Archive for the ‘Benefits of Homeschooling’ Category

Many students do quite well in a traditional school. They get good grades, they learn what they need to learn, and they advance through the grades until they graduate and – hopefully – go to college.

But are they developing love of learning?

Unfortunately, it’s often quite the contrary. Traditional education takes curious kids who have a natural love of learning, and churns out, 12 years later, teens who can’t stand learning, who see learning as a hated but necessary chore and who are constantly looking to escape and to “relax.”

But what if learning can be a lifelong passion? What if, instead of taking the fun out of learning, learning could become fun again? As a homeschooling parent, you get the opportunity that other parents lose when they send their kids off to school. You get the opportunity to allow your child’s natural curiosity to flourish. You can give your child a curriculum that teaches her independent thinking, that challenges her. You can refuse to accept that “learning” and “fun” are two different things – after all, learning IS fun for young children. Why would we allow them into a system that takes the fun away and turns learning into a boring, repetitive chore?

In a typical classroom, your child is told what to study, when and for how long. In your “classroom,” whether it’s in the kitchen, in your child’s room, in a homeschooling group, or in front of the computer doing an interactive, online homeschooling program such as WiloStar3D, allow your child to be a self-learner, to discover his passion, and to develop a lifelong love of learning.

Photo credit: Courtney Carmody

Is there anything wrong with deciding to homeschool a child – even temporarily – because she’s being bullied at school?

We thought this was a fascinating discussion on whether homeschooling as a response to bullying is a good idea.

Our key takeaways from the discussion:

1. The first step should be giving the child tools to deal with the bullies and stop the bullying. There are several ways to do that, and what’s common to all of them is that you want the child to stop acting as a victim and to radiate confidence and a “I’m not a good target” attitude.

2. However, sometimes absolutely nothing works and the bullying persists. If this is the case, moving the child to a different school is a valid option and often ends the bullying, proving that it’s not the child who was the culprit but the school or class dynamics.

3. In cases of persistent bullying, since most experts agree that sometimes the only solution is to move the child to a different school, homeschooling should be a valid option, because it’s just like moving the child into another school – it just happens that the school is at home.

We agree with this approach. We think that it’s a mistake to view the act of moving the child into a homeschooling program as “surrendering” to the bullies or as trying to hide from the problem. Just like moving into a different school, the choice to remove the child from a situation where he is bullied and to homeschool him is simply a choice to remove him from a damaging social situation that cannot be fixed and to change his environment. This is a completely legitimate choice.

I recently read a very interesting article in Psychology Today, titled Standardized Testing and the Flight to Homeschooling.

In the article, Dr. Laura Brodie talks about “a test-prep overdose that cries out for a parent-driven intervention” and adds that “kids spend enormous time memorizing facts for multiple choice tests, and less time writing, reading, forming ideas and enjoying hands-on learning.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve spent years in traditional schooling, as a student and as a teacher, and there’s nothing that irritates me more than to watch bright, energetic students enter the school system full of life and ideas and eager to create, but fast forward 12 years or so and they are bored, stressed and have not just lost their ability to think and create, but worse – they have lost their will to do so.

I can’t say I was surprised to read that more and more parents are choosing homeschooling to “escape a curriculum geared toward multiple choice tests” that is killing children’s enthusiasm for learning. I’ve seen the enrollment in WiloStar3D explode over the past few years, and many of our parents are telling me that they are choosing homeschooling becuase they disapprove of the current state of traditional education and feel that it does not prepare their children to become thought leaders, but rather it teaches them to be followers.

Just one word of caution – I would encourage anyone who considers homeschooling to make sure that the homeschooling system they are choosing allows and encourages students to create and explore. Not all homeschooling programs are created equal, and some are closer to traditional schooling than you might think.