Educating at home, or homeschooling, is a little-known alternative that is not usually practiced in Spain, but it is very popular in other countries. It consists, as its name says that the child does not go to school, but follows the training program from home. It is your parents or guardians who perform the function of teaching you.
This teaching method it has its followers and also its detractors. Each family, depending on the situation, can decide or not for this educational system.
Some advantages of homeschooling
Families who choose to homeschool find an advantage in the fact that children can have their father, mother or older siblings by their side. It is easier to adapt the method to the child and not vice versa. Learning is designed with more consideration of interests of the child, in a design of teaching more holistic and experimental than traditional programs.
On the other hand, the schedules and formal and bureaucratic matters of the school are not taken into account. Although in this sense it must be emphasized that it depends on the families, since there are families that hire tutors or specialists in homeschooling.
Other questions may be more practical like that virus infections are eliminated the possibility of saving on materials, there are no transfers in the case of distant schools, reduces the possible stress of the child in front of the group or the competitiveness of the classrooms. There are many parents who with this teaching try to protect their children from ideas alien to their interests, but the reality is that children interact with the outside, they do not live in bubbles.
Disadvantages of homeschooling
The most common issues that are noted as disadvantages of homeschooling children are that lose benefits of public education, such as scholarships, excursions, extracurricular classes… Failure to socialize with other children and with other disciplinary figures is taken as counterproductive, since certain social isolation can be incurred.
There less contact with other ideas, as it tends to develop around the interests of the family. This can lead to less acceptance and intolerance of other opinions. For parents the education of the child takes a long time available. It becomes a unwavering commitment. You have to have a lot of willpower and a great vocation.
In Spain there is an obligation to follow a school program. The child has to homologate his level of knowledge With other children of his age, this is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, it simply indicates that beyond what the parents want to teach a program to comply with, therefore the teaching must be effective.
The situation of home schooling in Spain
In Spain, this modality of teaching at home is followed by some 2.000 families. Although not expressly prohibited by law, the reality is that there is a loophole. The LOE makes schooling compulsory from 6 to 16 years of age, but the Constitutional Court ruled in 2010 that the “invoked power of parents to choose for their children an education outside the compulsory schooling system for pedagogical reasons is not included in none of the constitutional freedoms.
Following this pronouncement of the High Court, various judgments were issued that they have forced mothers and fathers to enroll their sons and daughters in ordinary schools against their will. Sometimes what families do is enroll their children in courses in North American schools through the Internet, so that they can take the exam, and then that title can be validated in Spain.
The Ministry of Education has a Center for the Innovation and Development of Distance Education (CIDEAD) for students of all levels who “are unable to receive education through the ordinary regime.