Should You Home School?

Pros and Cons of Home Schooling and Institutional Schooling

(Part 4)

Institutional Schooling - Cons

Summary

See below for a detailed description of each item:

De-socializing.
Recess.
Bullies.
Bad habits.
Stressful.
Lower efficiency academically.
Lower quality academics (mediocrity).
More boredom.
Extreme conformity.
Too much competition.
Fund raising.
Extra fees.
Time to drive them to school or the bus stop.
Parents get very little say in their children's education.
Lots of peer influence.
Lots of separation.

Additional Note About Teachers (Not a Con)

Details

De-socializing. Poor social skills are learned in schools.

Most of the time the children are supposed to sit still in their desks, work, and not talk, so they actually spend most of their time not socializing.

At recess, social skills are not taught. They are sent out to play with other children who are about the same age as they are, and who don't know more than they do about relating. Most children only play with children in their own grade, so there is very little opportunity for older students, who might have more social skills, to interact with younger students, or teach those with less experience.

Added on to this is the emotional boredom that many students feel much of the time in the classroom, and the low amount of physical activity in a classroom that builds up lots of physical energy. These cause quite a bit of emotional abuse (especially at recess), and on occasion the emotional abuse leads to physical violence. This environment generally leads to people who don't know how to get along very well, and who don´t respect others. By the time they are teenagers, the problem is quite severe.

Social skills are not "taught" in school. Usually there are no courses that teach social skills. They are just supposed to figure it out on their own.

Recess. Recess can be extremely boring. Of course with a few bullies around, it isn't exactly "boring," although boring might be an improvement. See also "De-socializing" above, and "Bullies" below.

Bullies. Some people consider this to be a major negative of institutional schools. It can be. And some people believe that learning to deal with bullies is a good educational experience. And it definitely would be if children learned how to deal effectively with bullies and injustices, but usually in schools what they learn is fear, coping, and that there is nothing you can do about bullying. They learn to be victims.

And the bullies are not winning either. When they get away with it, they are learning skills that could cause them to have very serious problems later in life.

Bad habits. Many children learn not to wash their hands, swearing, rudeness, disrespect for people of other ages (especially adults), etc.

Stressful. In school children are forced to deal with challenges (lessons, relationship problems, bullies, injustices, failures, etc.) whether they are ready or not. When they are not ready, it creates excessive fear, stress, and lower self-confidence. And usually each child must cope on their own. There is no one to "teach" them how to deal with these stresses.

With home schooling you can give your children the challenges they are ready for. You shouldn't baby them, but you can carefully control the situations, so they are not thrown into situations long before they are ready. And you are there to "teach" them how to deal with difficult situations.

Lower efficiency academically. In a large classroom, it takes more hours for a student to learn something, simply because the teacher has to help many students. One-on-one teaching requires fewer hours to teach the same thing, as in a classroom. This allows home schooled children time to learn more.

Lower quality academics (mediocrity). Students don't learn things as well in a classroom environment as they do with one-on-one teaching.

Because there are so many students in a classroom, the students have to work more on their own, and can't always get help from the teacher when they need it. Lots of times, the student just goes on, having missed something. They may learn it in later grades, or they may just miss it completely.

In one-on-one teaching, you have a lot better chance of them understanding a concept before moving on, so the student tends to learn and understand things better. One-on-one teaching, which is rare in schools, but it is the norm in home schooling, works a lot better.

And the standard of 50% being a pass, does not encourage the students to learn things completely. In most jobs, doing things correctly only 90% of the time, will get you fired, fairly quickly (do you want a cashier to give you the correct change most of the time or all the time).

Our schools only expect the students to get 70 or 80 per cent of what is taught, and then they don't go back and teach what was missed. They don't make sure each student has each concept, before moving on.

Even the emphasis on marks tends to encourage the top performers to focus on regurgitating instead of thinking, and on doing easier projects instead of more challenging ones that would teach them more. When home schooling, you know your children well enough to compensate for this.

More boredom. When you have only one teacher teaching a large group of children, some are going to be done their work first and be bored, some are going to find the work boring, and some are going to be waiting for help while the teacher is busy with other children.

Extreme conformity. Conformity is very strong among children from institutional schools. If you went through institutional school, as I did, this is so obvious, it's almost impossible to see or appreciate, until you get to know a number of home schooled children for a few years (not just your own children).

Most home schooled children don't do things because other children are doing them. They do them because they have a reason. And they are much less concerned if other people do things differently than they do. And this effect is very strong, and very healthy.

I think the extreme conformity in school children is because school children have to do everything as a group. Line up in the morning, sit down, stand up, do math now, do reading now, change topics now, have lunch, do recess, stop recess, go home, do the same homework.

This extreme conformity leads to very powerful peer pressure, and children doing stupid things because others did, and being afraid to be different, to be themselves.

Too much competition. In schools, collaboration is another name for cheating. In schools, it's every man for himself. You do your own school work, your own home work, and your own tests. Helping each other is usually not allowed. Once in a while you might do a group project, but usually the result is complaining by one or two people that they did all the work, and the others didn't help.

If your child is involved in team sports, they may learn about team work there, but you don't need school to be involved in team sports, in most places.

There are obviously some advantages to competition, but doing it all the time, the way it is done in most schools, trains them how not to work on teams. It builds people who are too quick to protect their own personal interests, and makes them less effective on a team.

Fund raising. Don't you just love fund raising for your school.

Extra fees. This may or may not apply to you.

Time to drive them to school or the bus stop. This may or may not apply to you, but for some families this is quite significant.

Parents get very little say in their children's education. You get virtually no say over what your children learn, how they learn it, who they learn it with, with what methods, etc. Often you don't even know much about what they are learning.

Lots of peer influence. And less parent influence. Children are influenced by the people they are around. If you spend time with them, it will be you who influence them.

Lots of separation. You won't know your children as well. They will pretty much have their own lives in a few years. (Of course for some parents, this may not be a con, in which case they should put this on their pro list.)

Additional Note About Teachers (Not a Con)

I personally do NOT think you should take your children out of institutional school because of the teachers. I know there are "some" bad teachers, but most teachers today are doing a heroic job. They are forced to deal with 20 to 30 children in a class, with inadequate disciplinary methods, and with children who come from a very wide variety of situations with different values, rules, and skills.

I think you should home school because the structure that our teachers and children are forced into in the institutional schools, is very inefficient academically, because it leaves many children believing they can´t do things, because 25% of our children in these schools are still functionally illiterate, and because this system de-humanizes and de-socializes our children, in such a way, that they are not well prepared to live in our society, and this significantly reduces their future happiness, and the quality of our society as a whole.

Home schooling is one-on-one apprenticeship training. This type of training has been around for thousands of years, because it works.

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