Home education has become increasingly popular over the years. Whilst it was once thought to be solely a privilege of the rich or famous who could afford private tutors it has grown slowly, quietly, even stealthily up into the ranks of becoming an increasingly accepted form of education for families.
The number of home educating families are reported to have risen considerably over the last couple of decades. The last ten years especially have found home educating – or homeschooling – becoming a more viable option of learning for many children for any number of reasons.
Bullying, peer pressure and special needs have all been cited as reasons for families choosing to take this path of learning with many parents opting for home educating for no other reason than wanting to take responsibility for their own children’s education themselves.
And it is indeed a huge responsibility to take on.
We have home educated for almost seven years to date. Almost three years with Stephanie alone, and another three and a half so far with the rest of the children. During this time we have tried different things, used different methods and worked in a variety of ways all with positive results.
Yet still, despite us knowing that home education can and does work we still find it very much misunderstood and surrounded by a lot of myths and untruths often passed on as fact or – more concerningly – as a point of law.
We have often been emailed with questions from parents who would like to know more about home educating their children and I have been meaning to answer these questions for a long time. As the summer holidays are the time for preparing for the new school year I thought it would be a good time to address people’s questions and concerns regarding home education in the form of a series of posts dealing with different matters related to it.
Are you a parent considering home education for your family? Are you just curious to learn more about the hows and whys of it all? What questions would you like answered?
Alternatively, as home educating is such a wide and varied subject and can be done in so many different ways I would love for other home edding families to get in touch with their stories of how and why they decided to home educate, let us know any resources they have found useful or with any words of advice they’d like to pass on. A kind of what they wish someone had told them before they embarked on their journey type of thing.
Please send your emails to family@largerfamilylife.com and put “Home Education” in the subject line.
We just began year 9! Looking back, it has gone so quickly, as with anything. But that isn’t to say it has been easy going the entire time 🙂 With that said, home school actually was the way to school when America was just a babe and settlers were moving west. It was their only way of educating living so far away from cities and towns. Eventually, as the population exploded, public schools came into the picture. Unfortunately, they are not as they once have been. And that isn’t the teachers fault alone. Families have broken up. Social “norm” has been lowered to its lowest. ETc, Etc. Home schooling is growing rapidly in the states due to so many factors. For us, home school was a decision based on faith. We have no regrets. Not one. And after you have a few years under your belt…the whole “what about socialization” question is just a laughing matter. There is an amazing world unlocked when you begin homeschooling.
The thing is that the UK seems to be so far behind America. You seem to have far more by way of curriculums that are available or online resources tailored for you or conventions for home educators. I’d love to see the UK catch up.
Thank you for this blog post…it is always encouraging to read such positive things about homeschooling. Especially when you are bombarded with well meaning friends and family asking “so when are they going back to school then?”, it is a great reminder that this path is one we have chosen and want to stick to for the time being without having to justify why. I love Patty’s comment “There is an amazing world unlocked when you begin homeschooling”, as that has certainly been our experience too. My boys have been involved in SO many things that they just would not have had the opportunity to do if they were at school. We started down this road 18 months ago and for us it was due to our son’s special needs and a very horrible time he was having at school. There is nowhere locally that can offer him a place that will meet his needs and although in one way it is frustrating that so many other families are also ‘forced’ down this route due to the short-comings of the education system, in another way, I almost want to thank the local education authority for being so incompetent as we wouldn’t have discovered this wonderful way of life if everything had worked out at school!
We need some British people to start writing some curriculums and lapbooks , etc. I have thought about maybe creating some lapbooks, projects but wouldn’t know where to start really.