Pros–Benefits of Homeschooling

• 1.Spend more time together as a family.
• 2.Spend more time with children when they are rested and fresh rather than tired and cranky from school.
• 3.Superior academic achievement through individual tutoring.
• 4.Parents can ensure that their children master the subjects.
• 5.Children can be daily instructed and vitally involved in the realities and responsibilities of life in the everyday real world context of the home, the community, the workplace and the marketplace.
• 6.The world is the classroom.
• 7.Tutoring provides vast amounts of individual attention.
• 8.Curriculum can be tailor made to suit child’s interests, learning style, aptitudes, special needs, etc.
• 9.Quieter, more secure, loving and committed environment of home builds stronger foundation for child’s security.
• 10.Builds stronger family ties as everyone is involved in a 24-hour-a-day project of great importance and vast implications.
• 11.Parents feel more fulfilled in themselves, and are continually challenged to a higher standard of excellence. Their own potentials are more fully developed.
• 12.Parents are most committed to the child’s success. No one else will spend the blood, sweat, toil, tears, time and money parents routinely invest in their own children.
• 13.Children receive superior socialisation through the parents’ positive role models and consistent training. Parents’ standards are not constantly contradicted as can happen in the classroom and on the playground.
• 14.The child’s learning, rather than the teacher’s teaching, is the focus of the whole exercise.
• 15.The child’s education will not conflict with or contradict the philosophy and world view of the parents and/or the family’s church.
• 16.Homeschooled children generally demand a higher standard of excellence in radio and TV programming, theatre, the arts, books, magazines, movies, etc. As more and more such individuals abound, they will not only create a market for better goods in these areas, but may also signal the demise of the NZ porn and sleeze merchants for lack of patronage.
• 17.Independent, individual, original thinkers, as homeschoolers tend to be, may develop into NZ’s own Shakespeares, Einsteins and Beethovens. Consider the South Island’s own C.W.F. Hamilton, the inventor of the jet boat and revolutionary earthmoving equipment. He declared that his two years in school interrupted his education.
• 18.Independent homeschooling is a must if we are to preserve our civil liberties from the totalitarian tendencies of the social welfare state. As the Presbyterian scholar of Princeton and Westminster Theological Seminaries, Professor J. Gresham Machen, warned way back in 1926, “If liberty is not maintained with regard to education, there is no use trying to maintain it in any other sphere. If you give the bureaucrats the children you might just as well give them everything else.”
• 19.Children and parents are able to form deeper friendships and more intimate relationships with each other….the family unit is thereby drawn closer together and strengthened.
• 20.Children learn respect for their parents as teachers in all areas of life. They will look to their parents and to those adults whom the parents respect for advice and guidance rather than to whatever teachers, social workers, and peers happen to be immediately available. The Generation Gap is closed.
• 21.Your child is removed from a peer-dominated environment in which he or she is exposed to countless potential failure situations, damaging both self esteem and love of learning.
• 22.The parents’ commitment to and intimate knowledge of the child, the individualised attention, the increased flexibility to even follow the child’s individual preferences in study and the parents’ enthusiasm and excitement about learning themselves will more than make up for any perceived lack of a paper teaching qualification.
• 23.Avoid having to struggle to get children to do the tedious busy work that is so often sent home as homework.
• 24.Allow children time to learn subjects not usually taught in their school.
• 25.Allow children to have time for more in-depth study than what is allowed in school.
• 26.Allow children to learn at their own pace, not too slow or too fast.
  Allow children to work at a level that is appropriate to their own developmental stage. Skills and concepts can be introduced at the right time for that child.
• 27.Provide long, uninterrupted blocks of time for writing, reading, playing, thinking, or working so that the child is able to engage in sophisticated, complex activities and thought processes.
• 28.Encourage concentration and focus – which are discouraged in crowded classrooms with too many distractions.
• 29.Encourage the child to develop the ability to pace her/himself – this is prevented in a classroom where the schedule is designed to keep every child busy all the time.
• 30.Spend a lot of time out-of-doors. This is more healthy than spending most weekdays indoors in a crowded, and often over heated, classroom.
• 31.Spending more time out-of-doors results in feeling more in touch with the changing of the seasons and with the small and often overlooked miracles of nature.
• 32.Children learn to help more with household chores, developing a sense of personal responsibility.
• 33.Children learn life skills, such as cooking, in a natural way, by spending time with adults who are engaged in those activities.
