Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Conventional Schooling vs Homeschooling


With the evolution of the industrial era, man needed many things that help him run the factories so he designed many tools; for example conveyor belt, rails to move the mass production from here and there etc. Similarly he needed people who cannot think so he developed School.

The term ‘Homeschooling’ doesn’t refer to the schooling at home, rather it defines a natural learning process that takes place outside the school. Homeschooling doesn’t mean to have a tightly coupled curriculum to be taught at home, it enables learning all the time and everywhere mentality instead.

In this article, I will list some defining differences that I found between Conventional Schooling and Homeschooling.












Conventional Schooling
Homeschooling

Evolved
since few centuries
Tried and
tested for thousands of years

The traditional structured school was first built in 17th
century in the United States and it took tens of years to evolve in a
modern-day school that we see today. The system is not that old and tested.
The historical learning system which we are referring as
Homeschooling is tried and tested for thousands of years.
So the questions should be asked to the schoolers not the
homeschoolers as to what are the reason to opt for a new system when an old
system already exists.

Prepares
for exams
Prepares
for life and life hereafter

The conventional schooling system focuses on the exams. All its
efforts are centered to produce better results in exams. The same mentality
is transferred to the learners and the ultimate purpose of the learners'
studies is to perform well in the exams and get good grades. A typical
learner at the contemporary schooling system must know how to write a good
essay on Salah (an Islamic mandatory prayer) and at the same time he
may no be praying at all.

Since there is minimal or no examination in the homeschooling,
the studies are centered to actually learn the concepts and practical
knowledge. This enables learners to learn education that benefits them in
life, relationships and everywhere. They learn how to become good Muslim, good
spouse, good parents, good children and good member of the society.

Curriculum-based
Interest-based

The conventional schooling paradigm is curriculum-based. Some
people design the curriculum which is forced to the learners.
The homeschooling is interest-based. The homeschoolers design
their own curriculum.

Worthless
education
Worthwhile
education

The sort of education that is generally delivered in the
contemporary schools is limited to the exams or for the job market only. This
is why we call iit worthless education. We will not find knowledge like what
type of food is good for us, how many hours sleep is required in different
slabs of our life, how to maintain good husband/wife relationship etc. in a
schooling syllabus. If something is taught to the learners, they learn them
for the sake of the examination. This is why we find many highly qualified
professionals are very good in their jobs but very bad at home. They may have
received straight A's in their Islamic education subjects but at the same time
they may not pray even the mandatory prayers.
A worthwhile education is something that benefits in the life
and extends the benefits to the life hereafter. Since there are no exams, the
learners
are learning for the sake of knowledge and act only. They may
learn little but it will be reflected in their lives. Since they learn mostly
from the
general books instead of textbooks, they have the life skills to
outperform in relationships and different aspects of their lives.

Compromises
the Ideological beliefs
Can be
designed as per the Ideology

When we send
our child to a specific school, we are actually accepting their ideology and
we are bound to act according to it. For example, a typical school has music
in rhymes, cartoons and on different occasion like annual functions. If one
believes that Music is impermissible in his ideology, he still has to
compromise for the sake of his child’s education. So finally he is giving
education to his child at the cost of his ideological beliefs.
The
environment and study plan can be designed as per our Ideology and we are not
bound to follow someone we don’t want to and hence we nurture our child
without compromising our beliefs.

Thirst of
numbers
Thirst of
knowledge

Generally all the graduates of the school think the same, that
is to get a good degree and get good job or establish a good business to earn
some good money.
If homeschooling is done on the basis of worthwhile learning,
they get education for the sake of meaning and to serve the society with
their knowledge.

Treats
all learners equally
Maintains
individuality of each learner

With the revolution of the industrial age, the industries need
people similar to products. All copies of a product are built in the
factories in the same way. The raw material is gathered, some processing is
done on the raw material, the material is then transformed into a finished
product, the product is packaged and labelled and sent to the market for
selling. All the products which are coming from this assembly line are the
same. At each step the quality of the product is verified. There is a QC at
the end which ensures the quality of the final product and certifies that
this particular product is capable to introduce in the market. Same goes with
the students. They enter the school and follow the steps that are called
grades. Each grade has 100% same curriculum for all the learners. At the end
of each grade, the school assesses the performance of the learner and at the
end there is a final exam that qualifies the learner that he or she is able
to be introduced in the market. These learners may have varying interests,
strengths and abilities but they are all vanished during the education
process and finally they are such a product who wants to sell himself/herself
at a good price in the job market.
The homeschoolers on the other hand do not follow a defined and
structured curriculum. They design their own curriculum based on their
interests and strengths and usually they outperform in their fields. The
forefathers of the Islamic society used to use the same procedure and hence
the Islamic history has brilliant scholars and scientists.

