Four years ago, we as a family chose to make a decision, that would shape our education and future––for better or for worse. We decided to take the road less traveled, an uncertain path of homeschooling.
To give you some context, it was 2021, and schools were forced to move online because of Covid-19. Because of this, my grades began to drop because online schooling was just really distracting.
You see, with the start of online schooling came the consequences of distractions. Our little rectangle screens were filled with so much mindless entertainment that I simply could not focus. Time passed by, and nothing changed.
That was when, during an evening walk, my father hinted at a new form of schooling. He brought up a rather novel idea. Rather than studying based on school syllabuses I could simply study myself and learn more effectively. Though this sounded nice on paper, I was still skeptical about the risks. Namely, these questions popped up, “What would we do if homeschooling fails?”, “Can we re-enter normal schooling if it does?”.
In the end these doubts were answered through my father’s friend. Yes, we can re-enter normal schooling on the off-chance that homeschooling fails. This was thanks to a government syllabus called NIOS, which offers exams for 10th and 12th grade without any requirements except age.
And so, our homeschooling journey began, void of any doubts. It has been 4 years since then and I have learnt a lot. This blog is me looking back, to both look at the positives and negatives of homeschooling.
The Advantages and the Disadvantages
On Self Control
The immediate effect that can be visibly seen is the freedom that comes with homeschooling. The school no longer restrains your time or your syllabus. At first, It almost appears to be refreshing. You no longer have to wake up early, you no longer need to be forced to study and you no longer need to have a fixed schedule.
Yet, we must not forget that freedom is like that of a coin, it has two faces; On one side we see freedom used right and so results in prosperity, on the other we see misused freedom that could lead to downfall.
For instance, right after I started homeschooling, my mind was too distracted to even focus on the tiniest of tasks. It took a long time to improve it, but I eventually did. It’s quite odd though that self-control was both a threat and a gain of homeschooling.
In my case, I made schedules and to-do lists for each day and week and followed them. In some cases, when I failed to complete a task, I document them in my weekly retrospect. This helps me find my mistakes and work on it to fix them. So strangely enough, self-control is both the advantage and the disadvantage of homeschooling.
On Studies
One of the most effective advantages of homeschooling is that it allows us to pursue our interests with much more focus and ferocity. For example, I’ve gotten much more interested in both Music, Coding and Business (primarily, investing) and homeschooling allows me to learn these subjects without being distracted by the rest.
I started off by focusing on music and coding. Now I’m currently learning ReactJS to become a front-end developer and I am preparing to complete Grade Trinity in Guitar. I’ve also decided to learn a bit of Piano and I can proudly say, that I’m able to play most of the pop and worship songs in Piano. Moreover my hobbies include sketching, economics, learning about history and psychology. With the help of homeschooling, I have been able to learn more in my areas of interests and develop my curiosity.
The real advantage in homeschooling, in fact lies, in the studies that the school might not consider teaching. Studies that might have been deemed as unnecessary or insignificant to be taught in classrooms.
For example, critical thinking is a skill that is well encouraged in our home. Whether it be about politics, theology or simple decisions, we have learnt to question and think in terms of logic. Often, we entertain thoughts that directly question our beliefs and we are encouraged to find the answer ourselves, through research.
Another important example is our communication skills (which I gone into further detail in the “On our Social Life” section.)
However there does lie some slight disadvantages on the other hand. As an example we might become ignorant of common knowledge unless we actively pursue it. For example, our knowledge chemistry, physics, biology have all been found quite lacking and now we are focusing on improving it.
To summarize, with proper guidance, homeschooling can help us look at the “whole picture” of studies and improve it all together. However, what is a must is the passion of the student himself, because unlike traditional schooling, homeschooling relies on interest for growth. Without any interest or passion, learning will eventually fail.
On our Social Life
Another major concern for prospective homeschoolers is the social life of the children. After all, in school, you are surrounded by people, therefore you are bound to make friends. However, at home, you are alone with your family, and so there are no opportunities for you to form friendships.
While homeschooling has fewer opportunities to make friends compared to traditional school, my family made sure I stayed socially active by attending my father’s meetings and participating in church activities.
For example, recently my father went to give a talk on cyber-security and he brought me and my brother along. The talk itself was quite insightful but what I found most interesting was the socializing that was done during lunch. I was able to hop into a conversation between an entrepreneur, a student studying for his masters and a teenage coder who was a part of many hackathons. This allowed me to improve my communication skills a lot. In fact there are so many such experiences I had thanks to homeschooling (which if included, will make this blog too long) that I shall probably create a separate blog post just for this.
In church, my father often advises me to seize opportunities to talk on stage, so that I can get comfortable with public speaking. Just a month back, I was able to deliver a rather short message on the Bible. More interestingly, I used Hindi rather than English (Which I’m comparatively worse at.)
Comparing my social skills (especially as an introvert) to 4 years ago, I would say that they have developed massively thanks to the opportunities provided by my father and homeschooling.
The Backup Plan
And finally, the most important question: Is there a backup plan we can follow if homeschooling fails? In spite of the advantages of homeschooling, there is still a risk of it failing. So what should you do? Well, there are two methods. One, you simply open a business, become well known, and the rest is your choice. However, you may not be able to go into medicine nor law, this method also relies purely on your business skills.
Two, you could register for NIOS, an alternative to traditional schooling, where you study yourself and simply go to the exam center to give your exam. This curriculum offers both 10th and 12th exams, allowing you to either re-enter school or go to university.
The only two possible downsides to this are the fact that NIOS is comparatively less-known and less-valued to CBSE and ICSE. So that means, some universities might not accept NIOS students. Secondly, since NIOS is the only possible way to re-enter the education sphere, changes in policies or laws can affect this plan. To put it simply, it is risky. Nevertheless, NIOS is the best, though only, backup plan if you would like to re-enter traditional schools.
To summarize
The advantages of homeschooling is both the versatility and flexibility in terms of studies. You have the freedom to learn anything, and you have all the resources spent on school to satisfy your passion and curiosity. Any skill however, that has to be learnt depends both on the parents and the children. The children have to have a passion or interest to grow and the parents should provide the necessary resources for that growth. In the end, homeschooling is simply a tool, the results depend heavily on how the tool is used.