Home Schooling vs. State Schooling - Essay Example

Home Schooling vs. Schooling School The issue of home schooling and the one causes certain discussions among modern parents. The point is that both forms of education have their advantages and disadvantages mostly concerning the aspect of the quality of education and social integration provided by both types of education. Home schooling is the kind of children education when parents decide to teach their children at home instead of sending them to public or private schools. The first issue that arises concerning home schooling is the efficiency of home education before the state schooling. As far as school is supposed to provide pupils with both ethical and informational educations, the question becomes even more complicated. Researches on ethnically and religious different families show that most of conservative families with strong religious values claim that school education doesn’t teach their children crucial value principles. The increasing secularization of modern schools makes the parents scared and they decide to teach their children by themselves (Patterson et.al. 2007). Still nowadays it is hard to say whether secularization is good or bad thing, as modern societies require ethnical and cultural diversity within liberal countries, which means that schools contain pupils of diverse races and religions. It turns out that providing conservative Christian values for Christian children at schools would mean discrimination and offense of, for example, the Islamic minority of the schools. In this case if parents prefer their children to learn certain specific values they would better teach them at home by their own. Another problem of home education comparing to the school one is the level of knowledge parents can provide their children with and whether it is relevant according to the educational norms of a country. School teachers follow the teaching plans consistently delivering all the required information to their students, involving them into proper educational activities, when parents can often skip some information because they aren’t simply aware of it. This is the reason why home schooling often is questioned by academic relevance of knowledge and pedagogical methodology of parents (Lubienski 2000). Thus it turns out that in case with home schooling the knowledge a child gets depends on parents’ education and their level of knowledge. Nevertheless, psychologists claim that good parents’ education is even more efficient if their children study at state schools (Holmlund 2011). The point is that if educated parents teach their child at home, he gets only one aspect of great education but if they send him at school as well, he will know twice as much better, as he could have learned both at school and at home in order to solidify his knowledge. Especially contradictory issue here is the one concerning teaching methodology. Pedagogical explorations on this topic conclude that often instead of consistent methodology parents educate their children using some ideological approaches (Knowles et.al. 1992), for example, in case with religious views children who are taught in strict religious ideological atmosphere can become intolerant to the representatives of different religions. Obviously state schooling has not only certain pedagogical approaches dealing with diverse cultural representatives; it also teaches children to be more tolerant to their diversity and in interactive communication develops their understanding of equality. Though, psychologists claim that observations of homeschooling mothers-teachers came out with interesting result: these mothers are mostly radical feminists (McDowell 2000). This could lead to ambivalent consequences, as children taught by mothers-feminist can either become more or less liberal in their views. One way or another, it is hard to deny that home schooling harms children’s social integration as far as the only people they interact with are their parents, so they can’t learn from anybody else. A crucial difference between home and state schooling methodologies is the kind of learning approach applied on children. Obviously, home schooling is more individualized while schools can only provide pupils with common approach (Morgan at.al. 1997). Individualized teaching allows learning process to be more interactive, so that a homeschooling child could not hesitate of asking more questions in order to learn information more specifically. State schools also have partially individualized approach but there is not so much time for pupils to ask and get their answers. This is one of the most common reasons why parents decide to keep their children at home schooling. However, in the issue of group educational interaction home schooling is definitely worse that the state one. The point is that in public schools children not only learn information but they also are situated within a certain discourse and a field of discussion. That means that communication makes them discuss information and analyze it on essentially different levels. The social aspect of home schooling versus state schooling plays the most important role in the discussion as far as most parents prefer home schooling before the state one because they’re afraid that their children can face certain dangers of public schools: physical abuse, moral traumas, and academic failures (Lubienski 2000). If looking at the issue from this point of view, indeed children often have such problems at schools. But on the other hand if leave them at home until they’re grown up they will never become socially resistant and never learn how to deal with social failures. It is important to admit that state schooling provides pupils with social life and this is also a kind of education. Life is not only knowledge and children need to integrate into society but eternal parental control doesn’t allow them to socialize. That’s why state schools create a lot of out-of-class activities like sport sections and other activities according to interests. During these activities children gain communicational skills and make connections. As long as any person has a need to be identified with some social group or category, where people are connected by the same social identification or consider themselves as members of the specific group, home schooling looses many positions before the state one (Stets & Burke 2000). Also, social life is a kind of challenge and state schools pupils often face such thing as competitiveness of their peers. In order to fight for their place in society children can start studying harder, which totally benefits their education. However, it frequently happens that pupils of state schools face the aggression from their classmates which they can never experience during the home schooling. The current problem of school bullying has got a lot of children from all around the world victimized by bullies. Some psychologists claim that it is school where children learn to be aggressive towards their peers, so in this case state schooling may harm (Swearer 2010). But if the reason for the aggression is families, then home schooling can make situation even worse as the children will later start living in real world without being aware that what their parents taught them is violent. Anyway, both reasons school and family can lead to harmful consequences in the children’s future lives. That’s why it is impossible to predict which factors play more important role in forming child’s personality, so it becomes difficult to define which kind of schooling is safer. Thus choosing which schooling is the best for a child, these crucial factors should be considered and compared and the most important of them are informational education, ethical aspect of schooling, and social interactions provided by both home and state schoolings. Still it turns out that all the aspects of the schooling discussion afterwards cause contradictory issues. That’s why probably the best way to decide which kind of schooling is the most suitable is to orient on the characteristics of a particular child. References Holmlund, H., Lindahl, M., Plug, E. (2011). “The Causal Effect of Parents Schooling on Childrens Schooling: A Comparison of Estimation Methods”. Journal of Economic Literature, 49, 615-651. Knowles, J. G., Marlow, S. E., Muchmore, J. A. (1992). “From Pedagogy to Ideology: Origins and Phases of Home Education in the United States, 1970-1990”. American Journal of Education, 100, 195-235. Lubienski, C. (2000). “Whither the Common Good? A Critique of Home Schooling”. Peabody Journal of Education, 75, 207-232.   McDowell, S. A. (2000). “The Home Schooling Mother-Teacher: Toward a Theory of Social Integration”. Peabody Journal of Education, 75, 187-206. Morgan, J., Leenman, T. E., and Kison, J. (1997). “Home Schooling”. Music Educators Journal, 84, 8. Patterson, J.A., Gibson, I., Koenigs, A., Maurer, M., Ritterhouse, G., Stockton, C., Taylor, M.J. (2007). “Resisting Bureaucracy: A Case Study of Home Schooling”. Journal of Thought, 42, 71-86. Stets, J.E., and Burke, P.J. (2000). “Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory”, Social Psychology Quarterly, 63, 224-237. Swearer, S. M., Espelage, D. L., Vaillancourt ,T., Hymel, S. (2010). “What Can Be Done About School Bullying? Linking Research to Educational Practice”. Educational Researcher, 39, 38-47. Read More