Teachers Homeschool their own children!
You would imagine that teachers more than any other group would be fully committed to sending their own children to school!
The general feeling from parents is that school enables children to flourish and to benefit from a rich and varied education; it helps them socialise and benefit from the structure of regular class times and school equipment. A good school can set your child up for life. All this sounds great and in an ideal world, maybe it is, but it doesn’t seem to be true today.
The fact that a rising number of teachers are leaving the classroom and homeschooling their own children is concerning. What does this say about the standards of education in our schools if the very professionals who make the system work for other people’s children are reluctant to choose this path for their own?
The truth is that most teachers who homeschool their children do so because they have lost faith in the education system. And because they know exactly what the failings of the modern schools are, this exodus from the classroom to homeschooling is deeply troubling.
Far from helping a child flourish and learn, many homeschooling teachers agree that the reverse is true. There is a range of common issues.
Most teachers complain that class sizes are too large to give any child the individual attention they deserve. A teacher may see that a child is unstimulated by the curriculum or struggling to fit in with the school environment but with so many children in the class and so little time, they are powerless to do anything about individual cases.
Instead, the prime focus is all about testing and results. Failing to do well at basic tests reflects badly on the school so this is the prime motivation for most teachers, struggling under an ever-increasing mound of paperwork.
This culture of testing and categorisation just does not work for children. Any behaviour that distracts from this is seen as disruptive because the aim is to take a range of uniquely different children and turn them into compliant robots.
Some children may do well in this rigid environment but most will not.
The result is that far from flourishing under such strict and basic guidelines, many children develop issues with confidence and become withdrawn or just give up on learning.
Children learn to conform from an early age and right from the start of their education, they have already learned to suppress their vitality, their creativity, their hopes and dreams. This narrow outlook does not encourage the academics, the explorers, the creatives or the mathematicians of the future.
How did this happen? Most teachers entered education in order to teach but the truth is that the public education system does not allow them to do their jobs properly. Passing on a love of education and helping a child realise his or her full potential has no place in a world which is all about conformity and tests results.
Co-Founder & CEO of the British Online School