• 34.More time spent on household responsibilities strengthens family bonds because people become more committed to things they have invested in (in this case, by working for the family).
• 35.Time is available for more non-academic pursuits such as art or music. This leads to a richer, happier life.
• 36.Children will not feel like passive recipients of subject matter selected by their teachers. They will learn to design their own education and take responsibility for it.
• 37.Children will realize that learning can take place in a large variety of ways.
• 38.Children will learn to seek out assistance from many alternative sources, rather than relying on a classroom teacher to provide all the answers.
• 39.A more relaxed, less hectic lifestyle is possible when families do not feel the necessity to supplement school during after-school and week-end hours.
• 40.Busy work can be avoided.
• 41.Children will avoid being forced to work in “co-operative learning groups” which include children who have very unco-operative attitudes.
• 42.Children can learn to work for internal satisfaction rather than for external rewards.
• 43.Children will not be motivated to “take the easy way out” by doing just enough work to satisfy their teacher. They will learn to be their own judge of the quality of their own work.
• 44.Children will be more willing to take risks and be creative since they do not have to worry about being embarrassed in front of peers.
• 45.Children will be more confident since they are not subject to constant fear of criticism from teachers.
• 46.Peer pressure will be reduced. There will be less pressure to grow up as quickly in terms of clothing styles, music, language, interest in the opposite sex.
• 47.Social interactions will be by choice and based on common interests.
• 48.Friends can be more varied, not just with the child’s chronological age peer group who happen to go to the same school.
• 49.Field trips can be taken on a much more frequent basis.
• 50.Field trips can be much more enjoyable and more productive when not done with a large school group which usually involves moving too quickly and dealing with too many distractions.
• 51.Field trips can be directly tied into the child’s own curriculum.
• 52.Volunteer service activities can be included in the family’s regular schedule. Community service can be of tremendous importance in a child’s development and can be a great learning experience.
• 53.Scheduling can be flexible, allowing travel during less expensive and less crowded off-peak times. This can allow for more travel than otherwise, which is a wonderful learning experience.
• 54.Children will be less likely to compare their own knowledge or intelligence with other children and will be less likely to become either conceited or feel inferior.
• 55.Religious and special family days can be planned and celebrated.
• 56.More time will be spent with people (friends and family) who really love and care about the children. Children will bond more with siblings and parents since they will spend more time together playing, working, and helping each other.
• 57.Feedback on children’s work will be immediate and appropriate. They won’t have to wait for a teacher to grade and return their work later to find out if they understood it.
• 58.Feedback can be much more useful than just marking answers incorrect or giving grades.
• 59.Testing is optional. Time doesn’t have to be spent on testing or preparing for testing unless the parent and/or child desires it.
• 60.Observation and discussion are ongoing at home and additional assessment methods are often redundant. Testing, if used, is best used to indicate areas for further work.
• 61.Grading is usually unnecessary and learning is seen as motivating in and of itself. Understanding and knowledge are the rewards for studying, rather than grades (or stickers, or teacher’s approval, etc.).
• 62.Children can be consistently guided in a family’s values and can learn them by seeing and participating in parents’ daily lives.
• 63.Children will learn to devote their energy and time to activities that THEY think are worthwhile.
• 64.Children will be able to learn about their ethnicities in a manner that will not demean. Children will be able to understand multiculturalism in its true sense and not from the pseudo-multicultural materials presented in schools which tend to depict others from a dominant culture perspective.
• 65.Children will not learn to “fit into society,” but will, instead, value morality and love more than status and money.
• 66.Children do not have to wait until they are grown to begin to seriously explore their passions; they can start living now.
• 67.Children’s education can be more complete than what schools offer.
• 68.Children who are “different” in any way can avoid being subjected to the constant and merciless teasing, taunting, and bullying which so often occurs in school.
• 69.Children with special needs will be encouraged to reach their full potential and not be limited by the use of “cookie cutter” educational methods used in schools.
• 70.Low standards or expectations of school personnel will not influence or limit children’s ability to learn and excel.
• 71.Children will be safer from gangs, drugs, and guns.
• 72.Parents will decide what is important for the children to learn, rather than a government bureaucracy.
• 73.Family will not be forced to work within school’s traditional hours if it does not fit well with their job schedules and sleep needs.

