No, my children don’t “miss out” on the social wellbeing that so many believe is only offered in school class rooms. In fact it’s not the kind of restricted social interaction I seek for my children, limited to their own age for the majority of their childhood!
What I seek for my children is a natural, not engineered social setting so they may interact with all ages, all walks of life, meeting NEW people all the time…learning how to make NEW friends and gain confidence in doing so, BECAUSE they are given the opportunity.
No…homeschooling does NOT mean your family sits at home all day during school hours, doing the exact same thing school classrooms do without the other children. Many, if not most, choose home education to be “different” to school. In fact the quality of home education means 1 hour is equal to a whole day of sitting in a classroom!
I’m reading The 5 Hour School Week at the moment. It’s based on “The 4 hour Work Week” principles written by Tim Ferris. I read that book about 15 years ago and loved that too! But at this stage in my life, the 5 hour school week is a fantastic book… I’m loving it!
Coming back to our societies ideas around home education…It bothers me when people assume we are at a social disadvantage! It’s just not true! We have the freedom, living in this day and age, to make friends so easily! Our online community is incredible! The sharing of resources is abundant!
Learning is DIFFERENT to what it was when school was introduced! This is why I love “home” school! You can do it ANYWHERE! It’s not confined to four walls! You CAN talk ANYTIME you want! With whoever! In class…you cannot!
The confidence this autonomy instils is incredible, being one of the many millions of reasons I personally choose home education! So I just want to leave it here…for now anyway. My point is…home educating families, have the freedom to interact with those THEY choose! Therefore the QUALITY of their social life is much richer, for their is true purpose that brings these people together.
Out of common interests, passions and choice. Homeschoolers know they need to treat each other with respect or they simply won’t maintain the relationship, dissimilar to being in school with the same people for years! You know that your relationships are built on mutual respect in homeschooling, because you are “choosing” your friendships.
Just some food for thought. I recently came across someone who talked of a child not being able to go to kinder (NJNP), as a disadvantage (socially)…BUT I just want to say, it’s NOT the only place you can find community! It’s not the only place you can gain social wellbeing.
The world is a big place! People are everywhere! If you don’t have your community, village or tribe yet…create it! That’s my philosophy! It always has been. This is one of my inspirations behind unschooling (home education). School is just not quite what I personally imagined for my family, for a multitude of reasons. Learning quality being one. But that’s for another blog;)
Inspiration At Play 