Pros And Cons Of Homeschooling-The "Pros"

I told my husband that I didn't want to homeschool. I didn't want my kids to suffer because I might not be the best teacher, nor did I want to isolate them from the rest of the world. I don't have kids so this discussion is academic, but I suspect other parents would agree with me. Your children's schooling is one of the most important parts of their upbringing, so we should put as much thought into it as we can. To this end, it helps to have the pros and cons of homeschooling given in a non-biased manner. This is what I'm attempting to do here. In this post, I'll give the "pros". I'll cover the "cons" in a separate post.

Some advantages to homeschooling-

You can tailor your teaching style to your child. Not every child can learn well in a traditional school. Even if they don't have specific difficulties such as dyslexia, overcrowding prevents teachers from giving students the individual attention needed to explain things they don't understand. If a child is homeschooled, though, parents and/or tutors can do just that. Some parents use interactive online lessons that help children “learn by doing”, which is something they might not get in a traditional school. They can go on field trips and see things "up close and personal" (such as what goes on in a veterinarian's office or a farm) in a way they wouldn't otherwise. For more visual learners, this is key.

The only problem I can see is that the methods of colleges and other schools may not "mesh" well with some of the more "alternate" styles  your child would need to be able to adjust accordingly.

Scheduling.  You won't have to deal with the "morning rush" of getting your children dressed, fed and out the door. Your kids can learn using their own schedule at their own pace. You'll need to be sure that your children still treat the curriculum like "school" and don't see being home as an opportunity to do whatever they want, but you can structure the lessons without having to worry about "school hours".  You also get to spend a lot of quality time with your child, which is something every parent can appreciate.

Academic achievement. Since they can get more individual attention and work at their own pace, homeschooled kids are often way ahead academically than kids in the “regular” systems. Think about it-didn't you have that kid in your class who constantly got called out for talking or disrupting things? I certainly did. The vast majority of the time, they weren't inherently “bad kids”; they were just bored because the material being taught was way too easy for them. I also knew a couple of kids who would ride their bikes from the middle school to the high school to take geometry because they had already passed all of the math classes offered by the middle school. If the two schools weren't right next to each other (as I suspect most aren't), this wouldn't have been possible. By homeschooling, kids like this could take subjects based on their ability level rather than age.

Your kids won't have to deal with the stuff you may have dealt with in school. There's no “popular crowd”, no gossip, no bullying, no peer pressure-none of that stuff happens in homeschool. Nobody gets “pantsed” or shoved in their locker. This can be especially helpful for girls because of the major drop in self-esteem many experience during the "tween" and teen years.