In this series on education choices for our children, I wanted to give the notes that I collected (mostly from around 5 years ago, as Hannah was nearing school age) from families who were years ahead of us. Nothing fancy, just the pros and cons that were given to us. What I like most is that these insights were given to us by families who had each been involved with multiple education options, so they could give a complete and honest assessment.
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| image courtesy of arroclint via sxc.hu |
Home School
- Advantages
- Simple and good at an early age, with focus on reading
- Can lay and develop a spiritual foundation
- Maturity issue: you can make sure that they are stable in their identity before being around a lot of kids, so they won’t get lost
- Flexibility with time and vacations
- Great student:teacher ratio, so you can focus on and customize education to specific academic needs
- Great emotional benefits; kids’ love tanks are full because of so much time together
- Children’s primary identity is to family, ahead of peer identity
- Disadvantages
- Be mindful of how you use time; it is harmful to be either too regimented (no one will enjoy it) or too laid back (easy to get off track)
- Need to remember that you still have a life to live, with other roles and responsibilities. It gets easy to isolate and draw back into the family; need to keep moving towards other relationships.
- Can be challenging to teach multiple kids and ages
- Homeschooling with younger children can be hard; challenge to keep toddlers busy
- Setting stands; it’s easy as a “loving parent” to give kids a bye or overlook things. In school, if you don’t do the work, you get an “F” – it’s not personal)
- At some point, you need to teach them to be in and to deal with the world
Private School
- Advantages
- Can find a school with the same foundational beliefs
- Smallness and openness; parents can usually come in an out any time
- Often have great academic standards
- Disadvantages
- Parents can get complacent, relying too much on the school, especially for spiritual development
- Cost
- Can be easy to withdraw from engaging the culture
Public School
- Advantages
- Can have an advantage for academics because have many more opportunities, especially at higher grades
- It is good for kids to be around non-Christians before going off to college
- Great opportunity to teach kids to be in and to deal with the world
- Disadvantages
- Can be very trying because of a rough environment
- Hard to go from a small (home) to a big (school) environment
- Children pick up some of their identity from peers
- School is usually not able to focus as well on individual needs
Can you add any pros or cons to any of these options?
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This is a really fantastic pro/con list! Thanks for sharing!
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