Homeschooling used to be a topic that didn’t come up at the office, in church or other social situations. However, as times have changed, so has the topic of homeschooling. You may be thinking that homeschooling still is a rare thought that comes into your mind, but you wouldn’t be alone if you now actually know a few people that homeschool their children. This alternative way to teach your children has become more and more mainstream in the past few years. Why?

People can debate for hours and hours about why more and more individuals are starting to homeschool their children. Here are just a few of those arguments:

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Summer schooling for us usually consists of a lighter than normal workload, but we do have a routine. Typically we will continue with reading, writing and language skills. This summer we decided to have a complete and total respite, so we will soon be back to school like the mainstream families.

Traditionally we follow a classical curriculum approach but more in the style of Charlotte Mason, although I do like Susan Wise Bauer, and her books very much, I find her schedule much too ambitious for our routine. I admire Susan’s intellect, organized approach and ambition, but I do find the schedule and very demanding for both the children and myself. I do find she sets the bar extremely high. Charlotte Mason’s style is looser, the edges a little softer, with the scope of the depth more dependent on the family and their expectations.

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There are almost as many approaches to homeschooling as there are parents undertaking homeschooling but over the years several general approaches have appeared. Here we look at just three of these.

The first approach is known as School-At-Home. This is perhaps the most commonly seen form of homeschooling and is the approach that most parents will try first.

Because the majority of parents have no experience of schooling children at home they turn to the ‘experts’ to design a curriculum for them and to supply them with the necessary teaching materials. The affect of this tends to be to simply transfer teaching from the pubic school classroom into the home.

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Homeschooling is not an easy option at the best of times but if you are a single parent then you may well be tempted to simply dismiss the idea as being impossible. Before you do so however you should know that there are literally thousands of single parents of both sexes homeschooling their children today and doing so very successfully.

For most single parents the biggest problem is simply one of finance because their primary goal has to be to get out and earn a living to support both themselves and their children. Surprisingly enough however the real problem is often not money but time.

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Parents will opt for home schooling for several reasons from a wish to instil particular values to the desire to remove a student from an unsafe public school setting to the aspiration to offer a better quality education. But the most general, basic reason for many is the well established belief that home schooling is ultimately healthier for their child.

‘Better’ can imply an assortment of things, but it includes as many deficiencies as it does positives. The omission of bullying or peer pressure are two major features of public school that many home schooling parents aim to remove from their child’s life. But the positive side is as equally important. It has been well studied that an improved education can be achieved by home schooling over public or even the modern private schools.

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We need to change our Educational System, it is not good enough and just like other major problems like our political system and health care system, it’s broken. We all know the educational system is not working and most public schools are nothing more than glorified baby-sitting, rote memorization centers of indoctrination. What value is this to our society or civilization really?

Interestingly enough everyone freely admits the educational system is broken and that it needs to be fixed and yet trying to get anything done with the current barriers of the status quo is a little unnerving and who has the time to deal with it all?

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One of the very first questions that most parents ask about home schooling is whether it actually works. They are only too well aware of the fact that the public schools have problems, but really wonder whether they can do any better. One natural response for some parents is to try a little harder to see if they can afford private schooling but, even if this were possible, are the private schools faring any better than the public schools?

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If you were to research the benefit of homeschooling, you would come across some very impressive statistics and study results. These study results have not been missed by our nation’s colleges, as today there are hundreds of colleges including Yale, Harvard, and Princeton that place considerable value, both educational and social, on an applicant who has been home schooled.

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Despite a commonly held belief that taking your children out of school and teaching them at home is likely to run you into trouble with the law, homeschooling is in fact completely legal. There are however laws governing homeschooling and you need to familiarize yourself with these before you start.

The Constitution does not cover education and, while the Department of Education plays a large role in defining the rules governing the provision of education services, the laws covering schooling are established by each individual state and vary considerably from one state to the next.

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Well, a lot of people predicted it and now it’s happened. My daughter’s unschooling has led her to a dead-end job at low pay. Yup, she’s a hired hand on a farm. She didn’t tell me that she was taking the job. I found out about it when I came across a list of her chores that she’d written out. In addition to feeding the pigs, chickens, horses and cows, she has to haul water, milk the cows and even chop wood! And for all this, she only gets room and board!

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