Chapter 12- Homeschool

Home school

According to our text book “Child Development 4th ed.” there are about 1 million children being home schooled. Plus they are doing just as well on standardized tests as those who have received a more traditional education (p.337). Some of the reasons parents gave for home schooling were; children receive individual attention, dissatisfied with public school, and for religious reasons. According to Neal (2006) flexibility is one of the keys for this program to work. Some children take music lessons during the day and have the advantage of exercising early before the crowds arrive at YMCA (Neal, 2006). However some of the draw backs are these children are not being taught to interact with peers of their own age. It requires a lot of structure and discipline and some parents are not providing this. Some teachers are skeptic and suggest parents should leave subjects like math, science, history, and geography to individuals who trained and knowledgeable on those subjects (Neal, 2006).

I feel home schooling is not for everyone. It takes alot of commitment from the parent staying at home. It is a full time job plus more and that parent will lose any personal time they had before. Parents need to be trained and well discipline. I had a friend who was home schooling her child when she was in middle school. All the parent did was buy her a computer software and the teenager just sat at the computer all day. She expected her daughter to do everything on her own. She was not very successful after two years of this. In her case mom re-enrolled her in public school so she could get caught up. Obviously the examples we read about say how well the children are doing and how they exceed children who are in public school.

References :

Feldman, R. (2007). Child development (4th edition). Pearson Prentice Hall.

Neal, A. (2006, September). HOMESCHOOLERS: INTO THE MAINSTREAM. Saturday Evening Post, 278(5), 54-104. Retrieved July 6, 2008, from Academic Search Complete database.