At Home with Homeschooling

Parent Circle / January 201210

at home with homeschooling

Homeschooling, whether part-time

or full-time, with a preschooler or

an older child, seems a daunting

task. Taking near-total control

over your child’s education is not

a decision to be made lightly at

the spur of the moment. Here,

then, is an attempt at sorting the

basic factors parents may want to

consider, before homeschooling.

Why do you want to homeschool your child?

There are as many reasons for homeschooling as there are homeschooling parents. Some choose homeschooling for geographical reasons (isolation, emigration); some have gifted children who may not do well in group schooling; some have children with various mental/physical challenges; a surprisingly large number withdraw their children from school in response to bullying, discrimination and plain old dissatisfaction with the system.

What type of homeschooling are you planning? ‘Homeschooling’ is an umbrella term

that covers a plethora of options in breadth and nature. Many parents homeschool up to the first standard; some up to the sixth or eighth; others past the twelfth, as my parents did. The safety net that the Right to Education Act provides, should eliminate most parents’ worries about enrollment possibilities. Curriculum covers a range of methods from traditional instruction to Waldorf, Montessori and Doman methods, from Vedic math to Abacus. Some even enroll their child in a school, and then take partial responsibility for teaching, only sending the child to school for tests and exams, with the administration’s blessing.

Finding full and comprehensive answers to these questions may require some

reading/researching/asking around/googling; so take the time, and do the work. Not only will it make your work easier when you begin, you’ll find yourself more confident of your ground, and more relaxed with your child.

However clear you may be on how you would like to homeschool your child, there are some basic pre-requisites for the plan to be a success:

A well-educated primary parent (PP): This refers only tangentially to formal education; given the state of education in this country, I would consider it infinitely more important that the PP is extremely well-read, a logical and organized teacher. The

BY NIRUPAMA RAGHAVAN

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pool of knowledge required to teach a young child is extensive, more than what is expected of any one teacher in any primary school.

A supportive and enthusiastic secondary parent (SP): Ideally for the emotional stability of the child and the family as a whole, both parents need to be involved in educating the child. The secondary parent, however, may not have as much time to invest in it, and might have to take over more household/logistical support, as is the case with most homeschooling families that I have seen. These roles are completely gender-interchangeable; my father handled half of my primary and a good chunk of my highly arts-oriented secondary education, and I don’t think he is an exception that proves the rule.

A consistent and comprehensive syllabus: Whether you choose to adopt a syllabus (IGCSE, CBSE, State board, etc) or integrate multiple syllabuses, do have clear three-year, one-year, and half-year plans; these should be tailored to your child’s gifts, needs and preferences. This prevents the classes devolving into interesting but goalless meandering, which is always a risk when everyone is having fun.

Important external resources: Libraries, TV shows, museums, galleries and the internet are important. They provide you with sources of information, both for your child and for the research that you will need to complete in order to teach. Cable TV and the internet will rapidly become your best friends for video clips, articles, documentaries and research; you can teach music by using YouTube or practice organizational skills together through Farmville. The box is only as idiotic as the priorities of its user.

While the basics are universal, homeschooling offers virtually unlimited possibilities for tailoring them to the learning style and preferences of the child. A quick google search or a visit to a bookstore specialising in textbooks will enable you to cross-check the boards that cover the topics you want, and in the style that you prefer.

How to bring about Learning in the child? With each topic, list out what your child has to know, what else is connected with it, and what more is available if he is interested. He could just develop a deep interest in a facet of Taxonomy! Don’t be surprised if your child develops obscure and highly specific interests and skills; it’s an advantage - some say a side-effect - of getting to learn the way one likes. You may have to bear in mind that your child may not necessarily be interested in pursuing some - or many - things beyond the basics. Do not push too hard when that is the case; but don’t compromise on them learning what they need to know, either.

