Homeschooling ( also called home education), home learning or homeschool – is the education of children at home, typically by parents or guardians, rather than in a public or private school. Prior to the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education occurred within the family or community, with only a small portion of the population attending schools or employing tutors or governesses. Currently, the great majority of children in developed nations receive their formal education in public and private schools.

In many places homeschooling is a legal option for parents who wish to provide their children with a different learning environment than exists in nearby schools. Some of these families make this choice on religious grounds. Many do it because of a dissatisfaction with the schools in their area or with the institutional effect of school in general. Others do it because their children are being bullied and abused by other children or teachers. It is also an alternative for families living in isolated rural locations and those who choose, for practical or personal reasons, not to have their children attend school.

Homeschooling may refer to instruction in the home under the supervision of correspondence schools or umbrella schools. In some places, an approved curriculum is legally required if children are to be home-schooled. A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling may be called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator John Holt in his magazine Growing Without Schooling.

Many people are talking about home schooling, an education system run at home. Printed and electronic press have made this term of family-based alternative education becomes more popular.
People have been focusing on home schooling in the past two years, since many parents feel that, in many cases, learning atmosphere in schools does not prioritize students’ interests. Many children become stressful and finally they are losing their creativity.

With such a condition, teachers start to think bout how to make schools more agreeable and at the same time, make students smarter. Then, various alternative schools emerged. Natural school for instance, which, bring back students to learn from the nature. Students no longer have to study inside the classrooms where everything is severe and closed, but in the nature.

There is also another kind of alternative schools which allow students to study anything depending on their interests. There is no school here like in formal schools. Teachers’ role is guiding and directing students in the field they have chosen according to their own interests.

There are still many kinds of alternative schools using different methods, in which students are treated as subject of the curriculum, and not the object. Or in other words schools and curriculum are designed to serve students, not on the contrary, students prepared to serve schools and curriculum!

Among those alternatives mentioned above, there is a home schooling or schooling at home. Etymologically, home schooling is school run at home; however, basically it is an alternative school treating students as subjects using at-home education approach.

Such an approach make students feels comfortable. They can learn according to their wish and they own style; anytime, anywhere, as if they were at home.

In this model, students do not always have to study at home, but they can study anywhere and anytime as long as they feel happy and comfortable like at home. The school hours are also very flexible, starting when they wake up until they go to bed.

This concept has been developed in many developed countries. In the United States, for instance, home schooling curriculums have been developed to allow the system has a clear concept and vision. This year, there are around 1.8 million American children learning using this method and it is predicted to increase next year up to 2.5 million.

How about in Indonesia?

Our country, in fact has been familiar with home schooling concept far before the introduction of western education system. In Islamic boarding schools, for instance, the kyai, buya, and tuan guru educate their own children.

In the past, warriors, noblemen and artists also did this. They educated their children in their own schools or homes.

Important figures such as KH Agus Salim, Ki Hajar Dewantara, or Buya HAMKA also develop methods using home schooling system. The objective was not to pass the exam and to get a diploma, but it was to love and to develop knowledge.

Currently, this home schooling system can be developed to support equivalency education programs, especially for students having problems like, street children, child labors, children of remote tribal groups, as well as students with special talents such as athletes or artists who have a very tight schedule.

Law on National Education System

How about the government? Principally there are no problems. Because the article 27 paragraph (1) of the Law no. 20/2003 on National Education System (Sisdiknas), stipulated: “Informal education activities are carried out by a family and entourage in the form of independent learning process.” The article (2) stipulates: “The result of the education as mentioned in the paragraph (1) is recognized as equal with formal and non formal education after students pass the examination according to the national education standards.”

Therefore, home schooling is protected by the law.

Home schooling could be classified in three groups, namely singular, plural and community. Single home schooling is carried out by a family independently without joining other families. Plural home schooling is run by several families. While the community home schooling is carried out together using plural model with a more organized curriculum like in non-formal education.

Therefore, home schooling could be registered at the local education agency as a non-formal education community. Participants can take the Model A (elementary school level), Model B (junior high school level) and Model C (Senior high school level) national equivalency examination.

There are various challenges facing home schooling management, namely: (1) difficulties in getting support or inquiries; (2) lacking of place to socialize and parents have to be skilled enough to facilitate the learning process; and (3) evaluation and equivalency.

However, with the introduction of Home schooling and alternative Education Association (Asah-Pena) to coordinate various home schooling activities and alternative education in Indonesia, including providing training and information on the management, all those hurdles could be hopefully overcame.

Moreover, the strength of home schooling is to give more independency and creativity for children, thus there is a bigger chance to achieve individual competency optimally, children are protected from social diseases such as drugs, consumerism, abnormal relationship and brawl. It also allows children to be ready to face the reality in a wider scope of relationship.

This also strengthen the beliefs that home schooling model could be an alternative of education in the future, and it also speed up the realization of learning society which become one of the characteristic of civil society..

SETO MULYADI Head of Hose Schooling and Alternative Education Association

Let’s look at some of the benefits of homeschooling over traditional schooling:

1. Flexible Schedule

Homeschooling enables a flexible schedule. For example, the child does not need to wake up at 7 every morning. With homeschooling, your child can start homeschooling at 9am or later depending on your preferred schedule. You can schedule your child’s homeschooling education as you see fit with materials or subjects that may be not available in a traditional school.

You can tailor the homeschool curriculum to suit the needs and interest of your child.

2. Individual attention

In a traditional school setting, thirty to forty students are assigned to a teacher in class. Therefore usually, the teacher cannot devote 100 percent attention to any child since it will not be fair to the other children. Plus, it is quite impossible to provide individual attention to all students.

