Home Schooling... A Pathway to Success

By Sumit Sharma

In this Book, we will discuss homeschooling in detail. If you are homeschooling your child, what difficulties will come? Which board will give consent to your homeschooling kid? What will be the future of your kid? Which company will give job to an unschooled kid?

We have tried to capture all such problems and tried to find out the solution of these.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716813252

Sumit Sharma

Dr Sumit Sharma is Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar, India. Before joining this institute, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering in Lovely Professional University, India. Dr Sharma’s interests are related to both theoretical and experimental aspects of mechanics and dynamics of nanomaterials and structures.

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This Book is dedicated to

My dear parents Late Sh Shobha Ram & Mrs Santosh Sharma,

My Better Half Deepti Sharma &

My loving Daughter Dhanyaa

This book is in continuation of our previous book ‘The Rise of Home Schooling’. In that book, we discussed that root cause of No Creativity among youngsters is current Education System. Either it must be reformed or completely change. One of the possibilities was to unschooled your children and start teaching them at home. Let the child follow his dreams and that was the concept of Homeschooling.

In this Book, we will discuss homeschooling in detail. If you are homeschooling your child, what diificulties will come? Which board will give consent to your homeschooling kid? What will be the future of your kid? Which company will give job to an unschooled kid?

We have tried to capture all such problems and tried to find out the solution of these.

Now, Its June 2020. India and the whole world is struggling against this pandemic disease Corona. With social distancing norms incorporated due to the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the initial measures taken by governments across the world was the temporary closure of schools.

A report by UNESCO states that such a sudden shutdown of educational institutions has impacted over 90 per cent of the world’s student population. As institutions make efforts to implement digital solutions and innovate learning methods for the benefit of their pupils, there have been a number of other changes that have taken place. Working parents are now striving to effectively work from home and are having to quickly adapt crisis schooling their children. Students, on the other hand, have been finding themselves in dire straits, as they try and adjust to their new environment.

With people being homebound during this lockdown, many of us have now realised how we have hardly ever focused on honing our life skills. As everything from crisis schooling to life skill enhancement might seem extremely new for those who are used to the traditional methods of education, this is not new for homeschooling parents and children.

The schools have started giving classes on Zoom. If your kid is in 1st Grade, 35 min online class every day. Will it be enough for a child? Are they taking this step for shaping your child’s future? No, they have started this foul play of online teaching because they want to shred monthly tuition fee from their parents.

Amrutha Langs (37), a polyglot and language professional, has been homeschooling her nine-year-old son for three years now. Being a part of the educational system herself, Langs was certain about exploring the homeschooling option so that her son can experience hands-on learning. She adds, I would not blame teachers as they are sandwiched between the management as well as parents. Also, they [teachers] are not the policy makers. More than any flaws, I would say that there are gaps [in the educational system] that I did not want my son to face. For example, every Monday the school would conduct a dictation test. I would rather want my son to enjoy reading. And, because he has been reading a lot over a period of time, [learning] spelling comes organically to him.

One of the countless advantages of homeschooling is the fact that children do not have to speed up their studying. In fact they get to learn things at their own pace. Shreya Okhde (33), a former activity co-ordinator for an international school, has been homeschooling her two children (six and four years of age) for about a year now. Okhde — whose son set two national records (at the age of five) for incredible memory power and as India’s youngest multi-talented child — tried traditional schooling her children for six months. But she noticed that her children were having a tough time. She explains, I raised them as independent thinkers. But in school, they were never applauded for being independent. Okhde says that children who are homeschooled receive an all-round education, but at their own pace. The speed with which they study at home is faster. In fact, within one year, we [her children] have finished [learning from] grade one and grade two books.

Langs agrees, highlighting that homeschooling is mainly about conceptual learning, You can teach your children at your own pace and also continue maintaining the same discipline of school. In fact, when they can’t understand a certain chapter, you [have the liberty] to come back to it till you fully understand the concept.

Another point Langs focuses on is about the restraint in time while a child undergoes traditional schooling: In school, the teacher is pressured to meet a certain deadline. But we [in homeschool] have no rush to finish a chapter [in a given time] since the parent is the teacher.

Beauty of Homeschooling

The beauty of homeschooling is that you can customise everything, be it the pace, worksheets, time, and even the curriculum, adds Langs. The basic idea here is to work around the child rather than to suit the educator.

33-year old Neha Anand-Joshi, a freelance pre-school consultant and founder of the soon-to-be-launched PLAYISM, a platform that helps homeschooling and support-schooling parents, agrees, Homeschooling is completely child-led. It is as per what the child wants to learn and is at his/her pace. In school, they [the children] have to learn as per a report card. As an educator and a homeschool mother to her daughter aged three-and-a-half, Joshi adds, There is no particular structure as such, since we learn throughout the day. When I am doing chores in the kitchen, she [her daughter] comes and helps me and that is how she learns everything from measurements to fruits and even vegetables. It is continuous learning throughout the day.

Okhde states that children who are home-schooled have multiple other benefits, They are better researchers and good decision makers. She adds that during this time when the entire country is in lockdown, parents should try engage their children in a multitude of activities, "Try and provide various resources at home that they [the children] can use the way they