Anti Homeschooling Arguments: Why Decide Against?

The most powerful anti homeschooling argument could be just that: ARGUMENTS. If you're looking for reasons why homeschooling is bad, this could be a real issue and a powerful argument against teaching your children at home.

If you and your partner aren't united in your support for homeschool you could find your family coming apart at the seams.

I know of one child who was relieved to stop homeschool just to escape the endless arguments between his Mom and Dad.

I rely on Rob to put me back in balance. A quick call to a friend and you're being told how their schoolchild has just been set a 750 word film review for homework – we haven't managed 3 lines yet!

"What a way to put a child off a film!" was Rob's response. He may not have been right, but it was comforting anyway.

Friends aren't always so lucky. I know a few strong individuals who carry on regardless, but it's bad enough having to deal with everyone else's anti homeschooling arguments without having to argue against your partner as well!

Of course, talking things through helps and maybe there's a compromise you can work out – if your partner's dead set against having a free-and-easy approach but you're totally anti schedule, maybe you can throw in enough workbooks to keep everyone happy. It's getting started on homeschooling that's often the hardest.

More reasons AGAINST homeschool

One anti homeschooling argument that you may well come up against is the fear that you will not be able to reach the academic standards of school. One look at the homeschooling statistics will show you the academic advantage of homeschooling, but I agree there is a problem with expectation.

If you're homeschooling there's a tendency to think you can do everything and more. Unfortunately you might just find yourself in the wrong race.

Homeschool is different from school, so the results you get are not always comparable, at least in the short-term.

Overall, I've no doubt homeschool is the winner academically, and in many other fields too.

But if you try to set yourself the same targets as school and copy the same methods, you could be setting yourself against the way homeschool works best. William and Catherine are light years ahead in some areas, just down from the treetops in others.

Real learning doesn't follow a straight line incrementally upwards, like the one they're so keen on presenting in graphs. That's part of the beauty of homeschool and one of the advantages of a flexible home school schedule.

You can afford the time to wait; there isn't a class to keep up with. It's common sense: we all develop different abilities at different times.

Catherine's still struggling with her 3 times tables – and that's another of the problems with homeschooling, – because unfortunately learning goes backwards as well as forwards! If only human children were as easily programmable as computers.

You can follow a homeschool curriculum, set goals and hit State targets – but they need to be realistic and tailored to the abilities of your child.

If you stick to the cast-iron route of building on your child's interests I'm certain your child will develop and grow in ways which would have been completely unforeseen had they gone to school.

But I agree with anti homeschooling arguments that say you can't expect your child to excel in every single area just because you're learning at home.

Homeschool's great, but it's not magic.

Most of the other anti homeschooling arguments you'll meet are based on that human knee-jerk instinct against something different: homeschool must be wrong because most people don't do it. I think we can all see through that one!

School isn't the only way; and who says it's the best?

Now let's look at the biggest anti homeschooling argument of them all – the supposed social disadvantages of homeschooling. You'll see you can turn that argument against itself and you may well begin to question what sort of socialization school really offers.

When you're thinking of anti homeschooling arguments it might be fair to write a list of all the arguments against school!

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