Home tuition!!

[qabawe]

What do u think of home schooling or or home tuition? is it really better than mainstream setting such as public or private school?What do u think??

 

 

((supporting or upposing??))

 

 

I definetly aginst this idea. My major reason is that the pupils will teeribly isolated from their peers and society

[5614]

I think it'll either work very well or very badly 99% dependant on the student, 1% on the tutor/teacher.

 

Student: If they really have a mind and willingness to work along with a good intelligence, (because face it, some people work soo hard and are just not as clever as others) then they will truely benefit from not having a class of disruptions. If they can socialise well in their own time they are getting the best of both worlds.

 

Teacher: Obviously the teacher needs to be good enough to give the student the amazing education he has the potential of recieving.

 

If the sudent doesn't wish to learn or can't socialise after school hours then he will miss out on a potentially good education or a social life. When home schooling works it works very well, but if it doesn't it is potentially disasterous.

[badchad]

I'm going to disagree. A teacher usually has undergone professional training in order to obtain certification to teach. Thus, he/she should be knowledgeable in the subject they teach.

 

Home schooling may be possible in the very early grades, however in my case, once I get to 6th grade we had individual teachers for each subject. SO, for instance, my 6th grade science teacher only taught science and should be more knowledgeable (not simply in content, but also in methods of teaching) then a parent.

 

At the college level there is no comparison. You can't get a college level education at home. College professors have a much greater command of knowledge then any "lay person".

[J'Dona]

I think that it needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Having been homeschooled myself for several years and having done normal education for about as much time, I'd definitely say that homeschooling was best for me. But I can easily see why some wouldn't like homeschooling or do well in it, one of the chief reasons being the social isolation.

 

For example, I spent six years of my homeschooling in the country in southwest England, where the nearest village was a fifteen minute walk away. For the first few years my mother taught myself, my brother, and my sister, in a room which had been converted into a classroom, before the level of material advanced to a point where we instead started to study alone in our rooms. That's not a very social environment, and although we did go to weekly events by a group for kids run by a teacher, trips to community centres in a nearby city, and a few other things, we didn't get regular, daily interation with kids our own age. It just happens that I don't have a great social need so I did fine; others might have fared more poorly. Having fewer social opportunities at hand might also make the student more inclined to find friends on their own; for example, my sister took to using online MUDs for five hours a day (and unknown amounts at night). She made a score of friends, including her future husband, and was travelling around Europe for conventions when she was fifteen.

 

On the other hand, homeschooling also allows students to learn at their own pace in different subjects, rather than that of the whole class. This depends largely upon the time and ability of the parents to educate their children themselves or to pay for a private tutor. One of the original reasons for us being taken out of homeschooling was that I was bored with stuff at my level and wanted to do harder stuff, but the schools wouldn't allow for it (I actually got effectively expelled from a Montessori school for helping other students too much, or rather doing their work for them—the management was changing and they didn't like deviants, long story). When we started homeschool my mother could devote full time to us, and she did follow the national curriculum, but it was modified in ways that suited us (my siblings and I) particularly. We also used computers a lot, more so than normal at the time, and CDs with basic courses proved very useful as preparation for GCSEs. Eventually I left the normal school system and slipped back in after my parents conviced our local state school to let me take my GCSEs and A-Levels two years early. In this case I was lucky, and homeschool stopped my interest in science and so forth from being stifled, though I'm glad I left when I did.

 

If there had to be general cases, I'd say that homeschooling would probably be ideal in a small village without a school, since most kids will know each other and live nearby, or in cases where poor standards and an unpleasant social environment at the local school would be a bad influence on a child's development.

[Beryl]

I think there's definitely nothing wrong with it, and I think that for most kids it's better.

 

But here's the best way I've found to explain it... I've used this on other forums before and I figure rather than trying to figure a new way to say the same thing I may as well copy and paste:

 

My education was almost entirely self-motivated. I say almost entirely because as a very young child my mother did do some actual teaching of reading and math skills. I'm not sure whether her interference was necessary or not, but at any rate I didn't mind it since even when I was needing help with learning I loved every moment of it. Since then I have educated myself, on the topics that I either enjoy or that I know I ought to learn more about. I imagine I will go on that way for the rest of my life, since I feel that life itself is meant to be educational.

