Should You Home School?

Pros and Cons of Home Schooling and Institutional Schooling

(Part 2)

Home Schooling - Cons

Summary

See below for a detailed description of each item:

Time.
Money.
Effort.
Doubt.

Details

Time. It takes a lot of time to teach your children. It also takes some time to learn how to home school, and you also have to spend some time reviewing the material to prepare yourself, and collecting materials, organizing field trips, etc.

Money. Because it takes a lot of time to teach your children, most home schooling families only have one parent earning money full-time, while the other parent does the teaching.

For most home schooling families this is a sacrifice. Although I have been told many times by many people, that it´s possible and that people just need to set their priorities, and I know many families who are happily home schooling, but for most families it still means sacrifice, and trading some nice things for the benefits of home schooling.

While some home schooling parents work part-time, often in home based businesses, it's important to recognize that you will probably have to get along mainly on one income, if you home school, which will mean some financial sacrifice.

Also, while making less money as a family, you will have to buy some materials for home schooling. There are many ways to save money, that are quite effective for teaching (like using lots of library books, using free resources on the Internet, etc. - see our "HS Money Saving Tips" page for more on this), but you will still have to spend some money directly on home schooling, and unless you were already planning to have one of you be a stay-at-home parent, it will mean doing with less money.

Effort. Home schooling is lots of work. The work is usually enjoyable, and the result is very rewarding, but it is still lots of work to prepare, teach, organize, etc. and this takes more than just putting time in, it takes effort. It also takes more effort when you have doubts (see Doubt below).

It is also some work to find out about the different methods you can use, the different curriculums that are available, the field trips, learning how to teach, meeting other home schooling families, etc.

It is also work for most parents to learn "how" to home school, because most of us have only experienced institutional schooling. This includes learning to use many more hands-on materials and activities (that are not practical in a large classroom with many children and only one adult), checking the regulations in your area, finding out about home school groups, places to visit for your field trips, etc.

It is also more work initially, if you start home schooling after your children have been in a school. It's more work to develop a closer relationship with your children (you're going to see them a lot), and to get them into this different method of education. This work has great rewards, but it still requires lots of effort.

Doubt. A lot of parents are not sure if they can teach their children. We have all been trained that we "must" have "trained teachers" teach our children.

It helps to remember that teaching is communicating knowledge and skills from someone who knows them to someone who doesn´t, and that a lot of skills learned by paid teachers are for class management of groups, which we generally don´t need as home schoolers (we need parenting skills, to manage our children when we are home schooling, but we need those anyway). Remember also that there are a lot of regular people home schooling, and they have all found ways to deal with their own lack of knowledge in certain subjects (they either learn the subjects they are weak in, or have someone else teach their children that subject).

Most home schooling parents also have the occasional day that is very frustrating (it really helps to know other home schoolers at this time, for encouragement), but these days can give us serious doubts about our ability to home school. It can take a lot more effort and determination to keep going when things are not going well, especially when you have doubts.

Knowing how things can be done, can get rid of a lot of doubt. Don't re-invent the wheel, ask other home schoolers how they've handled things. Whether it's physical education, socialization, music, etc., a lot of our doubts come from just not knowing how other people are already doing these things. Remember that all the problems of educating at home have been solved already, by home schooling families who have produced fine highly educated children, many who have gone on to university, and who are working successfully in all areas of life.

If you have a lot of doubts (and many of us did when we were first starting), you should meet other home schooling parents, both face-to-face and in e-mail discussion groups. For information on how to meet other home schoolers, see our "Find Support" article.

Having to Defend Your Choice. You may have to deal with nosy neighbors and relatives, who know nothing about home schooling and who think you are hurting your children by home schooling them. Some people may try to put quite a bit of pressure on you to put your children back in school. (If you need help with defending your home schooling, see our "Home School Defense" page).

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