With homeschooling, your child gets all the individual attention he/she needs. For example, if your child is weak in mathematics, you could devote more time and energy into teaching mathematics.

Your child’s homeschooling schedule can be adjusted to crater for that. For example, if your child is better at science than at mathematics, simple devote more homeschooling hours to mathematics and cut back on science. With homeschooling, the choice is yours. Traditional schools can’t do that.

3. Family Activity

The schooling of the child can become an extended family activity. Examples are field trips and experiments. Plus, the child also receives more quality time with his/her parents. There is more time for family bonding. The child is also free of any negative peer pressure or influences.

4. No peer pressure

With homeschooling, the child does not need to prove his/her abilities to other children. Parents are able to deeply understand their child better with homeschooling and therefore are able to plan the learning program according to his strengths and weakness.

Parents can also change the curriculum to suit the learning style of the child. For example, some children learn better from reading while others need to write. Some children even learn better from experiencing or seeing things in action.

5. Religion Learning

Religious learning is a sensitive issue hence most traditional schools shunned it. However, with homeschooling, parents can take control over the moral and religious learning of the child. Parents can impart their ideologies and deep beliefs into the child rather than let the school dictate what moral and religious education the child will be receiving.

Homeschooling is the best way to educate a child as you can see from the advantages listed below. If you have the time, the interest and the ability, why not give it a try?

The following lists are the advantages and disadvantages of homeschooling.

Disadvantages

There is no point in painting a rainbow picture of homeschooling. Idealism is a quick path to burnout. So, let us examine some homeschooling disadvantages together:

• Lack of Time – Homeschooling can be a full-time job unto itself. It takes research, preparation (how depends on your homeschooling style and curriculum), time to set up, clean up, organization, and of course, teaching itself. This is a lot to do on top of other work, be that a job outside the home, or all that goes with running a family.
• Personal Space – Homeschooling parents give a lot of themselves. One thing that often takes a back seat is making time for yourself. It takes a lot of energy to homeschool, and that energy has to come from somewhere. Make sure you make time for yourself, every week, be that going out with a friend or a solo dinner in your room with a good book.
• All that housework! – It is hard to keep up with routine chores when much of the week is devoted to school. Think of homeschooling as a full-time job, and organize the rest of your life accordingly. A weekly plan goes a long way to keeping chaos at bay!
• Pressure – We all do it. We look at what others are doing, compare ourselves, and usually find ourselves short. Whether it is the public school, private school, your homeschooling friends – do not compare. Everyone has their own unique styles and way of schooling their children. Find what works, and proceed confidently.

Advantages

Yes, there are disadvantages to homeschooling. However, there are many advantages, too.

• A schedule that works – Are your children early birds? Do you find your peak time of day starting at noon? It can all work in homeschooling. Homeschooling works with your family. Personally, my children love knowing that they are eating breakfast while most of their friends are already in class.
• Wide range of learning – You are not stuck to a pre-set curriculum in most cases. There are so many cool things to study – Latin, Spanish, how to garden, quilting, sewing, art, music, microscopes…well, the list is endless. Every year you will find new things to learn, see, and do.
• Flexibility – We can take a family vacation in November, a month off in December, a week off when we all have the flu. Homeschooling is flexible. We had no plans to study parade floats, but after watching a parade one day, one of my children starting planning their own float design. While there is no way I am ordering 20,000 roses to decoate a full-size float, we can build a mini-model. We learn art, building design, physics (how to make it move), and math (figuring out measurements to make it all fit. Flexibility!
• Knowing your kids – I list this last because I consider it the biggest prize of homeschooling. While there are times every day I would gladly hide in my room, overall I so enjoy my time with my kids. In teaching them, I really get to know them in ways I did not before. I not only love my kids, I being around them.

These are just a few, but maybe it will help get you started. In the end, what is required is taking the plunge. It is a leap of faith both frightening and exhilarating.

The interesting thing was what prompted such a change? There have been many recent surveys to suggest that parents are getting impatient and fed up with our public schooling system. It is seen as being superficial with no real-life skills being applied and taught.

Parents are also concerned about the negative publicity often portrayed in news. Examples are school students taking drugs in schools, abusing fellow students physically and even students bringing guns and knifes to school. Parents are concerned about the negative peer influence these students cause to their child.

Homeschooling offers an opportunity to end all that and allows parents to bring up their children in a natural and loving environment. I believe homeschooling is especially important in the early years of a child’s development (between three to twelve years old) as this is the period where they are prone to negative influences and peer pressure and cannot differentiate what is right and what is wrong. Homeschooling helps to protect them from such negative influences.

Another benefit of homeschooling is an inevitable bond between the child and the parents. The parents and the child spends more time together forming an unique bond. The bond gets stronger as time passes and later you will find that you can connect with your child better than you never thought before.

Parents can also have better control over the kind of moral and religious beliefs a child should have. Parents can impart their moral values and beliefs to their child easily since they spend more time together.

So what’s stopping parents from adopting homeschooling? For one thing, homeschooling requires a lot of time and money. For most families, both parents needs to be working full-time to support the family. Most homeschooling families I know of is dependent in one parent for the income. The other parent has to devote full-time in homeschooling the child. Therefore in some cases, it is not possible to adopt homeschooling unless you are financially stable.

The other interesting phenomena is that more and more homeschooling support groups are cropping up in your neighbourhood. They help to guide and support each other. Some homeschooling support groups have even gone online. If you do decide to go homeschooling, find a homeschooling support group in your area.