My Thoughts On Home-Schooled Kids On The Rise

It was reported recently that there are more and more kids who are being home schooled by parents.

Home Schooling has been a concept which is widely prevalent in US and now the trend is catching up fast with Singapore. With higher education level of parents, parents are fully equipped to coach their children at home with their own curriculum.

In my own opinions, these are the advantages of home-schooling

• Children can learn at their own pace and their own style instead of following the general speed of the education system and the classroom-whiteboard teaching style. By allowing learning at own pace, they tend to enjoy more and learn more effectively in the process.
• There is total freedom & creativity in the way parents or coaches can carry out the way they teach. For example, a science lesson can be carried out in the park in the form of a treasure hunt. Environment plays an important role in the learning process. If it is fun, children will love it and this helps them to build their learning thirst and the desire to explore more.
• Stronger Parents-Children bonding is established through fun and play instead of the conventional sense of authoritative figure. This is especially crucial with society moving into the information technology where things are porgressing at such fast pace that we overlook important aspects of life like relationship. Home Schooling allows the time for close interaction between parents and children which definitely is beneficial in the growing up phase for children. However, there could be some disadvantages which I think parents and coaches can work around to make home schooling a more balanced approach. This would be the main factor that I wish to discuss about.

Lack of social interaction : Being in close contact with parents and their own siblings, children are not exposed to the "real" world outside their world. This is the main component which needs to be looked into carefully. Afterall, children will reach a stage where they would have to leave their comfort zone to be in the society where they have to know how to handle and even work with tons of people with different personalities.

My suggestion would be to include sessions where your children can have the opportunity to mingle with the rest of their peers. The public school provides the environment for students to mix around with the rest of the children and this is great impact on the students in terms of developing softskills like communication, relationship building, leadership, teamwork, community spirit, being compassionate, being an effective problem solver ...

I am totally hands up for home-schooling concepts, are you? :-)

Perhaps we can listen some opinions from both parents, students and educators.