Home Schooling

The other day, I made a mistake. The first thing you do when you make a mistake is to admit to it and correct it with dispatch. I stated that the person who first coined the word 'Stress' was named Hans Sdye. This is wrong. The gentleman's name was Selye, a Slovakian born in Komarno in 1907. The article that contains this mistake will be corrected also.

Since we're back on stress, I thought it might be interesting to discuss the stress that I and others experienced when we went to school, all of 60 years ago, and compare it with the stress that children today might suffer.

Now hands up all those who've read 'Tom Brown's Schooldays.' My schooldays were similar, but while I suffered a fair amount of bullying at my preparatory school, this was not the case at public school.

Understand that in England, public schools are large private schools, such as Eton, Harrow, Westminster, etc. What we call public schools over here, are State schools in England.

I won't enter into the forms of discipline we had to endure in those days. Suffice to say that things are very different now.

I began my school career at kindergarten, where I remained until I was about eight years old. From there I went to preparatory school and thence to public school at the age of thirteen. From that point of view, things are much the same today. The question is whether children are made to suffer excessive stress due to this business of changing schools.

The particular discussion about which I was reading was the stress of changing from, say, middle school to high school, and perhaps it would be better to let children start at one school and then go all the way through to K12. I understand the argument behind this and of course up to a point it makes sense, but what it boils down to is an attempt to negate stress entirely, or at least as much of it as is possible.

Surely, this is a bad thing. I can remember feeling very nervous when I had to start at a new school. However, I found I could fit in quite well, especially at my public school, and what should be remembered is that schools are microcosms of society and give children the chance to learn to mix with their peers, thereby giving them a form of apprenticeship for their eventual and inevitable emergence into the adult world.

To attempt to shield children from stress entirely is to do them a disservice, since sooner or later they're going to have to find jobs, which could well entail moving away from home. If they haven't had any real experience of meeting and mixing with different children, then it seems to me that they're at an immediate disadvantage.

This is where I have my doubts on home-schooling. Just how much interaction with other children do these kids who home school have? I don't doubt the academic benefits for one moment. From what I've heard, children from this type of environment do exceptionally well. But academic achievement isn't all there is in life.

If, for whatever reason, children haven't had a great deal to do from the point of view of interaction with others, then their eventual experience of the big wide world could be devastating. Maybe they go to college, having been home-schooled for all those years, and they find themselves in an environment so totally different from that to which they're used, that the ever-open door of depression welcomes their poor beleaguered minds.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope I am. But it's a matter worth considering