A most important tip: Branch out from textbooks! The best way to learn is from an expert (who writes from a place of passion and expertise)8

Nirupama Raghavan

Expert Speak Mohana Narayanan, Psychological Counsellor, Aatmika Centre for Counselling

Even home schooling has its flipside. A regular school provides an environment where the child learns to give and take, and develops other soft skills which are often missed out in home-schooling. School life also has an organized structure with rules and regulations - this is what makes the child self-disciplined. A child feels safe within this structure. The children need to blend with the present day education system to know its importance. I know of some children who do not know even the importance of a graduation and shun education.


encyclopedias and educational CDs come in.

Some resources: DK’s encyclopedias and Picturepedias are a treasure trove; so is the Childcraft series, which covers poetry and literary needs as well as science and general knowledge. Collect posters, flashcard sets and quiz-based board games; they will always come in handy. At a more advanced level, you can find the Time-Life series, National Geographic archives, and a plethora of Discovery Channel and BBC documentaries on everything from aardvarks to zygotes.

On the internet, Youtube is a valuable resource (when used right), as are other child or information-oriented websites such as the BBC’s, or the USGS (United States Geological Survey), or NASA.

A quick Google search will run up enough math or grammar exercises to keep even the most grimly industrious little quiz-lover occupied for years. For the literary-inclined and an older child with a computer, Project Gutenberg uploads, html and notepad versions of all books with expired copyrights, are a cheap, efficient and legal alternative to spending huge amounts on buying up the classics.

For the rest... keep your eyes open and keep looking. For every resource in here, there are a hundred out there, that your child might adore. Have a wonderful time exploring!

Can homeschooling bring about loneliness in a child? There were other children around for me, for a significant chunk of the day. I attended Tamil, civics and physical sciences classes with other children; all my extra-curricular activities were in groups. Since my school-time wrapped

S Esha is a 12-year-old girl living in Pondicherry, who did not like regular school. She is being home-schooled now and also runs her own magazine Raindrops in which other children contribute articles. Ask her whether she misses school and she says: I do get irritated that I have to wait for a weekend to meet a school-going friend. But I feel good when most of my friends say that they would prefer to be home-schooled like me.

Ruchir Raju Deepthi lives in Koba, a village near Gandhinagar, Gujarat. He is 23 years old now, has been home-schooled, and publishes his own online magazine, care4nature. “Everything in regular school was so mechanical; other students were just repeating what the teacher said. They had no ideas of their own. I learnt better when I went along with my parents to conferences. Also, there are many professors and engineers in my family. Whenever they had lengthy discussions, I picked up a lot of information,” he says.

up by 3:00 pm, I had a whole evening to run around with other kids, climb trees, play in fields, get very muddy, play in irrigation canals, photograph cloud formations, or even just sit and read and listen to music, if I was in the mood. I was not athletic, but was very interested in getting wet/muddy/covered with stray foliage and dog fur in the shortest amount of time. My loneliness – and I was, at times, very lonely – had more to do with being far more intellectual than my age group. There are millions who have undergone perfectly traditional education who have felt precisely that isolation.

The socialization and social skills that children need, are not always acquired by passing out from the modern Swargavaasal (Gate to heaven) of schools. They come from spending time with other children, and around their mental/emotional age group, which may be quite different. They also come from spending time with adults. NIRUPAMA RAGHAVAN WAS HOME

SCHOOLED. SHE WAS 16 WHEN HER

TRANSLATION ‘PARTHIBAN’S DREAM’

WAS PUBLISHED; SHE HAS WRITTEN ‘PAVO

AND CAVO’ A PICTURE STORY BOOK FOR

CHILDREN; BESIDES A NUMBER OF POEMS.

Meet some home schoolers

rather than a textbook author (who is primarily focused on being readily comprehensible). I learnt geography and zoology by reading Gerald Durrell’s books on his expeditions, James Herriott’s stories of country veterinary practice, and watching/reading David Attenborough’s The Living Planet. I learned world history through reading James Michener, Leon Uris, Jawaharlal Nehru; science - from Isaac Asimov’s books on basic astronomy and physics. Of course, this approach leaves gaps in knowledge (particularly in the raw basics), but that is where the textbooks,

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Ruchir Raju Deepthi is a 23-year-old who has his own publication and so does 12-

year-old Esha S. The other common link between them is the fact that they have been home-schooled. Contrary to perception, home-schooling has its share of successes, and brings out the individuality of a person to the fore.