Nurtures
part of child
Holistic
approach

The schooling system nurtures only part of the complete
education that is courses and subjects and the social circle.
With the homeschooling, we can nurture the child holistically
that is to develop the learners' spiritual, physical, social and intellectual
abilities.

Teaching-based
Facilitation-based

If we keep
giving high blood pressure medicine to someone who doesn’t have this disease,
someday his body will be tuned to control the blood pressure only when such
medicine is taken. Children are born as natural learners. Too much teaching
seriously affects the learning pattern of the child and eventually he is
tuned to learn only when he is taught.

The
homeschoolers receive facilitation instead of instructions from their parents
and mentors. As parents, we need to provide them access to the right
environment, people, technology and resources and rest is taken care by the
children themselves. They themselves can make their syllabus, study plan,
research methodologies and schedule.

Teacher
initiated study
Self
initiated study

In contemporary schooling, teacher is the one who selects a
topic from his/her planner and start teaching the learners, no matter they
are interested and ready to absorb that particular subject or knowledge. This
sometimes leads to just taking the lecture without the actual learning been
taken place.
In homeschooling, the learning starts as a result of
self-initiated inquiry which enables guaranteed learning.

Complete
self disconnect
Connection
with Self

Generally the students in the contemporary education system do
not have the capability to connect with their own self. Connection with the
own self means to think deeply about our own existence and initiate a process
of self accountability. There are three reasons for this disconnect; (a) They
do not have enough time to think because they are usually caught up in their
studies, homeworks, tuitions etc. (b) They are victim of such an
education paradigm that enables them to do step by step defined
activities only. (c) They do not have connection with the books and mentors
who can enable the process of thinking among them.
The above mentioned three problems are generally not found in a
well managed homeschooling paradigm; (a) Since they are not going to the
school so they have plenty of time for themselves (b) They become open-minded
as a result of the freedom they have during their studies (c) They are less
connected with textbooks and more connected with the mentors and the books
that teach life skills.

Artificial
Learning
Natural
Learning

In the traditional schooling, the learning is mostly artificial.
The learners learn about plants without actually planting or exploring the
real plants. They learn about planets without actually seeing them through a
telescope. They learn about healthy and junk food and at the same time they
watch their teachers having junk food during their free time, so it's almost
impossible to find a person who quits junk food after getting it learnt from
the school. The learning is limited to the white board and the exam sheets.
In the homeschooling, the learning is mostly natural. The
learners are facilitated with the right tools and equipments so they see and
feel the real objects around them. In order to learn about plants, they plant
their plants and start exploring them. In order to learn about science, they
do experiments to learn the particular concepts.

Hardly
Creative
Full of
Creativity

Before a century and even before, it was easy to predict the
future. The development in the science and technology was moving with a
smooth pace. At that time, it was comparatively easier to decide what
skillset the future generation may require and hence the same can be
prepared. With the revolutionary advancement in the fields of science and
technology, it is now difficult to predict even after 10 years. New
technological concepts are emerging every day and old are vanishing out. Each
new day brings us new professions and some of the existing professions that
were available are no more. Keeping this in mind, it is difficult to decide
what skills a particular learner should have to proceed in the future. This
is why if a person is creative, he will find his way in all good and bad
situations.
A typical schooling curriculum is hardly creative. The learners
have to follow a defined syllabus and answers the questions that are
specified in the syllabus. They are usually not allowed to go beyond the
defined syllabus. Most of the time they are required to produce the answer in
the answer script that their teacher wants to read. Similarly they are also
required to memorize certain things and produce them in the exams. This
practice seriously affects their creativity. They do it for years and finally
their minds are squeezed to perform only similar activities.
The homeschooling in contrast focuses on producing self
generated portfolios. It can be art, literature or a scientific theory. The
length of the content they learn may be small but their thinking process is
ignited and they know how to create new ideas and solutions based on these
ideas.

Weak
connection with parents
Strong
bonding with parents

If we look around, we will find that the school going children
hardly find a good family time to sit and discuss/play with their parents
daily. Their time
has been taken by their studies and exam preparations. If they
sit for an hour with their mothers or fathers, it's usually for either
homeworks or exam preparation. Hence as a result of the disconnection with
the parents, their knowledge and wisdom is not transferred to children.
Homeschoolers are learning not by their parents but with their
parents. They work like peers. They both learn together and as a result they
establish
a very good family bonding. The bonding and the relationship
results in the transfer of the knowledge and wisdom to the children.

Weak
connection with nature
Strong
connection with nature

The subjects
are usually taught in the classrooms and the trees, mountains, rivers,
animals and birds are explained in the text books.
The students
are taken near to the nature to experience themselves and learn. The role of
text book is secondary in this regard.

