Portrait of a middle aged lady helping her son to do homework
More parents are choosing to homeschool their kids than before. Why are they choosing homeschool over public or even private education? There are many possible reasons, and for some parents, there might even be multiple reasons behind their decision. Here are five reasons that more parents choose to homeschool their kids.
More Involvement
Even with parent-teacher conferences, for many parents, they feel as though their only involvement in their child’s education is helping with homework. It doesn’t feel like enough. They want to know more about what the child is learning, how well they retain what they learn, and even if they’re perhaps ready to move on to new material or advanced material.
Homeschooling allows for that involvement, and even offers flexibility in the level. You can choose to do it all yourself, right down to planning everything, supervising learning, and grading work.
Or you can choose to utilize an online school, allowing you to technically homeschool while turning over the planning and grading to someone else, while still being more involved because you can easily see what they’re doing at any given time.
Personalized Education
The involvement and flexibility in homeschooling also allows for a more personalized education when you compare homeschool vs public school. Parents get to know their children in a different way, learning about their interests in depth, and are then able to tailor the child’s education in such a way that those interests are supported.
This might look like lessons that use a child’s obsession with dinosaurs to create and keep interest in individual lessons across subjects, or it might look like gearing a high schooler’s education toward going to art school to major in photography, or preparing them for trade school to support a desire to own their own welding business.
Instill Family Values
Depending on age, grade level, and the area in which you live, your child could spend anywhere from 6-9 hours per day at school. If both parents work and the child is in elementary school, this could be closer to 10 hours with afterschool programs or daycare. This means that your child spends most of his or her time with teachers, faculty, and other students who all have different values.
Homeschooling allows you to instill your own values, by allowing you to not only spend more time with your children than others, and also allowing you to be present during their interactions with others so that you can discuss them later.
More Gray Area, Less Right Vs Wrong
Public school, with crowded classrooms and tight schedules, is often about following rules, getting the right answer, and respecting authority no matter what. While you’ll still likely teach some of these things at home, there will also be more room for questioning.
Where your child might be told they’re wrong for finding a math answer through a method not taught by the teacher, you can give them that freedom. You can allow your child to follow a rabbit hole of questions started by a writing prompt. You can encourage free thinking and open-mindedness in a way public school can’t.
Bullying or Other Negativity
Bullying, a personality conflict with the teacher, school violence, and other negative aspects of public school have a dramatic impact on a child’s ability to concentrate, learn and retain knowledge. Learning at home, where the child feels safe, secure, and happy, can make it easier for the child to learn, and even rekindle a thirst and love for learning that may have disappeared in public school.
There are probably as many reasons for choosing to homeschool as there are families that homeschool. Families that choose to homeschool love the time together, the interaction, and the quality of the education. Most never look back once they make the switch.
