Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Homeschooling or Private School?

First, parents prove public schools cannot give the best education because teachers are not able to give so much attention to each pupil. Thus, a child cannot be developed relevantly and this would hardly help teachers discover his abilities. Social life at public schools are seen by parents as the worst model of their child’s future environment where individual tends to adopt himself to other individuals even if he does not want to. Parents who advocate homeschooling often accuse public schools in developing social models of behavior and thus, they restrict children’s freedom in choice and willingness to develop. They believe ‘white crows’ are cruelly punished by society and feel their children are those ‘white crows’ who would be hurt by other pupils and teachers as well.

Public school accusers say home environment can prove each child’s uniqueness and show there are not limits in development and freedom of choice. Public school teachers can hardly notice each child’s unique abilities and features because they have to provide education curriculum in full amount and do not care of (or just have enough time for) developing study individual techniques and approaches. Both reasons, social life models and loss of individuality, are so serious accusations to not be researched deeper and more careful.

First, social environment is inevitable thing children will have to meet in adult life. While the worst social environment model can be simply determined by alcohol drinks, drugs, cigarettes etc. the best social environment model for each child is hardly seen by even most intelligent parents. In this case parents follow the same error they accuse public schools for: they impose definite social standards for their children by knowing well what is best for children.

Both models cannot be accepted because children are not allowed to think themselves by either public school teachers or their parents. The question of freedom remains open. Next, many parents have not really experienced in anything what is relevant to education and teaching. They can easily fail while trying to present and explain their children the new topic or phenomena. They can prevent their children from ‘bad’ social environment at public school but they cannot be sure their children would not tend to find ‘bad’ friends out of home because homeschooling does not isolate children during their free time. Homeschooling develop individualistic behavior which leads to what parents fear of - the ‘white crow’ effect.

Both public school education and homeschooling have its advantages and damages, and parents should think twice before giving preference to any of education methods. They should remember that the happiest person is a person who is able to find his/her native environment which can help him/her develop his/her individuality and feel happy among others.