Self-centered
Relationship-centered

The ranking system in the schools develop self-centeredness in
the learners. They put their efforts to leave everyone behind and get the
best rank. If we closely look at a learner who is a position holder in
his/her class, we will find him seeing all his peers as the competitors.
In homeschooling, generally the Club model is adopted where learners
gather and work together to produce a combined output. This togetherness can
be with parents, siblings and/or with peers hence creating better
relationships between them.

Do as
directed mentality
Do as you
think better mentality

In conventional schools, many times learners are required to
solve particular problems with the method specified in the question only. For
example 'use the method of factorisation to solve the following quadratic
equation'. They are not allowed to choose a method that best suits to solve
this problem. Thinking and 'inventing' their own method to solve the problem
is considered as sin in the examination and the learner may get zero in that
question. This ignites the 'do as directed' mentality' in the learners which
is the exact requirement of the industry.
Homeschoolers have the freedom to think and choose the method
that best suits to solve the particular problem. They are even encourages to
design or invent their own methods.

Bombardment
of undesired information
Delivers
only desired knowledge

If we ask our parents how many subject they used to study at
school, it was lesser than those that we were taught at school. If we ask our
grand parents, it was even lesser than their children. If we see the subjects
of our children these days, they are more than what our parents or we were
taught. In the 21st century, there is a bombardment of the information. The
learners are
required to study too many subjects with too much information
within each subject regardless that information is useful in their personal
or professional
life or not. For example, I studied Sindhi language for almost 9
years at school and I never used this language even once in my life.
Homeschoolers do not learn everything. They focus on the desired
learning that will benefit them in their lives and lives hereafter.

Stress-full
learning
Stress
free learning

The throat-cutting competition in secondary and higher secondary
schools puts so much pressure on the learners that are under severe stress
specially
during their exams. If we do a survey of the past news, we will
easily find many cases when children went into depression after not getting
proper marks and even some committed suicide.
The homeschoolers learn in relaxed and stress-free environment
because they have no exams and hence no competition. They believe in
cooperation not competition.

Age-wise
grouping
Interest-wise
grouping

How strange is it, No? In traditional schools we group learners
on the basis of age, neither on the basis of interests nor on the basis of
abilities. All learners within a particular age range will be taking all the
subjects of that particular grade.
In the traditional system, people of all ages use to sit with
their mentors. Take an example of our ancestors. People who have interest on
a
particular subject use to sit in the company of that particular
scholar/mentor. The same happens in our Mosques. If there is a lecture of
Hadith,
people of all ages who are interested to learn Hadith are
welcome to the group. With this process, the knowledge penetrates deep in the
hearts of the people.

Provides
ability to answer
Provides
ability to question

The traditional schooling system prepares learners to provide
answers to the questions asked.
The homeschooling learners learn the ability to raise questions
which leads them to question some of the established norms of the society
that they may think wrong.

Hijacked
the childhood
Freedom
to enjoy the childhood

A typical
school works for at least 6 hours, if we add the time of travelling to and
from the school then it may increase to 7 to 8 hours. The child usually comes
with a homework that may last for 1 hour. Many families handover the children
to the tutor that again takes another hour. The child may be attending other
education schools for example Madrasa for Quran recitation or memorization.
So the child finally ends up with 10 hours of education per day. Where's’ the
childhood gone? The child doesn’t have enough time to play with his parents,
friends and cousins. He doesn’t have time to run behind a cat or take a
shower in the rain. He even doesn’t have time to sit with the grandma and
listen her childhood stories.
The child
enjoys the childhood. Since the focus is on creativity not on the length of
the content, hence he has plenty of time to make experiments and learn from
the experiences. He is not supposed to learn everything everyday. He is tuned
to find learning patterns everywhere when when it is raining or when he is
sitting with the grandma.

Parents’
training is not required
Parents
need to be continuously trained

Ideally the nurturing of children is the responsibility of the
parents. In the current era, people are also distracted and they don't want
to spend so much time on their children, rather they found it easy to pay the
school and let it nurture their children. Hence they outsource this divine
responsibility to the people who work for salary. When the responsibility is
outsourced, there is no need for their training as well and hence parents
don't work to improve their intellectual skills.
In the homeschooling paradigm, the nurturing process is moved
along with the parents and hence parents need continuous training. Finally
it's not just the child who is developing the spiritual, physical, social and
intellectual skills rather its parents as well who develop these skills in
parallel.

Herd
mentality
Personalized
mentality

Going to the
school without having clear reasons why to go is itself an example of herd
mentality and this is just the start. Since the beginning the child is tuned
to accept and do what everyone else are doing. So they go to the schools,
they sleep long on the weekends, they make birthday parties and they do a job
in a certain company because the big herd around them is doing this.

Homeschooling
is an start of the personalized mentality which can be deeply inculcated it
the child as he grows in this journey. Since he is not fully exposed to the
herd, he can be educated to maintain his personalized mentality based on the
ideology and reasons and not because everyone else around him is doing such
things.






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