With the recent teacher’s strike the issue of parenting and home schooling became a hot topic in some of the circles I found myself in. The issue of home schooling elicited hot debates with friends and colleagues especially as it is considered a new concept in our society. The question was whether it is good for your child and if it hampers their social skills. I for one support home schooling but this might not be shared by all. I shall strive to state my case here.
For one, I believe it is beneficial to the child to spend as much time as possible with their parents. As my friend Jimmy put it, a child gains his or her first values not from what they are taught in school but what they are taught at home. As a wise man once said, you can only bend a tree when it is young – or something to that regards.
Secondly, I am not a really big fan of the content of our education system. I feel that it is not up to date with changes globally in terms of technological, social and scientific advancements. In a world that is going global on all fronts, a child from Kenya is expected to compete with a child in the United States of America, and I feel our education system is letting us down. This is not to put our education system down, as it is considered one of the toughest in the world, and I personally having gone through it have a lot of lessons that I have gotten from it. Despite that, the world requires more and more specialization in various fields and also our system does not allow children to express themselves and develop their individual passions and talents ( or to some extent it seems so).
Thus I support the concept of home schooling but also do recognize that it require a lot of commitment from parents or the tutors which may not be available in most families thus the public/private education system still has an upper hand.