Pakistan’s Express Tribune hosted a piece by Rahul Karamat Barlaas. The idea of homeschooling is well represented.
Yes, I was home-schooled and I turned out fine
My parents decided to do things a bit differently with me and my siblings. They didn’t want us to be fed with the same prejudices that inhabit the thinking of regular schoolchildren. They wanted us to have an open mind, form our own opinions and have the confidence of being able to think out of the box. This is why we never even hired a professional tutor.
The education system in our society – be it schools or madrassas – tend to frame minds according to their ideologies. Our parents let us act according to our own choice and did not force us to fit in to a particular mindset. They let us decide what we wanted to pursue and who we wanted to be.
Learning by example set them off on the right track.
In the beginning, we were inspired to study when we noticed the people around us; they were often seen with reading material in their hands.
As Piaget’s theory on child development points out, a child should be seen as an explorer. We, too, explored the things which were around us; we explored books. We would take the books to our parents and asked them to tell us what they were for because they seemed so interesting. Our parents encouraged us to read the books ourselves. That was the commencement of self-studying. And of course, this was after we had developed familiarity with the alphabets and so on!
I won’t go as far as to say that the way of homeschooling is something exceptionally great or that conventional schooling is less qualitative. It is simply an experience of freedom.
The specific freedom to sleep as needed has recently been shown as a strong benefit for homeschoolers.
But it’s not like home-school isn’t cool. There are no boundaries in this system; you can do whatever you feel like doing regardless of time constraints. In fact, you are entirely free to follow your call, study when you think it is the right time and indulge in whatever subjects you enjoy the most. If you don’t feel like studying, there’s no one to force you to do it. Everything you do is up to you. You have the liberty to wake up and sleep when you want to. Nobody is there to tell you to go to bed because you have to wake up for school tomorrow. No one will wake you up early in the morning and say,
“Beta, wake up! It’s time to go to school!”
The Washington Post also discovered the National Jewish Health Sleep Study and the benefits of homeschooling.
This young man offered a great homeschooling snapshot in his opinion piece.