Does homeschooling prepare one for life better?

As the world becomes more academically competitive, with one’s knowledge level becoming key for one’s future job, and ultimately, one’s future. However, is school the only way through which people can learn? Relatively recently, there has come about the option of homeschooling, where people learn by themselves at home. Is this a viable alternative to the traditional schooling methods? This essay will prove how the benefits of attending school are exclusive to the school grounds, and homeschooling cannot provide these advantages.

Proponents of homeschooling argue that the education system is a one-size fit all policy. In most cases, the students with some learning difficulties are mixed together with the more “gifted” children into one class. This largely disrupts their learning process. In comparison, when they are at home, they have the opportunity to draft out their own curriculum to cater to their education needs. This presumes that schools cannot provide such specialised education. The truth is that the school curriculum nowadays are across a wide spectrum – some of them provide planned and guided education for children with learning difficulties, while others provided a more advanced scheme of education. For example, in Singapore, there is the Singapore Sports School which caters towards students who want to hone their athletic skills, while placing their academics at a lower priority. Premier learning institutions like Hwa Chong Institution have the Centre of Scholastic Excellence, which allows better students to take up subjects at a greater depth so as to facilitate their learning in their areas of interest and expertise. Schools also provide a continuous monitoring so that none are left behind. The constant tests and examinations is key for parents, schools and students themselves to understand how well they are assimilating the new knowledge that they have gained in schools. It is important to keep track of our own progress such that we can change the parts that we need to for our own benefit. By contrast, this cannot happen at home if parents are irresponsible, and students do not have a focused task at hand. With a lack of a proper goal, he may falter in his studies, not knowing what and when to improve. From here, we can already deduce that learning can happen on a scale beyond what learning at home can bring.

Without a rigid system, they have more flexibility to plan their time, critics argue. Why should students be forced to wake up so early in the morning? Education should either be about learning the content, or it should be to be fun, and expecting a child to follow a certain format would kill their interest to learn. Furthermore, it would be harmful for the student if they do not go through the proper courses of education. Sooner or later, these children have to integrate back into the system for their tertiary education, so it is vital for them to have the necessary academic requirements that are exclusive to the education system. The rigour of education needs to be put into place during their schooling so that a stronger foundation is built since young. This is essentially what tertiary institutions and employers are seeking for in today’s knowledge based world. Therefore, students of the current education system do benefit in increasing degrees as compared to their peers studying at home.

Opponents of the traditional schooling system argue that they should are able to focus better on the important subjects, instead of continually being affected negatively by other classmates. This distracts their intellectual learning. On the other hand, they do not recognise that nowadays, many platforms have been set up to ensure that children have the chance to report cases of negative influence from their peers. Furthermore, there is even an increasing chance of positive influence. When we look towards those who do better than ourselves and make them our role model, we also begin to learn from their studying methods to improve ourselves. This can help a child to develop intellectually by combining his strengths with others’. By contrast, a student who studies by himself lacks this positive external influence which is necessary for continual development. Schools nowadays can provide the teaching expertise as many education institutions set higher education standards for teachers. These teachers can then guide the students to rub others off positively. On top of that, there are great amounts of resources to help the child, and this can exist in tangible forms such as science lab apparatus and also intangible forms such as learning plans and studying programmes. This proves that holistic development has become a must in the education system, and traditional schooling methods better provides for this.

In the end, it is still clear that for a large majority of students, the way to go is still to undergo the traditional schooling process. What is to be expected are not the old-fashioned methods that parents would recall, but are improvised ways of teaching to suit the student as the system evolves. 

Any comments on the topic?