The Benefits Of Home Schooling - Learning History
For all the bad press that home schooling has received, you'd think it was nothing more than a new trend that deserves to be trashed. A lot of people don't like it seemingly because it deviates from the educational system they have gotten used to, one that is established and has been proven to work. If they only knew. Home education has been around far longer than schools have, and has also proven to be very effective. In fact, schools are lucky they even came to be, in spite of the many benefits of home schooling.
That's right, history is on home schooling's side. Many of the striking figures in history were home-schooled, and may very well have risen to prominence thanks to the many benefits of home schooling. Funnily enough, a number of doubters can't even fathom how home schooling can be better than education from a credible academic institution, much less imagine how some of the greatest minds of decades and centuries past can credit their brilliance to being taught at home.
But the fact of the matter is that these benefits can be seen even today. History may have changed a lot, but the benefits of home schooling have remained the same through the years.
Home education, for instance, allows for better learning due in no small part to the ideal learning environment the home presents. For one, it's free of the 10 million or so distractions kids are normally subjected to in the classroom. Not to mention, the unique style of home schooling ensures the teacher (the parent) is focused solely on the student (the child). The attention is not divided between students of a packed classroom whose number ranges from the high twenties to the low forties.
These conditions leave the child little choice but to listen and respond to the lesson, if only for the lack of alternatives available to him or for fear of letting down the teacher showering him with so much attention.
Another notable plus is that home-schooled kids tend to be more mature than other kids their age. This is because these kids aren't as influenced by their peers as they are by their teachers/parents.
Since kids enrolled in a public or private school spend most of their day with their classmates, they are vulnerable to juvenile notions and flawed values. Often has the honor student been labeled a “nerd” or a “teacher's pet” and the creative prodigy picked on for choosing arts over sports. Let's face it, kids left on their own don't know any better.
But the [style of home schooling] parents adhere to (for the most part, anyway) ensure that these kids are taught the proper values and are able to see the world from a more developed perspective. As long as parents play their cards right, these kids will know that not everything society thinks is “cool” is really “cool”.
These reasons are why it's no wonder that home schooling has stayed alive over the years, and is starting to gain credibility in academic circles again. It's more of a wonder that despite the many benefits of home schooling, the approach lost relevance for a while. But if history can truly teach us not to repeat the mistakes of the past, then home schooling should be here to stay.