Homeschooling - Concept

Since time immemorial, children have been gathering chunks of knowledge by a mentor aka Guru. Format of this education may have changed from ‘Ashrams’ to ‘International Schools’ but the basics remains the same. A Guru disseminates the knowledge and in the end seeks ‘Gurudakshina’ which is paid by the disciple. However, it is not mandatory from the Guru’s side to ask ‘Gurudakshina’.

Let’s come to the modern way of education system. Children still go to a bunch of Gurus who don’t seek any ‘Gurudakshina’ but are on the payrolls of the educational institution. To ensure that these institutions don’t run out of money to pay to their hired Gurus, they keep charging money in different formats from children’s parents. The basic school fee is justified to some extent; what is not justified, are the different charges which they name very innovatively as Development Fee, Infrastructure Fee etc.

Adding on to that, the nexus which the schools have with different uniform-and-book-shops is highly condemnable. The nexus pressurizes school to ask parents to buy books, stationary, uniform and all other not-that-necessary stuff from a particular shop and everybody wins in this deal except the parents.

Some parents have started working on a concept called homeschooling to combat this situation. Here, the children instead of going to school learn at home with the help of parents and if required, a tutor comes into picture. Directly homeschooling helps the parents to get more involved with their children and as a bonus, children don’t get molested by the teachers in the school (we have enough examples of this; Don’t we!).

Theoretically, parents are supposed to prepare a time-table for children which includes her studies, extra-curricular activities and projects. The child stays at home and learn under her parents’ supervision. One of the negative aspect of homeschooling is the child missing out with the social interactions with kids of her age, which she would be getting engaged in her school. Parents have come out with web forums to make an attempt to resolve this situation.

Like-minded parents plan and meet (along with their children) at mutually agreed places so that the child get a hang of social interactions. Getting connected on web means that parents can discuss study related issues with each other and strive for a resolution. We have examples of individuals like Hilary Duff and Williams sisters who were homeschooled and have created a niche for themselves.