Children

Home Schooling – Heaven Or Havoc

Home schooling can be viewed in one of two ways, sometimes both at the same time, heaven or havoc! While we are firm believers in home schooling, we understand of course, how these two conflicting feelings can come about during a stressful situation.

The key here, is to prepare in such a way, so as to avoid the, havoc part of this equation. You will only experience havoc, when you are not prepared for the upheavals that can take place in the life of the home school setting.

Though there is no perfect world here on earth, we can make it as near perfect as possible, then deal with whatever comes up after that. Learning how to avoid havoc, by preparing ahead, will prove to be a valuable addition to any organizational planning or skills.

Research is one good way to avoid some of the pitfalls of home schooling. Seeking the advice of others who have already experienced the home school processes, can be a good source of information. Reading materials related to home schooling can provide you with additional information and ideas you may institute in your plans for your own home school processes.

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Benefits Of Home-Schooling

More and more parents are exploring the benefits of home-schooling their children. The largest factor that contributes to my favorable consideration is home-schooling allows parents to take control over the moral and religious learning of the child. Parents have the flexibility to incorporate their beliefs and ideologies into the child’s curriculum. And there is no confusion in the child’s mind because there is no variation between what is being taught and what is being practiced. As a example, our older son had a project to research and work with our monthly budget. We worked through it with him and when his teacher reviewed it, she couldn’t believe that it was real. She thought our income and expenses were elevated and unrealistic! It came right off my spreadsheet that I use every month for budgeting. He didn’t know what to say.

The schooling of the child at home becomes an extended family activity. Parents get involved in every step of the learning procedure. Field trips and experiments become family activities. Thus, the child receives more quality time with his parents. The entire family shares games, chores and projects. Family closeness becomes the focus here. The child is also free of
any negative peer pressure while making choices and decisions.

Individual attention is another prominent benefit of home-schooling. For instance, if your child needs more time to learn math, then he can reduce the time for his English lessons. There are no fixed hours of learning per subject. This means that a child has the advantage of focusing additional time on the subject that seems tough, without any additional pressure. If your child is mastering his given curriculum, he can excel into higher levels or else learn a valuable lesson of entrepreneurship, “I get succeed (am paid) based on my results, not for the time that I put it.”

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Will No Child Left Behind Still Rule the Education System

One thing is for sure: educators are very much hoping that President-Elect Obama’s administration will overhaul the No Child Left Behind act. This is largely because the legislation that was so popular when it was first proposed has proved to be a large…we’ll go with “mess” since this is a family site.

When it comes to education, the No Child Left Behind act had noble goals: make sure that students were really learning and that school districts were not getting paid to merely baby-sit kids but to actually teach them. The problem stems from how learning is judged under the act. Under No Child Left Behind, a child’s education is judged solely upon his or her performance on a standardized test.

The standardized test has been used for decades to determine how well students were learning basic skill sets in individual states. Because schools are publicly funded, tax payers wanted to make sure that their teachers (who have the hardest job in the world) were earning their (tiny) salaries. Before the No Child Left Behind act, however, teachers weren’t forced to teach “to the test” and were able to cover a wider variety of materials that taught students how to think. Now, after the passing of this act, students are taught how to test well.

Another criticism of the No Child Left Behind act is that it provides incentives for teachers and school districts to lower education standards to both keep their federal funding and to keep from having to push the students who do not perform well from the district altogether.

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