Just like all choices we make in life, there are homeschooling pros and cons. Those pros and cons need to be weighed by your family against your goals for your child’s education: not just math, reading, and writing goals, but the character you want to instill in your children, and the values your family holds dear. When thinking about the goals you have for your children, you first need to evaluate if they are good goals, worldly goals, or Godly goals. Let us explore some homeschooling pros and cons together.
Homeschooling Pros and Cons: Socialization
Pros:
- Students are able to meet with adults during the day from a variety of backgrounds, interests, and expertise to learn more about their professions or topics that interest them.
- Students can find friends, co-ops, and classmates who create positive peer pressure and model the same standards of behavior that you desire to cultivate.
Cons:
- Thirty other children aren’t sitting in the same room as the student and aren’t immediately available to socialize with between periods.
- Students may not be exposed to other students who have different values and standards than theirs whom they could learn to coexist with or learn from and model their behaviors, ideas, likes and dislikes.
Homeschooling Pros and Cons: Academics
Pro: Each student can study at the pace he or she needs in order to gain mastery of a subject.
Con: Students may have to seek out help from an expert, rather than relying on the school system to find experts for them.
Homeschooling Pros and Cons: Sports
Pro: Students can concentrate on the sport of their choice after schoolwork is done. The Williams sisters, NBA star Blake Griffin, and Heisman Winner Tim Tebow are all examples of young athletes who used the flexibility of homeschooling to their advantage.
Con: You may have to find private coaching, and the number of homeschool football teams is low, but growing. Have you considered playing rugby?
Homeschooling Pros and Cons: Expense
Pro: You are investing in your family’s future, your grandchildren, and your legacy. There is no monetary value placed on these, but no one on their deathbed ever wished they had spent more time at the office.
Con: At least one parent is often sacrificing a full-time job, but there are many homeschooling parents who are entrepreneurs or who manage to work part-time.
You can see that there are many different homeschooling pros and cons, but with somewhere around two million homeschoolers in the United States and growing, more and more families believe the pros far outweigh the cons. The hardest part is to take the step of faith to bring your children home, but there are many organizations that are there to help you. There are also millions of families that have stood where you stand today and who made the jump into homeschooling. If you reach out, they can help you maximize the pros and minimize the cons, because we are all in this together. If you still aren’t sure, do an ANI chart with your family or loved one today. If you aren’t sure what an ANI chart is, then you are a great candidate to be a homeschooling parent! Why? Because learning is a lifelong journey, and the most important thing we can do for our children is model that idea for them.
Author: Jennifer Courtney
