Home education or School?

Home education is not for everyone. Some children love the structured style of classroom instruction, and more outgoing children can benefit from working alongside others, discussing their findings, brainstorming options. Some parents must be out at work in the daytime, whether single parents, or those who need two incomes to pay the bills. For these families, finding a good school is essential.

In addition, some parents cannot deal with being around their children all the time, or have no wish to take responsibility for educating them. And that’s okay too. Schools were introduced originally to give educational opportunities to children who would not otherwise have them, to ensure universal literacy and numeracy, and in this sense they are - on the whole - succeeding.

Moreover, a good school can provide great experiences for children with appropriate personalities and learning styles. Some home educated students decide to go to school when they are teenagers, if there is a well-regarded nearby school that offers excellence in science, or performing arts, or sports, if that is the child’s passion. Others decide to go to school to take exams, to gain qualifications that are easier to take in a school environment.

But not all children fit the pattern of a successful and contented school pupil. Not all teenagers want to take an academic route with exams and certificates. No doubt the media blows out of proportion the number of disenfranchised teenagers: those who are bullied, or coerced into sexual activities, or who start to take drugs. But truancy is a serious problem in many countries, and that only happens when students are not happy being in school.

For many children and teens, peer pressure is difficult to resist. Teenage pregnancies have reduced in the past decade with widespread education and the availability of contraception, but there are still children as young as eleven who become pregnant, giving in to the insistence of others in the school playground. Drugs, cigarettes and alcohol are used by some students at even the best of schools. Every year, tragically, there are suicides reported from teenagers who cannot deal with the stresses involved at school, including the teasing or bullying from their classmates.

It makes no sense to forbid parents to educate their children at home, if the parents are willing and able to do so. If problems are addressed in the early stages, they are much easier to solve. Forcing an unhappy student to spend time in a classroom every day does not help the student, nor the rest of the class. Alternative forms of education must be found.

Perceptions of Home Education

What is your mental image when you learn that a child or teenager is educated at home rather than at school? Do you imagine someone geeky, who is awkward and self-conscious in social settings? Or perhaps you think of a child prodigy, a genius in some areas, but not necessarily well-rounded. The classical composer Mozart was educated at home, for instance; so, more recently, were the tennis-playing Williams sisters. Or maybe you’ve read about families living ‘off the grid’, growing all their own produce, generating their own electricity, avoiding public life and educating their children through daily chores and activities.

Unfortunately, the media tends to focus on extreme lifestyles. While there are home educated families in all these categories, the majority are ordinary people who have decided to take full responsibility for their children’s education, rather than delegating part of it to schools. There are many reasons why families might make this decision. For some it’s a reaction against problems in schools: bullying, peer pressure, or difficulties with academics. But for the majority, home education is a lifestyle choice. Until a couple of hundred years ago it was the normal way in which most children were educated, after all, and it allows for far greater flexibility in the family’s schedule.

Research in several countries has shown that home educated children tend to excel academically, and in other areas too. While most are unlikely to become Wimbledon champions, home education allows for more focus on sports, or music, or art, or wherever the child’s passions lie. Home educated children, on the whole, bear little resemblance to the anti-social stereotype portrayed by the media. Indeed, most of them to take part in more general activities than those who are in school, because they have so much more time to do so.

As for academics: yes, it’s important that children learn to read and write, to study mathematics, and to develop a broad understanding of the sciences and humanities. But it doesn’t take a trained teacher to impart this knowledge. If you completed a high school education, or equivalent, you can easily introduce your children to anything that would normally be covered in the primary years. Modern technology and easy access to information allows for self-led learning where relevant. With the help of suitable textbooks or online resources, parents can enable teenagers to learn what they need to learn in the secondary years too.