Home Schooling

In the United States, home schooling is growing. Today, we see this rate moving rapidly, with between 1.3 and 1.7 million children in grades kindergarten to 12 being educated at home by a parent. More and more families are discouraged by the curriculum being presented to the children, finding home schooling a better option. However, home schooling is also used for children that are bullied at school, those that need special attention, or for families that live in remote areas, making traditional school attendance too much of a challenge.

Families that choose to home school their children do not have to rely on public, tax-funded resources, which actually saves taxpayers millions of dollars. However, families that choose to home school, children are reliant on having connection to the internet. This means being able to download studies and tests, and then sending the child's results into the system for grading. Obviously, having a reliable connection is important. In fact, some home school programs offer the child the option of participating in some classroom time, via the computer.

With broadband service, your child could enjoy all the benefits of being home schooled while still participating in a few class studies if needed. This means you could log on, actually having a real time interaction with other home schooled or public schooled students. With this, your child has the opportunity of developing friends in a classroom setting while still being taught by you.

You can work wirelessly if you like, making the home schooling far more enjoyable. With this, your child can move from room to room, or even sit outside on a sunny day to do homework. As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless.

You can find other home schooled students in your area, allowing friendships to bud. You can also have your child join a group such as a youth development organization. If one does not exist in your area, then create your own. In fact, you could develop a website dedicated to home schooled children just like yours, a place where students can study together, play online games, or simply chat.

The interesting thing about home schooled children is overall, these children score in the upper 80th percentile, which is far higher than children taught in school are scoring. The reason is the one-on-one attention the children receive. In addition, home schooled children enjoy a quiet setting without disruptions and distractions. Knowing you can offer your child everything needed to be a successful home schooled child.

Homeschooling may not actually really be "home" schooling anymore, this is because many very smart people have set up home-schooling networks in the United States and there are nearly 1,000 of them now. In these networks the parents and groups get together to assist the each of the parents to do it right. In the past there have been many critics of homeschooling, some of their complaints justified, some not. Most of the complaints are really no longer huge issues.

We have all heard the claim that home schooled kids do not get the much needed socialization that has been an integral part of the public school system. Of course this is no longer true with networks of homeschoolers, which go on field trips, join sporting teams or get together in larger groups. In fact their socialization comes without the bullying or stealing of lunch money on the way to school.

If much of the home-schooling now is being done outside the home, then is it really "home" schooling? And the word "school" itself is a misnomer too, because schools have turned into giant baby-sitting facilities and factories of rote-memorization so no child is allowed to advance. Perhaps the word home-schooling needs an upgrade?

Maybe we should call home school; Advanced Alternative Learning? Home-schooling is really nothing similar to the old methodologies employed in home-schooling in the last few decades. Are home-schooled kids smarter? Well, they may not start out any smarter on average than public schooled kids but their performance generally surpasses that of kids who are a product of the public school system.