Thoughts about thinking too much: 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.