This is a report I wrote for some relatives and never gave. I just wrote it to organize my thoughts.
There are many reasons to homeschool. These include:
v Better quality education
v Positive role models who are consistant with family values and beliefs
v Good interpersonal skills
v Practical life based skills and learning
v Specialization
v Equality
v Free thought
v Emphasis on learning to think and how to learn not just be taught
v Lack of assessment culture which is irrelevant after formal schooling
Why Not Formal/Traditional School?
Homework:
Homework is one major reason why traditional schooling is failing our children. Homew ork is a useless concept: too much has been shown to lower acedemic performance and repetition only works if the concept is already solid and even then only 5 repetition is necessary to demonstrate that the concept is solid. It is also symbolic of the modern deep societal distrust of children; we teach them how and what to think, we control their every behaviour (mostly in ways that are very unnatural considering the developmental stage of the child), and then their time outside of school is controlled by homework. To demonstrate my point about this issue consider Finland: In Finland, children have the highest in the world science scores at age 15 but please to note that more than ½ hour of homework per night is unusual, there are no honour societies, no college pressure (college is free), and school starts at 7 years old. The competition by homework and grades actually cause students to do less better than they are able; they do not attempt things in an effort not to fail. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it homework actually has a detrimental effect on traditional kids socialization. Too much homework leads to lowered unsupervised play and extracurriculars.
Socialization:
Socialization is a function of family not government. Real world social skills are not facilitated by age/grade segregation. Spending all or most of the day inside with 24-30 age mates is unnatural, unhealthy and very limiting. Children benefit from interacting with role models of older people and being role models for younger people. The age segregation tends to rob children of their culture and humanity and promotes only the status quo. Security and self confidence are created when children (especially shy ones like Austin) are allowed to venture out at their own speed not forced simply because its time. Warm loving parents are more important than continued social contact when creating a child who functions well in society. The negative socialization of school leads to peer dependancy which leads to loss of self worth, loss of respect for parents and family and loss of optimism. Homeschooling avoids negatives like peer pressure and bullying. Children don’t develop those dysfunctional bully survival mechanisms common in traditional schools. Excessive peer orientation interfers with parent guided natural, gradual transition to a connected independance (the natural product of childhood dependancy if left to its normal conclusion).
Other Reasons:
Schools are naturally biased against boys due to their tendancy to have difficulties sitting still and paying attention to details. These problems arise because of a normal delayed maturity in boys. Schools do not put any importance on this detail and boys get left behind and even when they catch up maturity wise they have usually already given up on the system.
There is a scary dehumanizing aspect of school. Kids are isolated from society, forced into ridged schedules and subjects are taught all out of context making the matter seem meaningless.
The forced memorization of school cannot effect real understanding.
Grades, stars and external praise rob children of the internal motivation that child naturally possess when confronted with learning.
Schools are fundementally anti-intellectual, emphasize peer acceptance over moral values, and promotes all the most trival aspects of socialization.
Schools promote only the status quo, conformity , obedience to authority, passivity and antipathy to thought.
Education, true education is a self generated on-going process that never ends not a narrowly defined activity that takes place between ages 5 and 20 yrs.
Our current school system fails to take into account that our rapidly moving information based society needs people who can think innovatively instead of reguritate facts and figures.
Broadly based schools have no time for reflective/experimental activities and more teacher directed instruction which is not ideal for many learners.
Psychologically speaking children are not ready for formal schooling till age 8 or 9. Vision and all other senses cannot cope and they are unable to grasp cause and effect reasoning until age 10 or 11.
Schools are oriented to the prevailing societal perceptions of the world and man. They tend to define reality in one way when learning can be a process of discovering multiple realities and possible realities.
One study followed kids from kindergarten to grade twelve. Quizzed on their self concept; 80% of kindergarterners had a good self sense, by grade 5 it was only 20% and by grade 12 it was only 5%.