The Early Human Handbook

Home schooling releases a child from peer pressure and some home schooling parents argue that family life is much happier when the stresses of a school environment are removed. A common refrain is that their son or daughter can ‘be themselves again’. I have some sympathy for this. A child should not have to defend wanting to learn or be forced to agree that such aspirations are ‘not cool’. Instead, they can yield to their natural impulse for curiosity and learning can be a positive experience for them.

Cons
Lack of social development.
Home schooling greatly reduces your child’s access to other children. Even if you make every effort to ensure they get plenty of playtime and other opportunities to meet and interact with people their own age, it’s unlikely to equal the 30+ hours in a normal school week. Is this important? Well, yes. Studies have shown that reduced opportunities to play and interact, which is a growing trend in our safety conscious society, has been accompanied by increases in childhood mental disorders. I have touched upon this in previous articles but, at the expense of reiteration, it has been linked to a general decline in empathy, an increase in depression and anxiety, a reduction in creativity and a rise in narcissism and social awkwardness. Playing with our peers is important. It is here that we learn the rules of social interaction, how to cooperate with one another and resolve conflict. These are the building blocks of our society. Learning to make friends and exist within a group are inestimably important life lessons.This may be mitigated by creating a schedule that incorporates home-school activities such as field trips to places of interest, involvement in sports and activities at recreation centres, and meeting other home school parents through home-school groups.

Missing Milestones
When we reflect with others on our past, how we grew up, we have common experiences and identifiable milestones that we can point to..balls, field trips, annoying teachers and so on. For the home schooler there is, for this period of their lives, no shared social identity. Is this important? I’ll leave you to be the judge of that, but I would suggest commonality is important in friendship and social bonding.

Reduced competition
Is the drive to compete (and by extension achieve) neutered by a home school environment? School provides many opportunities to test an individual’s mettle against the next person, be it academically, in sport or any number of after school clubs. Without such opportunities to go up against their peers a child’s natural aptitudes may remain untapped. Of course there are teams and competitive hobbies outside the school environment but attending them requires a prior interest and a degree of proactivity. A school system by contrast naturally introduces areas of competition that night not otherwise have been considered.Parents for home schooling however argue that an environment in which children do not have to be continually tested is a positive one. They believe that SATs are unhelpful, divisive and ultimately damaging. They suggest that such testing does not enhance a child’s learning but actually squanders time that could be spent doing more inspirational activities. They further contend that the home educated child generally moves through material at a much greater rate than the school based individual and therefore has time to develop other interests.