Aside from the often superior education homeschool students receive, here are some more reasons to homeschool your teenager:
Because homeschooling can be done at any time of the day and takes a lot less time than traditional school, many homeschooled teens can work part-time or full-time to earn money for college, their own spending money or car, or just to gain work experience. They can volunteer their time and skills during regular work hours when many agencies are open and need help. They can also spend more time learning life skills around the house and doing chores many teens just don’t have time to do.
Homeschooled students are less influenced by other teenagers and their sophomoric, cruel or even criminal behavior. Homeschooled teens are influenced much more by responsible adults and are held accountable to them. In school, a student can skate by on C’s and D’s and still go on to the next grade while goofing off. In a homeschool environment, parents can demand excellence in students’ studies and not allow them to pass if they don’t have an A or B level of understanding in a subject. My son soon learned he was better off doing something right the first time if he didn’t want to spend a bunch of time doing it over until I was satisfied with his work.
You can tailor a student’s curriculum to fit his or her specific needs and interests. If your child wants to pursue fashion design you can avoid teaching him or her three hard sciences and math beyond Algebra I and Geometry. Measurements relevant to the fashion industry can be taught instead. For example, sales and marketing could be taught instead of a third or fourth history course. To fill in any gaps in knowledge from not taking a class, the student can read a few books on a subject to get the main ideas. This is what we do as adults. When we need or want to learn something we get a book and read about it. An overview appreciation course could also be substituted for individual classes in subjects a student won’t use again. Someone going into the arts or business needs to know enough about science to be an informed citizen, but that knowledge could be covered in a physical science course about all the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, and astronomy) and one life sciences course covering biology, botany, earth and environmental science.
One of the biggest advantages of homeschooling is you can focus your teen on the three most important skills her or she will need:
- to read something and discuss it or write about it knowledgeably and well
- to find information quickly and independently
- basic and everyday math skills
If you can read and comprehend it, you can learn anything. If you have a great deal of skill and practice in basic math, you are equipped to learn more advanced math subjects.
I’m sure there are many more reasons to homeschool. Please speak your mind in the comments and share your ideas with us.
Sherri
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