In these present times, getting the best education for your children is of the utmost importance. The topic of student education is a controversial one as there are more than a few options available for the parent to plan the educational development of their children. It does not help that the public educational setting is often full of issue and debate over allocation of school funding, curricula choices and external influences. These things and others end up affecting a student’s education, personal development and belief system.
As time has past, it has been taken for granted that getting a good education and nurturing the academic and interest path of many children is successfully accomplished by the institutionalized school systems of our states and cities.
For many, the public school systems have not met the needs of many parents and their children with respect to the academic educational standards expected by the proactive parent. This has resulted in a growing movement of parents taking the education of their children into their own hands. Home schooling continues to grow and to expand as more and more parents realize the many benefits and advantages of teaching at home.
Home schooling offers many benefits and advantages over traditional educational methods and systems offered through our public schools.
Home schooling allows the parent to select the exact lesson plan or curriculum the students will learn from based on what the parent thinks is best for the student, not the public school system. It is often found that many public schools teach students subjects that are academically irrelevant, not challenging, or that are really best left to the parent to teach.
Home schooling offers a control mechanism over this and allows for a way to tailor the student’s education to specific interests and desires while continuing to provide a challenge level that will keep the student growing in terms of his or her learning abilities.
Home schooling offers flexibility of the educational process. Some students excel at some things but not at others. Home schooling a student of this nature would allow that student to excel where his or her strengths are while at the same time allowing that student to spend a little more in the development of the weaker areas.
Some students are gifted and do well with all subject matter they are being taught. For them, home schooling allows for the education process to be more challenging since a more academically challenging curriculum can be adopted. Gifted home schooled students are able to pursue their interests and development path without the time constraints or curriculum limitations that are present in the traditional learning environment.
There are many ways that home schooling can be accomplished today. Some parents opt for a structured curriculum while others use available textbooks. Some parents combine these things with their own teaching while others teach each lesson completely of their own resources. Knowing this, it is evident that this education process is completely flexible, can be specifically tailored to the student’s needs and can be changed on the fly as student educational needs change.
Home schooling offers other indirect advantages as well. One of these might be more available time. Home schooling can be an efficient way to teach. The time you have during the day can be used efficiently, thereby reducing the overall time that the student actually spends at school. This efficient use of time results in more time to be spent on additional activities either related or unrelated to the student’s education.
Home schooling allows for the parent to become the main mentor and source of guidance for a child. Since a home schooled child relates to the parent a lot more, the child and parent can form a tighter bond than they might otherwise form. This bond could be the foundation of a higher degree of trust between the child and parent where the child is more apt to come to the parent for help and guidance instead of turning elsewhere.
Home schooling can be an outlet for a special case where a child may have been a victim of excessive bullying at a regular public school. School bullying is a serious problem at some schools and is a hard issue to resolve. The home schooling of a child victimized in this way offers the child a way to re-focus on learning while at the same time being able to receive the close parental guidance needed to overcome how the child handles situations of this nature.
It is now known for a fact that home schooled students do well when it comes to college preparation. In general, home schooled students have performed equal to or better than public schooled students on SAT assessments. In addition, it is a fact that home schooled students have an equal success factor for doing well in college as their public schooled peers.
Home schooling is not for everyone. Each parent should carefully evaluate whether home schooling will benefit their particular situation or not. There are many considerations to be made when choosing to home school, but for many, home schooling has been a choice that has proven to be very beneficial to the student’s exceptional education.
Keywords:
home school, home schooling, homeschooling, home schooler
