The Freethinker

Homeschooling Challenges

(This is the article I have been procrastinating against for the past few weeks. Its over now. Yay. I'll get to the music debate this week.)

What challenges does a homeschooled teenager face? When I ask myself that question, I can’t think of anything. What is so challenging about learning at your own pace? What is so challenging about being able to pursue your own goals without the constraints of the public school grade system? What is so challenging about doing your schoolwork in your pajamas, or being able to pick your own lunch? Or do your schoolwork at night? Or take a day off or two or make up for it later?

Yes, certainly, maybe homeschoolers have it better off than the public schoolers. Waking up at the tender hour of whenever you want to as long as you get your school done isn’t very challenging at all, right?

Wrong.

Let me tell you right now; homeschoolers might not deal with the challenges of peer pressure, having to refute indoctrination, nor do they need to refute the other various challenges of public schooled life, but the burdens and challenges are very different. While one student spends their time trying to stay faithful to God and their family and refute false morality, another tries to stay faithful to the state and to their own duties of schoolwork and maturing diligently.

Being homeschooled takes a student out of the cesspool of peer pressure and immerses them into a life of responsibility and maturity, and free will. While one student wastes their time trying to make sure they don’t excel above the other children, it is the absolute duty of a homeschooler to excel and perform above the rest, even though it really isn’t the point of homeschooling, it becomes an irrefutable goal of every homeschooler; To bring their utmost highest to the Most High.

So with that, you may understand the standards at which we place ourselves. Speaking for myself, I try to shoot for the stars and I end up hitting the moon in my quest for knowledge. Mostly because I have yet to train myself in maturity and responsibility, which is another monstrous task high-schooled homeschoolers must deal with.

When a homeschooled student fails to perform, they must take responsibility to their newfound mostly self-learning approach. There is no one to blame when they fail or have to make up for a missed day. No snow day can be an approachable excuse, nor than they blame their mother or father for a chapter in their biology textbook that they procrastinated into oblivion and did not read. And so that also brings a new journey of developing their maturity and becoming an adult before they must go off to college.

Now keep in mind this does depend on a homeschoolers family backround, and just the overall personality God has given them. And not to say that homeschoolers don’t deal with peer pressure either, but it’s an issue that is alleviated in the homeschool learning setting. But there is one thing that all homeschoolers do deal with. And that is, what the state requires of them.

Homeschooling laws depend on each state, but Pennsylvania has one of the most strict homeschooling regulation laws in the nation. Various basic subjects must be taught, such as Pennsylvania history, reading, writing, arithmetic, health, safety, literature, music art and geography just to name a few. A parent/guardian must have a high school diploma to qualify to teach their children, and must file a notarized affidavit prior to the beginning of every school year. The parent must maintain a portfolio of materials used, work done, standardized test results in grades 3, 5, and 8, and a written evaluation completed by June 30 of each year. (Most homeschool mothers say portfolio creating is the fun part, it’s just like scrap booking!)

Now, you may be a “homeschooler” here in Pennsylvania asking yourself, “Wait a minute, I don’t have to do these things, but I’m homeschooled.”

This is where the line is drawn. You must also note, if you do not have to take part in these regulations, you probably don’t even use a textbook; you most likely do most of your schoolwork on the computer. Hence, you are a cyberschooler, not a homeschooler. True homeschoolers face the challenges of regulations; cyberschoolers do NOT because their schooling is regulated by the public school through the computer.

You could be looking at this article thinking, “Man, I should just cyberschool, then I won’t have to deal with all that record keeping and testing.” But you must also consider, the reason they don’t ask for record keeping with cyberschooling is because the school district regulates what your child is being taught through the computer. If they want to teach your child Darwinian evolution and give them an F for answering questions according to your worldview, you have no say in it, you have to go with the flow and digest what this “public school through your computer” is churning towards your mind.

But with homeschooling, you are able to have complete freedom over what you choose to teach your child according to worldviews. Yes, they may regulate that your child must learn music, health, literature, etc., but you can choose how they learn about these various subjects and from which worldview you will be teaching from.

As a conclusion, I hope what you have gained from this article has been informing, and answers a few questions you may have about homeschoolers, not just in America, but also in your own backyard of Pennsylvania, or may even persuade you to even consider homeschooling.

Untitled Comment

9:43 PM, Mar. 7, 2006

Posted by Futurewriterandvet

I'm sorry I got "ticked" lol. Sometimes I'm like that. I'm just argumenative :) . That's why I like you lol.
~Emilie Rose!