When Not to Try Home Schoolingfrom The Home School Manual © 1997 Gazelle Publications Buy the Book Today!
In the
preceding chapter [Chapter 3, is not on the web site] we examined the teaching-learning
process and concluded that parents can generally succeed as teachers for
their own children. Applying the principles of good education at home does
not require the same level of professional training and competence as does
teaching in a classroom. It's easier to monitor the needs of a single individual
than it is to intelligently teach a whole classroom of students guided
by feedback from a few vocal ones. For the individual, learning difficulties
can be cleared quickly, keeping anxiety to a minimum.
Teaching is full time work
The amount of time needed will vary from much to very much, depending to
a degree on your skill, the needs of your child, and the assistance you
get from a guidance center or correspondence course. Even if you are a
trained teacher and purchase a well prepared materials package, holding
a regular outside job would make responsible home schooling almost impossible.
It might work, however, if another person could carry a big part of the
instructional contact.
First graders take the greatest amount of time because they learn mostly from you and from your direct guidance. You obviously can't send them off to read and follow printed instructions. Also they have short attention spans and need very brief learning tasks. As children mature they become more able to concentrate on serious learning goals and require less of your direct attention. You can expect no sense of self-directed learning from children starting school unless you have delayed beginning their formal study until well past the typical school entrance age of six. High school students, even on a correspondence program, still require your time. But your major responsibilities then are encouragement, occasional help, and often gentle pushing. Difficult learning tasks may appear to the young learner as insurmountable obstacles. The help you give is valuable not because you are more skilled at the subject involved but because you lend courage and stability to the struggler. The actual illustration of the mom and girl in print on the CD is much nicer. Teaching requires good disciplineParents who are seriously concerned about their children's training generally have good home discipline. If your home doesn't, they will probably be better off in a classroom school where a more significant part of their direction and development can come from people outside the home.In most homes children are occasionally ill-tempered and exhibit unpleasant behavior. Normal parents slip once in a while, too, and act unwisely. But when a tense parent-child relationship is the rule rather than the exception, home school is not a good idea. Children in these cases need the influence of other adults. People can't learn well in an atmosphere of high anxiety. I'm not suggesting that sending your children off to school will solve a serious home discipline problem. There are things you can and should do, especially if your children are still quite young. But until the situation is under control, a home school is probably not your best option. Teaching requires commitment and organizationMost parents find that setting up school and teaching at home is a very interesting idea. But unlike a hobby that can be put aside when it ceases to be fun, your school program requires steady rain-or-shine commitment. If you aren't in the habit of following through on long projects, or if you anticipate frequent periods of time during the school year when "more urgent" tasks are apt to "unexpectedly" take you away from your teaching, you had better send your child away to a conventional school to begin with.Of course you can build your school schedule around necessary trips and special projects. Vacations are important too. You will be successful in getting through your school program as long as you have a plan that is not apt to be interrupted whenever you hear of a good sale, or when someone asks you to help arrange a wedding, or when you have a hard time finding help to pick your peach orchard, or when the house needs painting or when hundreds of other very worthy tasks demand your attention. I'm not saying never, never stop to pick peaches, but weigh the value to your children. Then if it seems worthy and it doesn't interfere with meeting your objectives, change your plan to allow for it. Organization is related to commitment. Do you tend to plan your time and follow through on your plan? Do you see the tasks you want to do as having various degrees of importance? And do you sometimes put aside low priority activities for what you consider more important? Do you plan your shopping to avoid frequent trips? Are you master of the TV and the telephone, or do they dictate what else you accomplish and when? Organization can be improved with effort. But if you seldom accomplish a great deal in a day, your school program could suffer. You could plod along for twelve months and still not complete what should have taken nine. If you have a serious organization problem, don't try home school until you have made some giant steps toward improvement. See the endnote for feedback to all this advice.* Teaching requires knowledgeAs already explained, you should know something about how to guide learning and control the learning environment. Hopefully this book can help. You also need to have some basic knowledge in the areas you are teaching, although not much more than you plan to teach. To some extent you can learn along with your child, but don't try home school without certain minimum understandings and abilities. First of all, you need basic reading skills. Speed reading ability isn't necessary, but being a very poor reader would be a handicap in all your teaching.In math, you should be able to handle with ease (and without a calculator) the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For middle grades and beyond you should have a simple understanding of fractions. Refinements of these math skills and additional concepts such as percents and metric units can be sharpened up as you go. Finally, you should be able to use standard English. Your child's ability to communicate as an adult depends on the quality of language heard all day every day as well as on the skill with which his or her written and spoken language is corrected. I would not argue that different dialects are bad, and I am not referring to accent, but if an individual can't use standard English when it is expedient to do so, his or her future opportunities are certain to be limited. Of course, knowing more than these minimum elements is better, as long as you are patient and don't lose your feel for the young learner just beginning to grapple with what you think should be obvious. Running away might teach the wrong lessonAlthough most parents who withdraw their children from a regular school to teach them at home are giving them a greater future, a few are encouraging negative character traits instead.Consider your motivation. What led to your idea that home school is better? If your mother-hen instinct got all fluffed up because your little chick wasn't assigned to the advanced reading group; or because, without asking your opinion, your early adolescent boy was counseled about being too familiar with a certain girl; or because your young cherub lost points because the teacher thought she was cheating when you know she would never do such a thing, beware! You may be teaching your child that anything that