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