 

Advantages:

1. If you can find an emotional bond to what you're learning - which is essentially what self-motivation is - you are far more likely to remember it for many years, if not the rest of your life. Forced learning may teach people well enough that they can pass the next test about it (more on test-taking later) but in my experience it with surprising frequency causes their minds to throw it out once it becomes 'unimportant'. Since this is about education, not the inner workings of the mind and the way that memory is stored, I won't go into great detail about the science behind this process; I feel confident that everyone will grasp the basic idea without me ranting about it.

 

2. Self-motivated (and self-chosen) education is actually more likely to be relevant to later life, especially in the teenaged years when interests are getting more refined. People ideally wind up with a career that is connected to their interests, and the topics they chose for education is therefore likely to come in handy with their dream career; not only will it help them be good at it once they have it, but it can often help them get it. I, for instance, have always loved literature and other book-related subjects, and therefore liked to spend time at the library; subsequently I started volunteering there, and I now have a job there which I love and which if I so choose I can keep for the rest of my life (I may not choose, since I would really rather live somewhere different than I do now, and also since if possible I plan to make a living as an author... but in the mean time it's a great job.) Most of my life people encouraged me to stop reading so much and learn more math and such, but I think that so far evidence has shown that they were wrong.

 

3. I have never in my life experienced stress about any factor of my education. Honestly. Taking tests (especially multiple choice, probably just because they're easier although aside from that there is something I love about the elimination process) is something that I do for recreation, and even when I'm taking a test for serious reasons I don't stress out about it like some people do. This may be just a part of my personality, but I think a lot of it was my education. There were never any serious consequences if I hadn't learned something properly; I just had to try harder. My education focused on learning things and enjoying it rather than not failing the class, and therefore that is the way I think of things. I know that with any question I either know the answer or I don't, and I can conclude which it is and deal with it appropriately when the time comes.

 

4. Self-education is bound to be much more unique than public school educations, and therefore promotes diversity in thought and encourages children to stand up for their beliefs.

 

Socialization, friends, and other commonly raised issues: my views

I feel that too much socialization can be a bad thing. Group mentality is rarely a healthy thing, yet in public school it's hard to avoid that. Children spend all day with children their own age, all of whom want to fit in so that people will get along with them (a reasonable desire, but a decision that children shouldn't be forced to make.) Wouldn't it be far better if children could spend a moderate amount of time with people of all different ages, and either listen to what they have to say or actually converse with them? That would allow them to get used to associating with other people, while understanding that it's all right to have your own opinions about things. Children don't need to spend a lot of time socializing in order to have good social skills. School doesn't even teach good social skills, it teaches how to have petty grudges and jealousies. Likewise, children don't need to be forced to make friends. As long as a child is given enough opportunities to meet people roughly their own age, they will make friends if they encounter one with whom they can have an enjoyable friendship. They may not have as many friends, but I for one would far rather have a few great friends than twenty mediocre ones. Homeschooled children, like adults, make friends through circumstances other than school.

 

Other issues raised - how will they learn to raise their hands when they want to talk, how will they learn about standing in line, how will they learn to respect authority, how will they learn to share, how will they learn to get along with people who are different than they are, et cetera - are explained by a point I made earlier: Life is educational. Some author (I believe it was Robin McKinley, but I'm not sure) said that the only thing she learned from high school was how to go to high school... I think in many cases that is true. The majority of non-curricular things learned in school are either unnecessary or you will learn in later life. Standing in line is very self-explanatory, and they will probably learn by going places with their parents where you have to stand in line. Raising a hand when you want to talk is not something that comes up a lot of out of school, but regardless most children do learn about the practice and realize when it is appropriate to do so. Respecting authority is something they will learn from their parents, and therefore will probably realize in later life that rather than blindly respecting authority it is best to respect anyone who you feel is worthy of your respect (although they will still have an understanding of what authority means, and therefore won't get themselves into trouble by ignoring it.) They will learn sharing with friends and siblings, not that the concept is one that takes a lot of drilling in; even without a lot of contact with other children they could pick up the habit from books and such, the same source from which I'm pretty sure I got most of my personality. The accepting differences argument makes no sense, considering the fact that in school children often seek out a difference between the majority and a specific child in order to give them some bullying ammunition. Children are more likely to learn about accepting differences from adults who set a good example and from not having those differences pointed out at an early age.

 

Conclusion

Self-motivated self-education not only works, but can (in my opinion) prove to be an asset in later life. Children, when not pressured to do otherwise, always have an interest in learning. Schools, although in most cases well-meaning, are often counterproductive to actual learning; not only do children feel the need to rebel from the authority of the teachers, they feel compelled to dislike it in order to fit in with the rest of the students.