Home Schooling

When a friend of mine announced her decision to take her two nine year old boys out of the local public school and teach them at home many people said that she had to be out of her mind.

When you think about it this would seem like a perfectly reasonable reaction not simply because the public school system has evolved over many years and developed an expertise in teaching children, but also because my friend was simply a housewife and had no training or qualifications for teaching.

But did you know that there are currently more than one million children in the United States undergoing home schooling in just the situation in which my friend found herself.

Now the reasons for opting for home schooling are many and varied but, at the end of day, most parents choose to home school their children because they believe that it is better for their children, not simply in terms of academic achievement but also in terms of removing children from many of the bad aspects of a public school educations such as bullying, getting in with the 'wrong crowd' and a host of other problems.

In simple academic terms there is little doubt that home schooling produces better results than both the public school and private school systems in the vast majority of cases. For example, the winner of the 1997 National Spelling Bee was home schooled and four sisters, all of whom had been home schooled, gained master's degrees from an Ivy League university. Another young girl gained her master's degree at the age of just 16 and was teaching at a Texas community college by the time she reached 18.

Now you might well think that these were simply bright kids and this had nothing to do with home schooling, however, even the US Department of Education would have to disagree with this as their own studies show that by the time home schooled children reach the equivalent of the 8th grade they are as much as 4 years ahead of their public school counterparts.

Home schooling is certainly not an easy option but, as any home schooling parent knows, it works. For the parent home schooling is certainly hard work but, although the teaching profession might not like to hear it, you do not need any special training or qualifications to teach your own children. Indeed, as long as you can read and write then you'll find that, with a little help from your local home schooling support group, not only will you be able to teach your own children but you will find that it is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a parent.

It is also one of the most valuable things you can do to really draw your family together into a tight-knit, loving and supportive unit.

The benefits of home schooling are today well known. Among the foremost of them is being able to allow your children to learn not just at their own pace, but also focus on the subjects that will help them met their life goals. The classical home school is one such option. The classical home school is a secular method of instruction and should not be confused with the Classical Christian home school which a religious based system of teaching.

What we call the "classical" education began in Europe in the Middle Ages and produced some to the greatest minds in history. Classical education is dedicated to the idea that the aim of education is to provide children the tools they need to learn for themselves. This system is divided up into five tools of learning, called the Trivium, which are reason, record, research, relate and rhetoric. These tools are used in four specific stages in the education of a child. Children begin at the preparatory stage where they learn reading, writing and basic maths. The next stage is the grammar stage where composition and the basics of conveying ideas, along with more advances maths and other subjects like science, history and geography are taught. The third stage is the dialectic stage where all these subjects are studied in more detail and students are encouraged to question ideas and concepts. The fourth and final stage of the classical education is the rhetoric stage where the main focus in on communications and children are encouraged to express their understandings, beliefs and doubts.

This process can be easily and effectively incorporated into home education, making it a classical home school. The classical home school follows the same pattern with the idea not of teaching children everything they need to know but of creating an enquiring intellect that understand the value of knowledge and how to acquire it. This is an attitude of mind that stays with the adult, long after the memories of school have faded.

The classical home education is meant for parents who are willing to step outside the ordinary and look at educating their children in terms of their ability to use a systematic thought process to understand issues and a creative approach to resolve them, rather than focusing on grades and marks.

The question often asked of the classical home school system is what is the need for children to study ancient languages like Latin and Greek or other such subject that are seemingly irrelevant in the modern world. The answer is that they do not need to, unless their bent of mind takes them that way. Classical home schooling is not bound by the subjects of the past. It is the concepts of learning and the ability to think independently that define a classical education.

For whom is the classical home school best suited? It is for those parents who want their children to have a wide perspective of the world they live in and understand that what is around them today is not the result of a few hundred years of progress and invention but is just a stage in the development of mankind. This kind of understanding will give children educated in a classical home school a sense of their place in the complex modern world and with this understanding, be able maximize their own potential.

Classical home schooling is not the best option for everyone. It does not guarantee success in life. But for parents who want to encourage individuality and the creative process in their children, it is one worth considering.