Many people have asked us why we have chosen to homeschool. I think they expect us to say ‘for religious reasons’, but that is not why we homeschool. It is a nice side benefit, of course, but it is not the reason we have chosen this path.
Homeschooling has so many advantages that I could spend an awful lot of time listing them all. Instead, I will share our short list:
- Academic: Homeschooling is a lot like private tutoring. You can get exactly the right program for the individual student in order to optimize learning. That is simply impossible in a public school. We have two children, so our kids have a 2:1 student/teacher ratio. Therefore, our kids get many hours of undivided attention, and their educational experience isn’t determined by who misbehaves the most in class or who needs the most help from the teacher in order to simply function ‘on grade level’.
- Relational: Homeschooling allows us to have a deeper relationship with our kids. That is not to say that publicly schooled kids do not have a good relationship with their kids; rather, we have a deeper relationship. Our children spend much more time under our influence and benefit from an adult perspective on current events, dealing with others, facing the challenges of day to day life. We believe we are raising adults rather than children, so we prefer our children spend their time with adults who model appropriate adult behavior, not spend their days surrounded by other immature children.
- Practical: We spend a great deal of time teaching our children practical skills. First and foremost is independence. For kids in public school, they are taught what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and they have a teacher overseeing every move. We prefer for our kids to learn the skills to tackle problems and challenges by doing rather than being told how to do. We will offer help, of course, but we prefer that the kids make as many attempts as possible before we step in to assist. We also teach our kids to cook, clean efficiently (not use them as maids) and do all the things they might find the need to know if they were living in a dorm at college. They learn basic sewing, home repair, car maintenance, budgeting, conflict resolution, etc.
