Why Homeschool?

The homeschool vs conventional schooling debate has raged on for years and will continue to do so.

The last thing we’re trying to do is persuade anyone to agree with our own point of view. Rather we simply want to express the thoughts we’ve had in making our own decision to homeschool, for anyone who finds themselves in a similar position.

This has two purposes:

1. To reassure ourselves that we still agree with our own logic and choices, because it’s an enormous decision to make regarding our children’s education
2. To help others who may be struggling with the same dilemma

As with all difficult decisions everyone knows the ‘done thing’ is making a list of pro’s and con’s to each option, in the hope of ending up with a vaguely balanced argument that allows a sensible decision to be made. So here goes.

Things that school teaches a child that we weren’t so keen on

• To sit in a room, and then try and learn about things, 99.9% of which are happening outside of said room
• To sit still, be quiet and follow instructions from an adult, that the child is told is an ‘authority figure’, without any explanation as to why that person is worth listening to, or in a position of authority
• That work should happen between the hours of 09:00 and 17:00, and if you’re more creative or enthusiatic or motivated outside of those hours, well then that’s too bad
• To be an employee, assigned a task to complete for someone else within a certain timeframe, rather than setting their own goals and projects
• To do everything yourself, rather than outsourcing work to someone who might do it better and more efficiently, allowing you to pursue your own goals more effectively
• That learning should be done in strict, arbitrary blocks of time dictated by a bell, rather than engaging with a topic for as long as it remains interesting
• Generic, syllabus driven tick-box learning points about subjects and facts that someone else has decided is important for them to know
• To memorise facts that will never benefit or alter their life in any way whatsoever
• With the entirety of human knowledge available at the touch of a screen, the value now lies in knowing when and where to look for a piece of information, not just memorising blocks of information itself
• Don’t get me wrong, our children will learn about Latin, the Incas, the jurassic period and French, but they will also understand why, and we will try to provide context to demonstrate why it is important to know things like this
• Conformity among peers and fear of speaking out for fear of retribution
• I was fortunate enough to attend a selective, expensive private school in London, with all the resources, expert teachers and opportunities I could ever have hoped for, however I was still made to feel like a nerd for demonstrating an interest in particular topics and asking questions after the bell had gone
• As a result, I dramatically changed my personality and missed out on doing things I should have done, because I was too worried about what people would think
• My three year old has asked questions until I have cried. I do not think school will handle him well

Things that school doesn’t teach kids, which we feel are really rather important

• To ask questions until you understand, not until someone else tells you to stop asking questions
• Immersive, situational learning where you learn with all of your senses to develop a skill that will help you achieve a task with a valuable outcome
• Financial literacy, taxes, investing and wealth planning for the future - I received an expensive private education for which I am incredibly grateful, however I left school with no appreciation of taxes, investing, saving or wealth management
• How to develop a specific passion or skill and become a master of something
• A student with ten Bs at GCSE level is considered by conventional schooling to be more ‘successful’ than a student with three Cs, a place on the Olympic fencing team and a flourishing creative online business
• We feel it is more important to us that we help our children develop the skills they want to develop, than it is to make them a conventially ‘well-rounded’ individual, just for the sake of it
• How to monetise a unique skill or passion in the modern, predominantly online world
• Managing social media safely and its profound negative effects on mental health

These are the issues we’ve identified with conventional schooling, without even considering the current state of the UK educational system, rampant levels of bullying and abuse, and increasingly poorly paid and supported teachers.

Furthermore, this doesn’t take into account the particular needs of a high learning potential child, who clearly needs different input to other children.

The problems with homeschooling

• Motivation and time - It's incredibly hard work
• Resources and funding - We're having to work out how we can afford to homeschool, by pulling extra night shifts and earning income by writing online

It is expensive for two reasons:

• You have to fund all of the activities and resources yourself, including travel, parking, equipment, subscriptions and food
• You can’t be working a job and earning money while you’re home educating your children
• We are extremely fortunate to be in a position where we can make ends meet with both of us working less than full time, such that one of us is almost always at home, and we’re acutely aware that many families cannot afford this, expecially in the current climate
• You don’t get funding for exams or teaching courses

Teachers for specific subjects

• We don’t claim to know everything as parents, and there are many subjects, particularly languages and humanities, where we would be well out of our depth trying to teach any higher than basic primary school level. To deal with this issue we’d need to find a way to get our kids some exposure to experts in these fields – a project that is ongoing.

Benefits of homeschooling

• To encourage development in stronger areas, and allow more time for areas of difficulty
• No waiting for other students to catch up, or feeling pressure to say ‘yes I understand’ just so you don’t hold the rest of the class up
• You learn together, and spend that time bonding over new discoveries

I will quite willingly admit that both of my elder children are more intelligent than I am. The rate at which they acquire and retain new information and complex concepts is unfathomable to me and I’m relying entirely on my 30 years of headstart to be able to keep up with them. We learn new things together every day and I am becoming more knowledgeable myself as a result

• Sleep - a whole kettle of problems in our house

All throughout my childhood and teenage years, my body wanted to wake up around 9am, and I was most productive at around 5-8pm, and wanting to go to sleep around 10 or 11pm.

This was completely incompatible with my schooling and I ended up having to drag my exhausted brain to school to start at 8:30, but still couldn’t fall asleep before 9.30pm.

Not only does this not make for productive learning at school, because my mind was hardly in gear, but it resulted in sleep deprivation that is bad for development and growth as a side effect.

Homeschooling gives you flexibility to work around when your child learns best, and allow them to sleep more on the days when they need it.

• Travel

Go wherever, whenever you want, and avoid the school holiday prices!

• Languages

Choose whichever languages you would like to learn, with a vast array of affordable resources such as duolingo at your disposal

• Socialising

“But what about the socialising?”

School socialises your child with people of the same age, not people with the same interests, passions, values or abilities.

School trains your child to see adults as ‘authority‘ figures who are not to be socialised with, but to be ‘respected’ and often feared, and you are considered strange if you choose to talk to adults, rather than children of your own age.

High learning potential children are reknowned for preferring adult company and conversation, and it's something our kids seem to enjoy more as well.

Homeschool socialising involves:

• Time with siblings of different ages
• Time with children of different ages and backgrounds, but with similar interests
• Time with children and adults at sporting clubs, who are part of their local community
• Visits to places and institutions that give a wider appreciation of their society
• Nursing homes
• Volunteering
• Farms

You can devote time to learning other skills and hobbies that are hugely important, but neglected by conventional schooling:

• Crochet and sewing
• Drawing
• Music
• Cooking
• Gardening
• Home improvement
• Laundry and other domestic 'chores' that you need to be proficient at as an adult

None of the school-related inefficiency:

• No stressful morning commute with crochety exhausted kids refusing to put on their uncomfortable school shoes
• No bustling for space outside the school at drop off and pick up time
• No parent-teacher meetings
• No homework or heart sink projects because someone else has decided making an Ernest Hemingway-themed costume is a good use of family evening time
• Don’t get me wrong, we love costumes and craft projects, but we like to choose our own!

Check out our blog posts on reasons to homeschool here

The Bottom Line

If our children ask us to go to school, we will of course send them to school immediately, no questions asked.

It may well be that they actually enjoy it, and we were completely wrong in our assumptions – and that’s fine – all we want is for our kids to grow up happy, healthy and intellectually interested. But hopefully, if we’ve done our job properly, and they want to try school to see what it’s about, they’ll come straight back home again!