Cons–Drawbacks of Conventional Schooling

• 1. Political motivation of curricula content.
• 2.Susceptibility to radical philosophical overtones of pressure groups: relativism, feminism, mysticism, socialism, the worst of the Family Planning Association, homosexual activism.
• 3.Bright children often bored and unchallenged.
• 4.Slow, SPELD or handicapped children often left behind or under-attended.
• 5.Many children subjected to bullying, teasing, victimisation, manipulation and the many negative aspects of peer pressure.
• 6.The peer pressure often leads to peer dependency wherein a child will look to his peers for acceptance, standards, morals and guidance.
• 7.Danger from dense traffic, kidnappers and perverts while travelling to and from school.
• 8.Exposure to unhealthy, unrighteous and immoral lifestyles as well as infectious diseases, epidemics, head lice, etc.
• 9.Some children suffer the insecurity of psychological rejection at being sent away from home by parents who often unwittingly give the children the impression they are glad to have the children off their hands.
• 10.Because the children are away from home for most of the day, Mum or Dad may both tend to focus their attention and look for personal fulfillment outside of the family.
• 11.Children often develop a split personality in order to deal with one set of authority, values and standards at school and a completely different set at home.
• 12.The instruction tends to be like mass treatment of children on the classroom dosing strip. No time for individualised tuition.
• 13.Classroom environment is artificial and contrived and shelters children from the reality of everyday life in the home, the community and the workplace/marketplace. The classroom is also often overcrowded, too cluttered, too noisy and unruly.
• 14.Necessary academic subjects are skimmed over for lack of time. Unnecessary and sometimes controversial subjects are shoehorned into the programme wasting precious time.
• 15.There is the added costs of fees, uniforms, committee meetings, transportation. There are hassles with timetables, personality conflicts with teachers, administrators, other parents. There is worry about the competency of some teachers, the influence of certain other students, and rumours of unsavoury “goings on” at school.

Cons–Drawbacks to Homeschooling

• 1.There may be fewer opportunities for playing team sports.
• 2.The house begins to resemble a research station rather than an immaculate showhome.
• 3.Research and learning opportunities begin to spring up in your mind and can even dominate all other activities.
• 4.There may be hassles in transferring back into the school system. Because you have been studying along a different stream, and even though your child may know a lot more about a lot more subjects, because he hasn’t done “Insects” and “Trains” as did his school peers, your child may be thought of as “behind” and the teachers will complain about having to spend extra time bringing your child up to speed.
• 5.Parents may find they have less free time to themselves.
• 6.Homeschooled students tend to miss out on the trendy and experimental educational philosophies and methodologies instigated by the MoE from time to time. They also tend to miss out on those units which are “pushed” into schools by government policies, special interest lobby groups, trustee boards, headmasters and even individual teachers.
• 7.Homeschooled students may lack the stimulation which academic competition can provide.
• 8.Homeschoolers tend to be less knowledgeable and sophisticated in the areas of swearing, dirty joke telling, finger signs, alcohol and drug abuse, illicit sexual activity and gang dynamics.
• 9.Parents may face some opposition from relatives, friends, neighbours and school personnel.