What is a "home burial?

What do you think about home schooling?

• I was considering home schooling again for my daughter. But a lot of my family members and friends are against it. They think that it's not fair to the child. She's been home schooled before for a year (she's only in first grade now) and she went to regular school for a year. If i did decide on home schooling again, it would be with a group of kids. My sister in law is a teacher and she home schools her children and she was home schooling my child before too. The reason i'm considering home schooling her is because before she was doing so well at home and when she went to go live with her father they sent her to regular school and she likes it but she's been having some incidents going on at school lately. The teacher claims she's too outspoken and there's been this thing going on with cliques in her school and the classrooms. it's a whole bunch of things as to why i want to home school Do you think that home schooling is bad for children? what are your opinions?

• Answer:

  I have had some experience with home schoolers, although I am not one. Each family I knew chose to home school for different reasons. One mother felt that her children had learning disabilities and that they would do poorly and not receive the attention they needed at the public school. She made this evaluation on her own. She had some difficulty herself, and so did the father, so she made the assumption that it was hereditary. Other families chose to home school because they wanted to keep their children in a more protected environment. Many of them had strong, fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and they did not want their children exposed to the behavior, beliefs and language of the other children in their community. Another family removed their children from school after they developed behavioral issues, so that they could keep them from the peers they thought were a bad influence. One child was very advanced intellectually, and his parents wanted him to have access to specialized instruction. Some families lived an alternative lifestyle. This was in a very rural area, so some lived very much off the beaten path. The quality of the home instruction varied quite a bit. Some parents were college graduates, or even held graduate degrees. Others struggled with reading and basic math themselves. Some families worked together cooperatively and pooled their resources, with each parent contributing as he or she was best able. They would plan field trips and tried to incorporate music instruction, physical education, and so forth. All the children I knew have since grown to adulthood. And you see the same variety in the results of their educations, as was present in their quality of instruction and in their parents' motivations for providing it in a home setting. I would say that a FEW have done very well. They were able to go on to college, or to have non-professional careers in a trade that they enjoy. Others still struggle with basic skills. In nearly every case, I feel that home instruction was not as comprehensive as a public or private schooling curriculum. No one family has every ability to the degree that a specialized teaching staff can offer. I found that parents who were good at reading would emphasize and concentrate on that. Math and history would get some time, and science was included up until it became more advanced. Most of the children ended up lacking in at least one or two areas. Some of the students entered public school after a number of years of home instruction. Again, their experiences and success varied. Some had very little difficulty, others were socially and academically ill-prepared. The early years of a child's educational career can be difficult. Children from widely varying backgrounds are suddenly together in one room, and there are inevitable conflicts. The middle school years are notoriously stressful for almost everybody. But these social experiences are as important for children as academic instruction, because a child who does not have these issues resolved by the time he or she reaches high school has a MUCH harder time understanding and dealing with people who are not what he or she is used to. I have to say that the children of the fundamentalist Christian families had the most rebellious teenagers. I won't tell you their personal stories, but my opinion is that they did not learn when they were younger how to make good personal judgements, since their parents had controlled so much of their lives at home. The best thing you can do for your children, I believe, is to provide moral support and to teach them how to deal with bullies and manage their own behavior on their own when they are away from you. This can be hard, but it is an important part of growing up. Your children become stronger when they have to learn how to make responsible decisions and how to function in a world that is not as sheltering as we, their parents, might wish. I would not choose home schooling for my own children.