Homeschooling in Singapore

I would proffer the following reasons for homeschooling. These reasons are not meant to be exhaustive. Please feel free to build upon them!:

1. The quintessence of homeschooling is parental involvement in a child’s education. This desire for involvement can take several forms, but for many it lies at the heart of homeschooling.

2. You feel that you can do a better job than school teachers. The best teacher:pupil ratio is one-to-one. You do not believe that your child can receive the customised, personalised approach he/she deserves in a class of thirty or more pupils.

3. Your child is at the high or low end of the ability spectrum. Echoing point 2 above, mainstream schooling may not be optimal for your child.

4. You consider the school curriculum to be too narrowly focused.

5. You consider the school curriculum to be too overly concerned with testing.

6. You consider the school system to be giving too much homework.

7. You can concerned about what sort of socialisation your child will receive in a school. You do not want your child only to mix with children of the same age cohort or be in a single-sex school. You do not want your child to be exposed to undesirable peer pressure until your child is older and can make better judgements.

8. You are concerned about bullying in school.

9. You want to raise your child according to a certain moral/religious code.

10. You have a dual national child and you are concerned that only one side of the child’s heritage will be catered for in a national school setting.

11. Related to point 8, you may simply wish to give your child a reprieve from school for a period of time. This could be following a bullying incident or some other distressing incident for your child, or for medical treatment.

12. Your child expresses a strong and informed wish to be homeschooled.

Martin
'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'

For me, the main reason for considering homeschool is to 'shield' my children from undesirable influences from peers/school.
My husband who teaches at an enrichment centre mentioned that one of his students (12 yrs old) is already exposed to pornography as his friends are all watching porn from the internet..

I also don't want my kids to be getting into BGR prematurely.

Other consideration which I would deem important would be one's readily for homeschooling.
I agree that homeschooling is an idealistic approach to education. However, if one is not ready to 'pay the price' ie having less time for self, personal aspiration, interest, lesser household income, don't mind devoting the next 6-10 years (or longer) to the family and kids instead of carving out a career for yourself, having own self actualization needs fulfilled etc.. then it would become a constant struggle.

Priscilla

I agree, Priscilla. Often when people find out I homeschool my younger daughter (P3 age), they immediately ask, 'But aren't you worried about socialisation?' I reply, 'Absolutely. That's one of the reasons I keep her at home.'

A friend of mine has a P2 son who takes the school bus. My friend told me that his son started using age-inappropriate language. The son explained that the older boys on the bus regularly show pornography to the younger boys.

It's frightening.

Martin

This is so hilarious!!! I will certainly need to copy this statement... btw, I hope it ain't copyright !?

It is! You have to pay me one Ferrero Rocher chocolate every time you use it.

no problem... will make advance payment with a box or Rocher!

I want to quote a paragraph from John Holt's book which I am reading to add to reason to homeschool.

John was asked this question :
"If children are taught at home, won't they miss the valuable social life of the school?"

He wrote:
"If there were no other reason for wanting to keep kids out of school, the social life would be reason enough.....the social life of the children (in school) is mean-spirited, competitive, exclusive, status-seeking, snobbish, full of talk about who went to whose birthday party and who got what Christmas presents and who got how many Valentine cards and who is talking to so-and so-and who is not. Even in the first grade, classes soon divide up into leaders (energetic and - often deservedly - popular kids), their bands of followers and other outsiders who are pointedly excluded from these groups..."

Hurray for the reasons above and I read in this book, "Homeschooling the Early Years' and this is what I like best :

"Imagine for a moment that your family starts off each and every morning with that Friday afternoon feeling of freedom."

That really sums up why we've decided to homeschool, too!

I can think of one more reason to homeschool a child. That is, when a child has special needs or certain developmental or learning disorders. Eg. Autism, Dyspraxia, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Sensory Integration issues etc.

A school system would be too challenging for kids with these special conditions.