Home Schooling Programs

There are many different home schooling programs available and probably 1001 different reasons for choosing a home schooling program over sending your children to public school and it would be impossible to list them all here.

One thing we do know though is that parents often feel very deeply about their decision to opt for home schooling and here are some of the often quoted reasons for this decision. These are listed in no particular order.

• Large class sizes. Over the years class sizes have continued to grow in many schools and it is often felt that teachers are simply not able to give individual children the attention that they need or deserve.
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• Political in-fighting. In some areas there is a virtual running battle between the teachers and their employers with the children often being caught in the middle.
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• Poor quality schools. For some parents the only available public schools are considered to be of very poor quality either lacking funding and facilities and/or employing poor quality teachers.
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• Moral or religious issues. Some parents find that they are unhappy with the moral guidance provided by their local public schools or find that the religious education being given to the children is unacceptable.
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• Authoritarian attitudes. While most parents want their children to be educated in a disciplined environment in some cases it is felt that an overly authoritarian stance taken by the local public schools does not create a suitable learning environment.
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• Special needs. Where a child is particularly sensitive or perhaps has special needs because he or she suffers from an illness or disability, such as asthma or epilepsy, public schools can often exacerbate the problem and children are frequently subjected to bullying or become isolated and depressed.
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• Unacceptably high workload. Public schools can sometimes place considerably pressure on children to reach certain academic standards and impose unacceptably high workloads, particularly when it comes to homework.
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• Too long a day. In cases where children have to travel long distances to and from school this can make the school day too long, particularly for very young children.
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• Teaching style. For some children the formal classroom environment simply doesn't work and the "one size fits all" model is simply not appropriate.
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This list could of course go on and on and there is no doubt that anyone who is considering home schooling will certainly be able to add to it.

In many cases, whatever the list of individual reasons, the underlying feeling is simply that the public school system doesn't work and that true family life means that parents should enjoy their time with their children and teach them themselves, rather than palm the job off onto somebody else.

At the end of the day the public school system is a relatively modern invention in historical terms and for many centuries children learned the skills they needed from their parents at home.

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