crosses the ego should be squashed or escaped. You could be gaining better reading opportunities at the expense of a calm, unselfish character. Rules needed for keeping the classroom in order seem quite restrictive to the child used to getting his way at home. Rebellion then surfaces naturally. Efforts to help him overcome the problem are sometimes thwarted by his parents' defense of the behavior. They have always given him free reign hardly realizing the strength of his self-will, and they take any suggestion of his wrongdoing as a personal affront. After all, he does it at home, and its being "wrong" at school challenges their judgment. If the child is taken out of school at this point to be taught at home, you can see what happens to character development. The parents' mistaken attitude is sometimes camouflaged when the teacher hasn't handled the situation prudently. He or she may have misjudged, or maybe the rule wasn't really that important. Also, the child's own bias in explaining what happened might have distorted the facts. Even if the teacher is wrong, the child is seldom entirely innocent. A "win" for the parents may settle things well between them and the teacher, but the child loses! While we are on the topic, we should also point out that parents' opposite overreaction to school discipline by denouncing and harshly punishing the child at home can equally sow seeds of bitterness and rebellion. I'm not saying that conflicts in opinion should always be ignored, or that an unpleasant situation should never prompt a change in the school environment. Just try to find a solution in a spirit of respect and cooperation. Your own attitude teaches more valuable lessons than can ever come from math or science or reading. Some children have special learning needsIf your child seems to be having more than the expected difficulty in learning, you must be alert to the idea that special help may be needed. You want to avoid both ignoring a possible disability, and imagining grave defects whenever a little problem surfaces. Neglect may result in tardy identification of a special need which might have been helped by early intervention. At the same time, I can understand reluctance to ask for state assistance which could take over some of your own decision making. Dr. & Mrs. Lanier discuss this in their chapter, "Home Schooling the Special Needs Child."As mentioned elsewhere in this book, scholastic achievement depends much more on simple attitudes and preparation than it does on inherited intelligence. If you suspect a learning problem consider first the possibility of a defect in the child's environment. Read the chapters "Helping Your Child Learn" and "Inspiring Motivation." Then read about learning disabilities (or about physical handicaps, if they are the issue). Appendix C has a section on organizations, and Appendix J lists books. If you might need it, seek professional counsel. In considering a home school remember that because challenged individuals are different, they tend to be sidetracked by society and miss much of the normal interaction with other people needed for social development. On the other hand, although home school means associating with fewer people, it may be a necessity for your situation. Or it may be highly desirable for part of your child's learning program. In principle, however, life is already abnormal for your handicapped child. You will want to do all you can to help him or her feel like an important part of the big world. That may mean the regular classroom for a portion of formal education. Plan to encourage a positive self-image in your child. This will no doubt be a greater asset than success in school subjects. As you may already know, state education funds often pay an extension teacher from the local school system to visit homes of children who cannot easily fit into the school system. Also special regulations may govern how handicapped children are taught. Home schooling needs a balanced approachParents who are interested in school at home are not usually run-of-the-mill people. They have distinctive opinions, and when decisions are to be made, they don't often look around first to be sure all their friends approve of what they are about to do.Acting on principle instead of on popularity is commendable. Occasion- ally, however, independent thinkers specialize in a single idea. They write, talk, plan, and dream about it. The risk I see for them is not in teaching the idea to their children. Parents have a responsibility to pass on what they consider valuable information and right principles. The danger is that learning that is essential to success in life might be neglected. The children's future is at stake. A course of study could differ from what is normally taught in the public schools and still prepare the student for a successful life, but in my opinion, it could not be satisfactory while ignoring the essentials of the major subjects most schools try to teach. See Appendix G, "A Typical Curriculum." If you are not ready to provide your child the essential array of skills and knowledge in sufficient depth to function efficiently and effectively as an adult, you should let a more traditional school do the job. You can teach your special idea at home after school hours. ButIf you are naturally timid, don't be too quick to conclude from this chapter that you can't teach. I've described important qualities for the home teacher, but I believe that most people who want to teach their own children and who are concerned enough to read this book have what it takes. Look back over the qualifications. If you are really bad in one or more areas, Okay, throw in the towel. But if you see some weaknesses that aren't clearly problems, go have a heart-to-heart chat with someone who knows you and is sympathetic to the home school idea (if there exists such a person). Maybe you are underselling yourself. All of us have stronger and weaker areas.If your final decision is to give it a try, then pick up your courage and go for it!
Endnote"My only suggestion would be not to try and discourage home schoolers quite so much. It's a tough decision, and if we're going to have to take into account our housekeeping skills - well there wouldn't be many of us left." One lady on the bulletin board had quoted the whole section on organization from this chapter. She got some interesting responses (that tended to induce a little humility for me). Here's part of one from someone living in Chewsville, MD: "QUICK, lose that book!!! Or your Messies card may be forfeited! We started home educating years ago and it sounds like nonsense to me! And it is written by a MAN! Sorry guys. But I have not met a man yet who was home educating although some do support duty. We are 'muddle' of the roaders in structure favoring unit studies and . . . a Unit is where you find it - maybe the furnace today, the space shuttle in the back yard tomorrow. ... With 9s and unders most of the curriculum can be learning to love reading and math and science together with a dose of our world thrown in for geography and social studies. For the 9s and up we recommend doing some goal setting with gradually more and more of the responsibility being the student's."
My advice would be a little different, but these ideas (except for losing the book) are worth thinking about. Maybe my critics didn't read to the end of the chapter. Anyway, I'm really glad now to have a good chapter on how to be organized and another one on self-discipline. And please note, gals: they're both by women!
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