54 UNIQUE BENEFITS OF HOMESCHOOLING

[John81]

PARENTS, 54 UNIQUE BENEFITS OF HOMESCHOOLING



By Joel Turtel

April 22, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

Parents, is homeschooling the right choice for you and your children? Maybe you think you don?t have the time to homeschool because you work. Perhaps you don?t have confidence in your ability to teach your kids because you never took ?teaching? courses.

But consider the alternative. Public schools can destroy your children?s self-esteem, destroy their ability to read, strangle their love of learning, put them in physical and moral danger, and wreck their future.

In contrast, here?s 54 unique benefits homeschooling can give you and your kids, as written and explained by Laura B., a smart, wonderful wife, mother of three, homeschooler, and business owner who works from home and still focuses on her family!

Homeschooling (or low-cost internet private schools), can have the following extraordinary benefits for you and your children:

1. Be with Your Family
2. Set Your Own Schedule
3. Vacation When You Want
4. Choose curriculum that best suits the needs of your child
5. Be totally aware of the state and progress of your child's education
6. Keep your child away from un-necessary peer pressure
7. Keep your child away from the bad influence of other children
8. Love, nurture, and teach your child the character and morals you value most
9. Make learning fun
10. Make learning as "experiential" as you want
11. Don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to get your child dressed and fed and off to school where they're so tired they don't learn well anyway.
12. Break up the day however you want to fit your child's learning attention span
13. Teach your child without any "assumed limitations". Teach multiple languages, develop one skill or subject--the sky's the limit
14. What you teach an older child naturally filters down to the younger child(ren) making learning must easier and faster for siblings
15. Teach at the pace and developmental stage appropriate for your child
16. Avoid educational "labeling"
17. Keep you child as far away from drugs as possible
18. Never have to worry about bomb scares or mass shootings
19. Allow your child to do think, discuss, and explore in ways not possible in a classroom setting
20. Constant positive reinforcement and gentle correction. No abusive words or actions that scar your child's psyche
21. Don't use the school system as a babysitter. You only need a few hours for learning--the rest of the day is filled with unnecessary "busy work"
22. Develop life skills such as cooking, cleaning, and organizing that are easily learned with the additional time spent at home
23. Spend as much time outdoors as you want to enjoy nature and the world around us
24. Teach the value of responsibility by providing daily jobs
25. To make money management as natural as breathing by allowing even small children to do tasks, earn money, save it, and spend it in an appropriate manner.
26. Never have your child beat up by a bully. Teach self-defense skills that will enable him to deal with any situation but not until he is mature enough to handle the emotional aspects of confrontation
27. No pressure or set "expectations" from teachers on a younger sibling that follows an older sibling in the same school
28. Be around when your child needs to talk
29. Take a break when your child needs a break
30. Bond as a family through family group activities
31. Pass on your religious beliefs and morals to your children and stay away from the "indoctrination" of other school systems
32. Teach sex education when you and how you want
33. Develop your child's imagination and teach diverse problem solving skills instead of one institutionalized method of thinking
34. Unlimited possibilities for extra curricular activities that interest your child having to live up to the expectations or skills of others.
35. Develop the individualism of your child
36. Avoid traditional school "group activities" that may leave one student doing all the work or ruining it for everyone else.
37. Never have your child feel the failure, embarrassment, or teasing from "failing" a grade
38. To keep your children out of the care, custody, and control or people you don't know and who naturally teach their philosophy of life whether they realize it or not
39. No opportunity for your child to "sluff off", "snow-blow", or "just get by" with academics
40. To have your child learn initiative naturally as there's no peer pressure or fear of embarrassing himself
41. Allow your child to have input and say in subject matter and style
42. Allow your child to focus on growth and development--not following the latest fad or being in a certain group
43. So your child will only be surrounded by people who love him, encourage him, and want the best for him.
44. Make sure your child doesn't end up graduating without knowing how to read or knowing other basic skills due to educational failings of your local schools.
45. Keep your child out of private schools that have peer pressure, teacher criticism, drugs, sex, and alcohol that your child never needs to be around
46. Avoid grading scales and testing that gives no positive benefit to your child
47. Not to give the state or federal government control of your child that they assume is theirs
48. To easily pass on your unique heritage or language to your child
49. So your child is not limited by "age" or "grade" to advance or explore academics in which they are interested or gifted
50. To teach your children to enjoy life
51. To allow your children to go to work with Mom or Dad when you all want--not just on the one "go to work with a parent holiday"
52. As many field trips as you want, to places that interest your child
53. To just take a day off when everyone feels like it
54. Flexibility to switch or experiment with different curriculum



Parents, if you are disgusted with public schools and want your children to have the great education they deserve, why not consider homeschooling? Millions of parents now homeschool their kids, and many of these parents are only high-school graduates.



In the last three chapters of ?Public Schools, Public Menace,? you?ll find many ways to homeschool your kids or use internet private schools, even if you work. Homeschooling can be a lot easier, and take a lot less time than you think. It can also bring you great joy in teaching your children.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Turtel/joel54.htm

[Guest Guest]

[Adaram]

Our Children attend a Christian School, but we are seriously considering pulling our daughter out to home school. My son seems to be fine (he is in grade 9 now), but my daughter (grade 5) has constant struggles; daily. The homework is overload, the teachers, while kind, are particularly unreasonable in many ways. Especially, we feel, towards our daughter. She also has started to struggle a bit socially. Her best friend seems to have turned into a very nasty, mean; almost a bully this year. There are good days, but there are many bad days as well.

Why have we not pulled her out yet for sure? She is extremely social and even when she feels sick she wants to go to school to be with her friends.

