My wife and I have decided to homeschool next year. This isn’t because we don’t like the school our children currently attend. In fact, to the contrary, we happen to like the school our children attend, a private Christian school in the area. But, nonetheless, we are going to pull them, and start home schooling them this coming year.
The question becomes: Why? Over some period of time, in an unknown number of posts, I’m going to explain. I’m hoping other folks who don’t understand homeschooling might come to better understand the reasons someone might homeschool through this little series. I don’t, of course, claim to speak for all homeschoolers, or even for any sort of community. These are just our reasons, and may not have any bearing on anyone else.
These reasons are not given in any specific order, just as they fell out of my head (if you keep an open mind, things will fall out all the time).
Our first reason is flexibility.
Flexibility is a major concern in our lives. The obvious one is financial. Without the cost of sending my children to private school, we have more financial flexibility. My wife could work, of course, but the way the tax laws are set up, and the way things really work out with summers off, school times, and having to pay for times when we can’t be there, the financial side is not as clean as it might appear. In the end, it’s a judgment call, but “paying” my wife to teach the kids by taking them out of private school, rather than her being paid to work, so other people can teach our children, seems to be a financially sound choice at this point.
Beyond this, there are other financial considerations. If, for instance, I lose my job, it is much easier to support a family that is self supporting in as many ways as possible. And if we had to move to find a job someplace else, then we will have more flexibility to do so if our family is more self supporting.
And then there is the other side of financial flexibility. Travel can be a big part of an education. There are grandparents to see, places to go, things to experience. And all of this is not only easier when you can set your own schedule, it is actually cheaper. It’s cheaper to fly on an off schedule than an on schedule. It’s cheaper to get hotel rooms.
This also applies to vacations. It’s cheaper to take a vacation in a relative off season, so you can save money to do more than just a vacation. Entire vistas of new possibilities in learning and ideas open up when you’re no longer beholden to someone else’s schedule.
There are other forms of flexibility, of course. The ability to change the school to accommodate interesting events, or learning styles, or other sorts of things. How many schools can slow down on some math concepts, and speed up on others, to handle when a child is struggling, or whizzing through? Not many. Apply the same concept to science, and communication, and many other areas, and you get the picture.
Flexibility is a key point, then.
Related posts:
It seems the first consideration is sort of the opposite for most people, since most do not consider a private school the default from which to calculate.
Just a thought that fell out of my head.
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Flexibility was a major factor for us as well. We’ve been homeschooling for 6 years now and can tend to forget and take the flexibility for granted.