Homeschooling... Yay or Nay? - Poll - Please Vote

It's not something I would choose to do but I'm not opposed to it.

me personally couldnt home school the kids as i dont know enough to do so. Besides i think they need school not only to learn but for social reasons aswell.
I watched that wife swap usa the other day and 1 woman home schooled her kids and im not being funny but they were thick, her 8 yr old was iliterate because he hadnt been taught properly, no life for him when he gets older really. mind u she werent the brainiest.

so it would be a no from me. No offence to those who do, if u can then gr8 but not me.

Altho im not so sure about sending them to school too young. i think 5 is young enough ( altho dd was 4 when she started as one of the eldest in her class)

This is an interesting post as it reflects many peoples attitudes to HE. I thought it might be helpful to use it to dispel some myths.

You are not your child's teacher. You are a facilitator. You answer their questions to the best of your ability and then help them look for the information they need from books, the internet, museums, other adults etc. Teachers do not know everything either, they are just the same as the rest of us. Parents have the advantage of knowing their children better and giving them much more one to one or small group time.

Children are actually very capable of teaching themselves without any help from adults.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_s ... elves.html

Children teach themselves to read when they are ready and it doesn't matter whether they are 4 or 12.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fre ... elves-read

It makes no difference how well educated you are as a parent or what your income level is. Research shows that home educated children from low income families and home educated children with poorly educated parents actually outperform school children from middle class families and well educated parents.

School does not teach children to socialise. It actually encourages anti-social behaviour and bullying. Spending 7 or 8 hours a day with 30 other people who you have very little or nothing in common with other than age is not natural socialisation. Small groups of mixed age children and adults is how children learn to socialise within the community. HE is ideal for this. Research shows that HE children are actually more sociable than their school educated peers.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... t-problem/

Think about how your children learnt to do things before they went to school. How would go about learning something new as an adult? Did you stop learning when you left school?

Ooops, I forgot to say that children have different learning styles, different interests and learn at a different pace. A one size fits all approach and curriculum cannot account for this.

And finally this excellent and very amusing video explains how schools kill creativity in children. This is the main reason that I HE my dancers.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_r ... ivity.html

We were backed into a corner by the LEA when we moved area and had no choice but to Home Educate Daniel (Harmony managed to gain a place in the local school but Dan's year group was full). Whilst i'm confident in my abilities to make it work, i couldn't see me doing it on a fulltime basis.

What it did do though was break his cycle of disruptive behaviour which had gotten out of hand in his last school and also restore the faith he has in himself.

Now had we stayed in our old area i would have removed him from the school he was in and i would have HE him because they didn't understand his needs. Luckily his new school is great and have listened to everything i've said about him and also reacted in an appropriate manner.

Ooops, I forgot to say that children have different learning styles, different interests and learn at a different pace. A one size fits all approach and curriculum cannot account for this.

And finally this excellent and very amusing video explains how schools kill creativity in children. This is the main reason that I HE my dancers.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_r ... ivity.html

I'm going to be picking your brains in future about HE I'm sure Fortnately my DH is very open to the idea, he asks the right questions to query whether we will actually be able to cope with teaching things when we might not understand them. I say to him exactly as you've said, we are here to help our children to find the answers from whatever means we can. I'm really looking forward to it actually

can't say at the moment need to read the links and will be back

In theory i'd love to do it up to primary school level but i will be working.dh is dyslexic and not confident in maths,science or english/language so i'd have a hard time persuading him to do it.
I'm also not sure about once they get to secondary school age like beth said i'd be worried about qualifications,facilities and the breadth of subjects.
Having effectively done a teach yourself medicine course at uni which was all self directed with no lectures and not much facilitation i'm not a big fan of self directed learning now tho but can see how it would work at a lower level.incidentally the uni i studied at are now introducing more formal teaching again.

[MrC]

I've added a poll. Please vote if you haven't already.

What do you do then say when LO is older, standard / higher grade type level and they are interested in Maths, Physics or Chemistry for example (probably unlikely with my childred for them to specialise that much beyond generalist there, but still)? There is only so much I can teach or I can grasp on those types of subjects. I completely agree it's all about learning to learn and learning to love that. It's a shame it took me until I was in my 20s to really discover that for myself. I would quite seriously consider it and I can work around LOs, I do already. It's more when you start getting into higher level and specialised subjects, then how they sit standard grade and higher exams them. The thing is even at this stage I can tell pretty well that Ella has a creative streak and it'll be interesting to see how her practical side develops to back that up. The whole idea of ratios to children taught at home really appeals to me and also that lack or regiment and freedom with routine. I doubt very much my husband would be willing though. Ella was helping me dye fabric this morning and learning which colours mix up to make what. I can see how it can fit in with daily routine, shopping, trips out, etc too.