A Prime Benefit Of Home Schooling - Setting The Pace
Do you know what it's like to run a race? If you do, then you should know that aside from sheer speed, there is another major factor that decides your place as you cross the finish line: your ability to pace yourself. Same goes for the race to a successful future. To reach the finish line (and to get there well ahead of your competition), you need to find your ideal pace and run with it. For students, the finish line is being mentally prepared to take on the real world. And fortunately, as a benefit of home schooling, they can run the race at their own pace.
While enrolling your kids in a public or private school is a proven and effective approach to education, there are just some things the style of home schooling offers that no academic institution can. The most prominent of these benefits of home schooling are the consummate learning environment, highlighted by the lack of distractions typically found in the classroom, and the parent/teacher's undivided attention.
But another benefit of home schooling (which is often overlooked) is the freedom to allow the child/student to develop at his or her own pace.
In the average school setting, students are asked to meet certain standards in order to pass and move on to the next grade level. Schools do this as a rule, despite the fact that every student progresses at a different pace.
How is this relevant? Consider two scenarios.
One: Due to the relatively low standards that most schools adhere to, your children could easily be promoted to the the next level without mastering the lessons taught in their current grade. This means that they are liable to forget concepts they should already be well aware of, or fail to apply them properly when the time comes for them to do so.
Two: Let's say your children are brilliant. Prodigies in every sense of the word. Despite their genius, however, they are confined to the pace the rest of their grade has set for them, when they could very well be tackling trigonometry while their classmates struggle with long division. Even if the school accelerates them, who's to say that will be enough to tap their potential?
And here's another hook of the school system that incorporates both scenarios at once: What happens if one of your kids has a phenomenal understanding of numbers but is a couple of years behind in reading level?
Will he be kept back a year just because he so happened to fail English, and promotion requires a passing grade in all subjects? Or will the school board consent for him to stay with his batch, even though they know restricting him to his batch's math subjects will limit his growth?
No matter what they decide, your kid will suffer from the consequences of their decision, simply because the school system isn't built to handle such a situation.
Pace is a bigger factor than you might think in your children's education. It's one of the reasons why the [style of home schooling] is held in such regard. As a benefit of home schooling, your children can develop at their own pace, play to their strengths, and work on their weaknesses, without having to worry about the system hindering their growth.