Home Schooling

‘Home schooling is better for children than mainstream education’ – AGAINST
To begin for our motion, as the opposition, I believe it is necessary to propose the following problems with Home Schooling for pupils. I would first like to begin with briefly addressing the advantages of home schooling. Home school education is good for the child, as there is no one to distract him/ her from any work, so they can concentrate more. Another advantage is that the child gets one to one. Now coming onto addressing the issues with Home school education and why mainstream schools are a better learning zone for the child. If home schooling is to go ahead, then there will be a drastic drop in the number of students going to mainstream schools. Not only some students will disagree with this, but it will also affect the teachers, because that then means that there will be no jobs for the qualified teacher’s specialised to teach certain subjects, and a number of teachers in the UK will be jobless and are more likely to also go against this statement. Another issue is that there aren’t any real facilities when home schooling, for instance there are no actual science labs and in science you need to actually buy all of the substances needed for a practical, like goggles, lab coats, and the different chemicals like sodium. Etc and substances like that are very hard to find in everyday shopping stores. This brings the money outcome working out more, because with main stream education, the school provides you with all of this equipment. And it’s not that it isn’t bringing a good education for the individual, but sometimes the child will get lonely and anti- social, due to the fact that there aren’t any other new children learning with him/her in lessons. Home schooled students usually do not hold classes on drug use and abuse or how the body changes when becoming an adult and the child would feel very uncomfortable with his/her parents talking about those topics to them. This also brings onto the advantage if main stream education which is that you are socialising more with pupils-interacting more and that then means that your child will grow more confidence within their selves as they are sharing ideas with other students in their class. Whereas, with home school education, there is only that one child attending the lessons and that means that you can’t do group work activities and then without that, it will lack the child’s confidence and they experience the outside world. Another topic to rise in the discussion of disadvantages on homeschooling is socialization and that is one of the more serious negative effects, that you child is missing out on the opportunity to interact with other children. While this can become a problem and is something all parents have to consider when homeschooling, the only way it’s a problem is if you isolate yourself from the outside world. Lack of confidence is something that happens in the home all closed up and disconnected from the world where the child is left to sit all by their self at the kitchen table doing his/her workbooks and text books. Also, this includes when the pupil is having to follow the parent’s teaching and instructions without having any interaction or connection to other children. This can affect their development socially as they do not learn how to communicate or behave in group settings. This is obviously a vital skill in living and working as an adult. Further, there is always the danger that they will look back with regret at missing out on school experiences, such as their high school prom. Even without the school setting, the fact that they do not go to school with the other kids in the neighbourhood will single them out, making it even harder to make friends. Another main disadvantage of home school education is that there are no school trips and without that, the pupil is just doing work out of a text book and not actually visually looking at things. Rather, the pupil just listens to the teacher explaining what it would be like. Especially in subjects like Geography, as you can’t observe things like the scenery etc… and you have to be there to actually visualise it in your mind. So the child will also be missing out a great deal of visualisation. Being home schooled is a huge disadvantage for the teacher, being the mum or dad, as they can’t to work and have to be staying inside in the weekdays. The parents are not qualified teachers who have passed a degree to teach, they just teach their children what they learnt from when they were at school and it’s not as if the parent can look up something on the internet, as everyone knows the internet is not exactly a reliable source to get information from, it is a secondary source of information that has been put up there by someone else and the information could not be entirely correct. This also comes onto the mother of father getting easily distracted with other siblings or housework, as they can’t help to tidy up here and there. If the parent that you’re getting taught by is ill and can’t get out of bed, then because of that, the whole ‘school day’ is gone because the parent can’t teach you. Whereas, with main stream education, you have specialised teaching in individual subjects, for example a qualified science teacher or a qualified mathematical teacher, so if one of your teachers is off at school, you wouldn’t get sent home, you would get a cover teacher and the teacher that is off won/t be teaching you for the rest of the day, so you will get your normal teachers to teach you for those lessons and your day won’t go by without being anything, just because your teacher for one of your subjects hasn’t turned up. This also leads to the disadvantage of having only one parent teaching all of your lessons, that means that particular subjects are not only missed out, but the whole day is missed out as no other teacher teaches you apart from the parent that is ill. Also, you don’t get a replacement from your parent that is ill, you don’t get a cover teacher, your work suffers and you get behind and you can’t stay on track. Another essential point that I would like to bring forward; is that main stream schooling gives the individual to mix in naturally with children of all backgrounds, religions and classes, it gives the child to learn together in an environment that everyday life is like. Through allowing your children to experience the mainstream of education, you are making your child experience the general values and experiences that will stand them in good stead for future years. The state education system provides a better platform for later life than many private institutions. More importantly, you are allowing your child to experience the range of different opinions and viewpoints in the mainstream education; you will enable your child to form a more rounded picture of life after school, rather than a stricter approach home school education. Additionally, the mainstream education system allows your child to communicate with all aspects of society without having to pay for a rather isolated upbringing that many privately-educated students are subjected to. Also, public institutions can provide a greater understanding of the workings of society. Furthermore, unless you have trained and hold qualifications as a teacher you will not be able to teach your children as efficiently as a trained professional teacher would. You want to give your children the best possible start in life and that means providing them with the education to be able to succeed in the world of work. The stress that it will place on you and your family is a strong argument against home schooling. Not only do you have to prepare lessons on every subject, but you also need to have researched each topic enough to feel comfortable answering questions your child may have. This is a huge amount of work, and even after this, there is still the question of how to present the lessons. If the child is struggling to understand then they could blame you, resulting in a bad relationship between you and your child. Although you may still feel as if you could do a better job than a professional teacher, you would have to seriously rearrange your life to be able to do so. Home schooling is a full time job, and you have to consider whether you have the time and resources to do it. You may also be financially struggling to not be working, in order to home school your child. When you add up the cost of home school materials and resources it can sum up to be a very large number. Above all, it allows pupils to socialise with others from all different aspects of society, and provides a more balanced understanding of the world and the way it operates. When it comes to educating your children, mainstream schooling can provide the learning environment most successful and really changes the individuals the social awareness throughout life. These are just some of the disadvantages of home schooling. The education of a child is one of the key responsibilities of a parent, and they must think very carefully before removing their children from the social learning environment of a public school into an isolated area with no pupils. All of the arguments for and against must be weighed up; however there is a clear indication that the disadvantages of home schooling far outweigh the advantages.