Some parents stay confused about whether they should homeschool their children or not. These arguments against homeschooling can help you explore what are the disadvantages of homeschooling. Some remedial insights will also be presented.
Education is an essential part of developing your children. So, every child should have an equal opportunity to learn as it’s their fundamental right. Unfortunately, it’s not so. You will encounter two types of education systems when your child reaches the age to start school. One type is school-based education and the second type is homeschooling.
I am sure you’re well aware of school-based education. But do you know what homeschooling is? Homeschooling means teaching children at home. You’ll be the teacher and parent of your child at the same time.
Homeschooling is a popular system in western countries. But the question is, should you adopt homeschooling for your child’s learning? Undoubtedly, homeschooling has many benefits; it can also be harmful to a child’s social development.
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What are the disadvantages of homeschooling?
Here, we are going to present some best arguments against homeschooling. These arguments will force you to think several times before considering homeschooling.
EDUCATIONAL GAPS
The educational gap is not knowing anything which your child should know at a specific age or level. However, some gaps don’t come under the education gap. For instance, if your child doesn’t know anything from the other state’s curriculum, it would not come in the education gap. Moreover, it’s wrong to compare a child with others while estimating the education gap.
In homeschool educational gap of your child can worry you. For instance, while teaching science, you may have taught one chapter with deep concepts. But, you may not explain the concepts of the next chapters deeply. It can cause a problem in your child’s learning development and professional life. You should identify and tackle these educational gaps.
Can you identify these gaps?
You can find the educational gap by merely tracking your child’s learning with quizzes and tests. These quizzes will help you find the point from where the problem started. After identifying the issue, you can start the lessons again to remove these educational gaps.
However, you must know that the educational gap is not a term just related to homeschooling. It exists everywhere, whether your child is reading in a regular school or at home. For example, a child learning in the classroom “A,” will never grasp the concepts taught in classroom “B.” Similarly, a child learning at home will not get the concepts taught in school. Moreover, a child learning one type of curriculum will not understand the other curriculum.
You need to find the gaps that are acceptable to you. If you’ve no issue with homeschooling educational gaps, you can go for homeschooling.
LACK OF SOCIALIZATION
Does your child is getting enough social interaction? It’s the question asked by the parents of homeschool children. Socialization is the primary concern of most parents homeschooling their children. Your child can deal with the surrounding people.
For some, socialization allows a child to play with a peer of the same age and make him a friend. If it’s so, how can a child living at home all day be socialized? Homeschoolers may fail to socialize with the community.
The homeschooling supporters argue that they homeschool their children because they want to prevent them from anti-social activities like bullying. But they don’t know; they are teaching their child to run away from such a problematic situation. Their child will never be able to confront such a situation in the Future.
On the other hand, some parents engage their children in different outdoor activities to nourish them socially. They arrange museum trips for their child on their own. Moreover, they join some homeschool groups to provide socialization opportunities to their child. But they forget socialization is not just to enjoy or to some chit-chat.
When it comes to educational socialization, it’s a different thing. It’s about working and discussing with people of different opinions. It’s about challenging and collaborating with their peers in the classroom. Any homeschool program cannot do so without a school setting.
Excessive stress on parents
Stressed parents make the basis for another argument against homeschooling. The burden of a secure future for their child makes parents stressed. Moreover, a human, either he is a super parent, needs relief from his responsibilities. If he doesn’t get that relief, he becomes stressed and annoying.
An annoying parent can lose his/her temperament. As a result, he can beat his child over small mistakes. Some parents lose their temperaments too often and exert a negative impact on a child’s behavior. Moreover, a child would never differentiate you as a parent or a teacher. For him, you’re a single person, his parent. And it’s even more stressful for a child to be beaten by his parents than by his teacher.
In contrast, a school teacher gets training to control his nerves. Therefore, it’s better to educate your child in a proper school setting.
Lack of Motivation
Motivation is something that keeps things going with excellence. Motivation acts in the same way for learning.
When a child sees someone in his school doing great in something, he’ll try to do the same. Similarly, your child will also try to play football as a football champion of the school plays. It’s the motivation that urges him to do great in his field.
However, when it comes to homeschooling, a child doesn’t have any motivation sources. Further, a homeschooler faces no competition.
Lack of experience & qualification in education
Academic qualification is essential to homeschooling your child. It becomes more critical when your child enters high school. For example, if you are an art specialist, you’ll not be able to teach your child chemistry. As a result, you’ve to hire a chemistry specialist for your child. It would cause an extra burden on your pocket. On the other hand, your child will learn all subjects from specialists in the school.
Moreover, teaching experience is equally important for teaching your child. A trained teacher knows all the techniques to teach any specific subject. Thus, a trained teacher can make learning more enjoyable.
So, a parent can only be a good teacher if he is the jack of all subjects and is professional.
Cost
One of the best arguments against homeschooling is the financial stress it imposes. Homeschooling a child can be costly for a middle-class family. You might have to buy a new curriculum, teaching material, computer software. Moreover, homeschooling child also needs money for more field trips.
According to an estimate, homeschooling can cost you about 700-1800$ per year. On the contrary, you may not have to pay a single penny in some public schools.
Another fact is one of the parents should stay home to homeschool their child. It means one of the parents would not be able to earn money. Thus, homeschooling also leads to a lower average income.
Time
From selecting the curriculum to evaluate your child, homeschooling is a time-consuming task. If you’ve taken the responsibility to homeschool your child, you have to give the maximum of your time.
It would help if you had time to
- Choose the right curriculum.
- Organize lesson plans
- Prepare daily lessons
- Teach
- Make tests and quizzes.
- Plan study tours
- Meet socialization needs
Furthermore, the task of homeschooling becomes even more cumbersome if you have more than one child. If you desire your child gets a better education, you should always be available to them. Therefore, difficult time management can be an argument against homeschooling for busy parents.
Lack of learning facilities
Lack of facilities is another argument against homeschooling. You can never facilitate your child to the fullest in homeschooling. For instance, you can never arrange all the chemicals and apparatus for chemistry experiments. Moreover, it’s challenging to have a swimming pool, gym, or running tracks at your home regarding physical activities.
Development of Over-dependency
There are chances for your child to entirely dependant on you. He’ll ask each and everything from you. Thus, your child will lack confidence and decision-making ability. Consequently, your child may find it challenging to succeed professionally. Moreover, he’ll not be able to make bold decisions in his practical life.
On the contrary, if your child goes to school, he’ll interact with his peers and other adults that will lead to the development of independence sense in them.
Some other disadvantages of homeschooling
Besides these nine best arguments against homeschooling, there are some other disadvantages of homeschooling.
● You may have to face criticism from others. It becomes difficult sometimes to explain why you homeschool. In such cases, do some proper research about your decision.
● Handling different learning issues is a prolonged process in homeschooling. In contrast, your child will get an instant solution to every problem in school.
You have to adapt according to your child’s learning needs.
Finding homeschool friends for your child may be challenging.
Involving your child in different sports and co-curricular activities is also challenging.
Conclusion:
In this article, we’ve shared some best arguments against homeschooling. Maybe some of them are convincing enough for you not to homeschool your child. Despite all these adverse effects, the idea of homeschooling is growing. It might be due to the higher academic achievements of homeschool students, according to statistics. Moreover, homeschooling becomes the need of the hour in this pandemic era, whether you want to adopt it or not.
12 FactsAboutDisadvantages of HomeschoolingEveryone Thinks are True