle to mobilize their inherent language competencies." Here we can read that if students do not take advantage of the tools they have around them to enhance their literacy skills and judge by themselves, they will be easily poisoned by the ignorance towards really and fiction in the words. Most students think that if something is written in a book or article on a newspaper it has to be a solid true. Which, in most of the cases can be a double blade sword.  

"...It helps children accurately understand and interpret information by making connections between what they read and what they already know, working out what is important, and spotting the difference between fact and fiction." (J.Douglas. 2017.) Relate to this I will write that probably due to the connections with social media students may be more used to be critical with what they encounter navigating the web. Sadly, most of them decide to start spreading intentionally or not this fake news which just hinders even more students critical thinking process.

Lastly, to say that a really good way to encourage students to spot fake news is to play with what they already know. Games such as true or false or even doing an exercise in class with a news realte to something they are interested in may be a great start. 

A critical commentary of: "Where is the Outrage? Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times" by Henry Giroux

First of all, I want to say that I am not really good doing critical commentaries, principally because I think I get really involved in what I think I agree or disagree with so, I will request feedback after posting this.

In the video, during the first minutes, I will say that I feel that thought Mr. Giroux has some reason while talking about the path education is following these days I also disagree a certain level with his romantic view of how education must be.

"There is a need to use education to mobilize students to critically engage agents, attentive to addressing important social issues..." I agree with what he says here because it is not possible to ignore the importance of telling the younger ones that things do not change just because you want it. The world is not that easy and without a real interaction with these problematics things like low quality of education and few spots in high-level education will keep going until everything is owned by the hands of the powerful ones.

But I also think that the way in which he talks about this is also quite uncomfortable because it reminds me of someone that wants to convince to lead, not to just inform and give courage. This is just my impression of hearing his tone. And, coming back to what I said about his idealized view of the education, I do really think that he truly believes that most people care about the future of our school and universities. But, at the same time is quite naive to think that something like that can be changed just by pointing out all the bad sides of the problematics.

"The worst dimension of power is when it makes itself invisible." This quote is also really interesting. He puts in a spotlight how education and people with good ideas and thoughts are easily put aside by the words and actions of others with more influence. Most of the time because the ignorance implicated in sharing and making strong relationships with people how really care about a change are lacking something.

Lastly to say that in this quote  "Young black men...are guilty of criminal behavior not because of crimes the might commit but because they are the product of a collective imagination paralyzed by the racism of a white supremacist culture that can only view them as a dangerous nightmare." I think he stands out a really good point regarding social division because of skin color or ethnic. Showing that color does not reduce your ability to question and criticize the events in the world and the problematics of our environments.

Finally, I want to point out that I enjoyed most of the talk of Mr.Giroux, the only problem for me was that sometimes he talked too much and become redundant or very intense about a specific topic. But at last, He made think about how I see the education and what I am going to do to give something to others to see things differents from me too.

Stereotypes time

In today class we watch some videos about stereotypes and thoughts about other cultures. Stereotypes are ideas or just things that are said from mouth to mouth. But, as life is, some stereotypes are based on reality and even though sometimes they are rude and change the appearance of other countries, they cannot simply disappear.

Maybe some of the most harmful stereotypes are the ones that try to ridicule your culture. An example of this is the opinion many people outside Colombia have about us. We are naturally aggressive, drug dealers and thieves. But, obviously, we know that this is not true at all.

Since we started thinking rationally, our species develop different systems to create relationships with other humans and our environment. Stereotypes, tags or denominations are some of them. We as individuals most of the times are conscious of what kind of person you are. Funny, enthusiastic, temperamental, sensitive, practical, arrogant, there are hundreds of adjectives that we can use to describe ourselves and even this process of self-assessment is a kind of stereotype because we are trying to define ourselves to fit into a group.

Though this may sound strange and even hypocritical because probably we do not like to be etiquette with an adjective we do not considerate that define us. We should consider stereotypes and etiquettes as "trues". I consider after watching all these videos that stereotypes, as I write before, are create based on reality but obviously they can also be wrong. This is why I think stereotypes are more a kind of guide. This guide as a whole has it's based in general things, as our nationality, our age, our gender,  our economic status, our education. This is just the tip of the iceberg a person truly is, sure you can be a little temperamental if you are from a specific part of the world because that is the way you were raised but I do not mean that you are also funny and certain situations do not bother you at all. 

Lastly, to say that stereotypes just give us an idea of how most people see us based on the things mentioned early but this adjectives or ideas are just not enough to describe how wonderful everyone is, how different, how variable, how imaginative and how capable. Every person is a completely new world and such as all planets have a spherical shape it does not mean that we all have the same atmosphere and material inside us. At last, it depends upon us to show to others who we really are and what truly can be defined as "us".

Stephen Brookfield - Creative and critical thinking

(Sorry for the late upload, I left this post in the edition mode without knowing. It was mean to be post on August the 16th)

In the video is highly implied that is incredibly relevant to help students to develop or improve their critical and creative thinking skills. All students need this skill to defend their ideas and question others' thoughts. Without this, students and younger people will be conformist with what they are learning and will not stop to think on their own what the topics and new information means to them.

Professor Brookfield  explains that critical thinking is a process in which an individual becomes aware of the assumptions that affect the way they think and then they try to find if what they know is truly viable and accurate. He also mentions that a person that is aware of what he is learning and that thinks creatively  is able to see things different from others, from various and original perspectives and try to avoid using the same reasoning over and over again. What is more, this individual is also capable of express their ideas in original ways, being resourceful and innovative.

Then he talked , making some joke in between about the critically and creatively informed actions and in which things each one is based: 

> Evidence or experience that can be justifiable.

> Assumptions known and checked by experts or facts.

> And lastly the one that stands a chance of achieving its intended consequence viewed from multiple perspectives.

What is more is that Professor Brookfield also talked about the different kind of assumptions human beings create such as the causal in which we explain a sequence of events. Also, the prescriptive that allow us to guess how things will or may happen and finally the paradigmatic that is the one we call common sense or reasoning that let us take things from granted and feel secure about some events in our lives.

To conclude he talked about the four key intellectual traditions: 

> Analytic Philosophy: logical fallacies, argument analysis, deductive, analogical and interferential reasoning.

> Natural Science: Hypothetical/deductive method, a principle of falsifiability. This one was really appealing for me.

> Critical Theory: Uncovering power dynamics and ideological manipulation.

> Pragmatism: an experimental and creative pursuit of beautiful consequences. For example democracy, inclusion, connection. 

At last, I enjoyed the video, I liked the few jokes he made and the examples he propose during his talk. Finally, I think that the Professor Brookfield has so much more to share with us in the future.