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Home schooling or homeschooling, if you want (in deed, you even see it hyphenated, as in home-schooling) has been about for about 30 years now, although, of course it was all parents had before state involvement in education. Remote thinly-populated places in large countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a large degree, although it is less difficult now with the wide-spread use of radio, television and the Internet. Video packages also have an important role, as do books still.

Nevertheless, home schooling has become really popular in the cities as an alternative to urban public schools, which are frequently seen as hotbeds of disruption, anger and drugs, especially by the middle classes and not without some valid cause, to be fair. However, there are also other just reasons for deciding on home schooling, which we will go into at a later stage.

Firstly, it must be pointed out that the decision to opt for home schooling has to be a family one. This is because it will turn “normal family life” on its head and place an added financial strain on the household purse. For instance, one parent will have to stop work. This cannot be allowed to be a cause of resentment, or both parents could take part-time jobs and share the children’s tuition time. Whichever way you decide, you will not have two full-time salaries any longer. Working from home on the Internet could be a partial solution here.

Home schooling will also upset everyone’s social life. So, the parents’ social life is restricted by not seeing work colleagues every day, but so is little Johnny’s, especially if he has already spent some time in a conventional classroom. He won’t see his friends from class as much and they could drift away from him or even resent him.

On the positive side is that the family will become a lot stronger as a unit by working together at home schooling. Both parents will have a thorough understanding of what their child is learning and will be learning. While following a broad-spectrum education, you may nevertheless opt to focus on points of, say, history or science, that particularly interest your child. It allows you the freedom to tailor your child’s education to his or her particular interests, something that state education cannot do well with over-sized classes. Your child will also come less under the influence of the rowdier elements in school and be able to concentrate more on studying.

A note of caution may be useful at this point. Do not be tempted to compel your child to learn too rapidly. It is tempting for a non-professional teacher-cum-proud parent in home schooling to push the child much harder than he can go. Remember that most people are only average. You must be on look out for signs of burn-out and bad feeling at all times.

Once you decide to opt for home schooling, you will have to choose a basic curriculum, run through it yourself to familiarize yourself with it, buy or locate in the library any supplementary books, videos and software, make a load of notes and stock up on pens and paper, folders, binders and filing cabinets and you’ll be ready for your first semester at home schooling.

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