We have been praying for a long time, and we just can't seem to make a decision.

[John81]

In life, friends come and friends go but we know that God is eternal.

Continue praying as seeking the Lord's guidance in all things should be our priority. The most important thing is to make sure our children are raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. If a child can attend a Christian school and learn of the Lord, see Christians living out their faith, and can learn to be a proper Christian by the lessons and examples they receive at the school, then that's a blessing. If they can't, then something else needs to be done.

We must always remember the most important thing in raising a child is that they learn of Christ, they learn the Word of God and they see and experience what living for the Lord is. This is far more important than learning the times tables or having lots of friends (especially if those friends are not what they should be).

I pray the Lord will make clear to you which doors He is opening and what doors He is closing.

[powelstag]

I think home schooling, mostly done by Christians. According to me one its benefits is controlled indoctrination. Brainwashing them such that they can't live their mind free from guilt and preconditions for the rest of their life. It's a form of child abuse.

[DennisD]

I think home schooling, mostly done by Christians. According to me one its benefits is controlled indoctrination. Brainwashing them such that they can't live their mind free from guilt and preconditions for the rest of their life. It's a form of child abuse.

I'm sorry, could be reading this wrong...are you saying homeschooling is a form of child abuse? Or sending them to school is a form of child abuse?

[blossom]

We started homeschooling this year (we start late January in the southern hemisphere) and we are loving it. Highly recommend that you do your research, pray, and then jump right in.


Blossom

[4everHis]

I think home schooling, mostly done by Christians. According to me one its benefits is controlled indoctrination. Brainwashing them such that they can't live their mind free from guilt and preconditions for the rest of their life. It's a form of child abuse.

Powelstag, I wonder if you are familiar with the group that sponsors Secular Homeschooling Magazine? I think if you examined it, you might be disabused of the notion that the home school movement is primarily religious. Many people from all walks of life, from all points of view are very weary of the quality of education provided by their school districts, publicly funded and politically administered. (Most school districts have boards populated with people who have run for the position).
As to your statement concerning "guilt and preconditions", I wonder if you have considered that every form of education has "guilt and preconditions" associated with it. By its very nature, education will always involve points of view. You might be surprised to know this, but most of the curricula utilized by any school or home school has a distinctive point of view determined by the editorial board of the publisher. It is the position of the teacher to help students develop critical thinking. Students are exposed to facts. (The earth is a sphere, laws of gravity, multiplication facts, historical events, rules of grammar.) They are also exposed to opinions. They are exposed to rules and morals. Every educator, secular or spiritual, must work to provide a framework to help students sift through the information. Therefore, by your statement, all education is a form of child abuse. Or is it your opinion that all education that involves a Bible is child abuse?
I do not speak from your childhood experience, as apparently you do. Many times a person will emphatically state something as truth based upon their own experience in wide, sweeping proclamations (like yours "Brainwashing", "guilt", "preconditions" "child abuse"), rather than having any facts upon which their opinion is predicated. I do, however, speak from a long career of childhood education. Both my graduate and undergraduate degrees are in the field of education. I have factual information, as well as anecdotal evidence that would refute your "claim". I am not one who home schools. I am one who works in the education sector. I support every parent who wishes to ensure their child receives a good education. FAPE is not necessarily reaching every child in the most effective manner. (FAPE is free, appropriate, public education). Any examination of achievement scores would support this statement. Many parents want their students to have an exposure to the arts that is unavailable in the current educational climate (budget cutbacks). Many parents want their students to
fulfill their potential by receiving personalized, individualized instruction that can not be provided in a classroom overcrowded with children. Many parents want their children to hear a full, factual representation of American history and foundations, which has been eliminated by political correctness, secularization and revisionists. Additionally, an undue amount of attention has been given to the teaching of the MCATs, FCATS, ICATS, or wherever you liveCATS, and that has resulted in an omission of history and geography. Many home school parents would prefer that their children not read sexually explicit stories or stories with cursing and vulgarity labeled "literature", particularly when many better choices abound. Many parents would prefer that their children be exposed to a higher level of material than can be provided by a classroom teacher who must augment everything presented in class to allow for ESE and ESL and other special needs students to have equal access.
I welcome every parent to examine their child's educational content. I welcome every parent to have a voice in what is being done in their local schools, both public and private. The current school system's prOBlems are not limited to the classroom content. Many social prOBlems exist as well. It would take a simple search on bing or Google to determine the plethora of issues in local schools that are prOBlematic. If one can shield their child from those experiences, I hardly would call that abusive, but rather protective.
Evidently, you have had a bad experience, either personally or vicariously. For that, I truly am sorry. However, the vast majority of home school parents are intelligent, caring, creative people who are seeking to have their children provided with a different kind of FAPE - Fun, Academically superior, Personalized Education. For many on this board, the academics will be expanded to include Bible. This makes sense when you consider every home whether by design or default exposes their children to their own personal world view. The people on this board choose to have a purposeful, designed approach to teaching their children the Bible and sharing their own Biblical world view. If you consider the Ten Commandments abusive and a cause for concern, I would welcome a dialogue with you. If you consider the concept of loving one's neighbor as oneself, the concept of caring for the world which God created, the concept of respect and OBedience for laws and authority, then I again would love to discuss it with you. Those are the values upon which the religious home school is built.
I apologize for having such a long post, but this is an issue about which I feel strongly. I support the right of every parent to select the best possible circumstances for their children's education. Who possibly could choose better than the parent. While I do work in a school setting, I do not find it to be the perfect place for every student. Home school is not the perfect setting for every student. Public school is not a good setting for many students. (The last sentence is my opinion.)