Thoughts On Home-schooling

Home-schooling. I never anticipated that I would ever so much as consider it, let alone harbour a desire to practice it.

But since my daughter was born, just 6 months ago, I have become more and more interested in the ways of the home-schooler and how I might approach this enormous task.

Obviously, it goes without saying that I alone am not making any decision regarding my daughter's education and ultimately the final say will be had by her Daddy.

But Hubby has given me the go ahead to look into it, to research and find out how it is practised in the UK. And so I have, with relish.

A trip to the library has provided me with ample reading material as a starting point and I am already racing through my "beginners" book 'Learning Without School', by Ross Mountney.

The decision to home-school before your child has begun school is presented as a fairly easy one to make. Children who are pulled out of school to be home-schooled are almost always removed due to severe on-going problems the child is experiencing that the school has failed to address. Not so with the pre-schooler. The decision to home-school your pre-school child is almost always a philosophical, moral one.

And this is the very heart of the matter for our family. We are very aware that by choosing never to send our daughter to school, to never even try that "normal" route, we could potentially be subjecting her to a childhood that is set-apart and different. Perhaps painfully so. All for the sake of our philosophies.

And yet, my experiences of state education in this country leave me wishing that I could shelter her from those aspects of school life that I know to be demoralising, harmful, and sometimes even dangerous. This is not the ranting of a religious fanatic who cannot function in ordinary society. These are the concerns of a very normal family who are wondering how they can carve out a happy childhood for their daughter (and hopefully future children) without exposing her to the usual name calling and playground politics of primary education and the peer pressure, sex, drugs and drink of the teen years.

I am very aware that a lot, in fact, most people would venture to say that their school days were relatively happy. Indeed I am one of them. I thoroughly enjoyed most of my schooling and I was lucky enough to make friends easily and do fairly well academically.

But that can't detract from the basic problems that the school system presents in my thoughts. Number one being that parents can't really know exactly what their child is being taught behind closed doors, crucially both by their teachers and their fellow pupils. Again, I have no fear of my daughter making friends with and socialising with children whose family background differs from her own. What I don't want is her to become victim to the far more subtle pressure exerted by an over-emphasis on testing and narrow-minded academia which convinces children that they are worth only what an examiner is willing to grade them. Number two, children who are unhappy at school are often reluctant to discuss their problems with their parents out of a mistaken belief that their parents will be unable to help. Number three leads on from number two, unhappy children who believe they have no outlet for their thoughts and feelings often turn to harmful or negative behaviours that worsen the original issue and make recovery a much more drawn out experience.

Home schooling would virtually resolve all of these issues before they had a chance to even arise. Of course I know it would not be easy. The time and commitment one has to make is enormous. And when more children come along (if it please Him) the time and energy needed only increases.

So, for the time being, I'll keep researching and reading and crucially, praying for the right answer to come.

If anyone reading has any thoughts or experiences on home-schooling either here in the UK or in the US that they would be happy to share, I would thoroughly enjoying reading them. Many thanks in advance!