The term homeschooling has been understood vaguely by the general public. They perceive it to be a system where the child is taught at home by his parent with the same kind of text books and even a blackboard. It is usually understood and followed as ‘the home replacing the school’, following a similar syllabus, having similar goals, preparing for exams, etc.

“For us, homeschooling means that there won’t be any syllabus. This is because we feel that ‘setting a syllabus’ means deciding for our

second home, why would any parent want to home school their child?

Homeschooling need not have fixed timings, and it gives you many choices. “Thanks to its flexibility, holidays and vacations are not dictated by the school schedules. Learning happens at the child’s pace and there is no stress to keep up with the grade levels. Competition is only against oneself, so there is no one-upmanship or bullying. Learning happens for the joy of it,” says Meena Srinivasan, a software professional and a stay-at-home mom from Puducherry.

Some parents also feel that schools have a distorted way of measuring a child’s intelligence. “We don’t really need much of what we learn in school, and most of what we need to learn 8

the different shades of homeschooling

daughter what subjects/areas of life are more important than others,” explains Sangeetha Sriram, a writer, an urban farmer and a parent who is homeschooling her child.

Genie Kids (a school emulating home-schooling) in Bangalore encourages and practises the kind of learning where there are neither text books nor a syllabus. “There is no teaching that happens. No faculty, equipment or activity imposes learning on children. Over here, children construct their own learning. All children learn in their own style, in their own way, at their own pace, in different quantities and intensities,” says Aditi Shah Mathur, founder of Genie Kids.

Why homeschooling When school is considered to be a

BY SHASHWATHI SANDEEP


instead of resorting to remote facts from a text book. Often we end up devising our own curriculum”, says Meena.

Some other children learn from their day-to-day activities. Explains Sangeetha, mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, ”Our ‘method’ is to expose our daughter to varied environments like the beach, park, railway station, bus journeys, buying from vegetable markets and small road-side shops, family functions, temples and even our maid’s home, where she can see and experience sensorially, a variety of things. She soaks it all in and ask us questions and thus makes sense of the world around her. We also involve her in work, as in the kitchen.”

“As for the Sciences, most of the experiments are performed hands-on with day to day materials. The kitchen

becomes the chemistry lab, the garden the biology lab and so on,” explains Meena.

The option of writing exams is also left to the child. There are exams at two levels - the 10th and the 12th. “Children can currently write the NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) and Cambridge board exams with ease. I would suggest that children write the NIOS exams for the 10th grade and both the Board exams at the 12th grade level,” advises Vidya Shankar. IGCSE is also an option for children.

in life, we learn from life. Yet, children start believing themselves to be clever or dumb, based on what a few teachers and educators decide as life-skills. Students are carefully moulded and measured according to their ability to conform,” says Vidyut Kale, a parent from Mumbai.

When to start “I would personally advise parents to start as early as possible. Just as children express freely their hunger for food, they will also express their desire for learning if parents listen and learn with them,” says Vidya Shankar, who is setting up CASCADE (Creating Alternative System for Children Aiding Development Experientially), a common platform for the home-schooling parents of Chennai and Puducherry.

How does the child actually learn Well, from everything that is around him! “We prefer a child led - project oriented approach. We use an eclectic collection of material – textbooks from different schools, workbooks that we find in second hand stores etc. The internet is a huge boon with its unlimited resources. We have subscribed to a couple of sites which gives us access to grade level and subject level worksheets/books when we feel a need for them.

We are part of several online groups and forums. We support each other by sharing our thoughts, concerns and more importantly, resources. Materials and resources cost a lot of money and we get very creative when it comes to study material. In our case, we would also like the curriculum to be relevant to the child’s immediate surroundings

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WEBSITE RESOURCES 4www.alternativeeducationindia.com 4homeschooling creatively (Yahoo group) 4living math forum (Yahoo) 4living science forum (Yahoo) 4www.indiahomeschoolers.ning.com