REFLECTION

(HOMESCHOOLING)

CURRENT ISSUES IN EDUCATION

(EDU 646)

PROGRAMME : ED249 8A
LECTURER : MADAM KHADIJAH

NAME MATRIC NUMBER

Nur Balqis Yusra Bt Azmi 2015101177
Norsharikin Nadzirah Bt Mustakin 2015165745
Nurul Nazihah Bt Naphia 2015101281
Nuraliyah Bt Abdul Razak 2015102615
Nur Zahidah Bt Raman 2015165653
Fatin Nabilah Bt Hamzah 2015162287
 Homeschooling

Homeschooling is the one of the interesting topic that very suitable to be in presentation
and present it to adolescent who still have the choices to choose which education is suitable for
their future when they have a kids. In our opinion, homeschooling should be introduced and be
familiar to the community so they know what is best for their children and make the right
choices in their children's education.

First of all we go to what is homeschooling. Homeschooling can be known also as home

education which is the education of children at home or a variety of places other than school.
Many families use less formal ways of educating. "Homeschooling" is the term commonly used
in North America, whereas "home education" is commonly used in the United Kingdom,
Europe and in many Commonwealth countries.

Homeschooling can be done at home or any institution that provide homeschooling or

online website. Since homeschooling is being done at home, so it will be conducted by parents
or tutor or online teacher. The time consume for homeschooling at least one hour. It can be
exceed more than one hour according to child age.

Next in this presentation, we discuss why homeschooling need to be known in community.

First make a change from a negative school environment. Nowadays there are so many crime
cases that happened at public school even in private school there is crime cases. So as parents
we scared for our child development. The best way to prevent from all this is to homeschool.
Second is to get a higher quality education. Homeschool practice one to one interaction
between one teacher and one student. So the teacher can focus more on the student and know
well the ability of the student in their education. Next is can improve social interactions
between family members, siblings and teacher. Lastly is to support a learning disabled child.
Many homeschoolers know that different personalities, different learning styles, and different gifts
require different approaches. For some children, however, it is more than a matter of style or gifts. You
may have a child with learning or attention problems that you feel are beyond your ability to teach. The
best way for them to still have an education is homeschooling.
 How Does Homeschooling Works?

Furthermore, how the process of homeschooling is conducted have been discussed in

this presentation. There are three types of homeschooling settings where homeschooling
worked. First, the parents play role as the teachers. In the past, parents had been engaging
private tutors to teach their children at home. Fast forward to today, homeschooling simply
means children stay at home and follow a flexible time table set by their private tutors who is
their mom or dad. Second, families come together to teach each other. The families can together
tap and into each other’s skills and speciality. For example, Mr. Chong teaches Mathematics
while Mrs. Malar conducts an art class, Mr Suhaimi lead a trip into the jungle to learn about
the ecosystem while the Amirul organize a sports event. Third, homeschool center where it is
very much like a school. The syllabus and activities again, varies from one center to another
and that goes back to the parent’s criteria in choosing a learning center.

Besides, according to Demme Learning (2018) in its website demmelearning.com,

there are some of the common approaches to homeschooling and that can mix and match to
meet the needs of the homeschooler such traditional- The traditional style of homeschooling
copies a typical school classroom. The traditional style of homeschooling imitates a typical
school classroom. There is a learning style reliance on textbooks and organization by grade and
subject. This method is sometimes referred to as “school at home”. Next, relaxed
homeschooling that focuses on following the student’s interests such as making a trip, watching
at the same time the homeschooler will learn by their experience. One of the most recent themes
seen in the world of homeschooling is online or cyber schools. Through online schools ,
students may take a single course online to supplement other curriculum and methods, or they
may use a cyber-school for their entire curriculum. Which mean students use online learning
to fulfills their needs.

In reality, most homeschooler follow a combination of methods for their education

needs called eclectic approach. Parents or tutors might use different methods for different
subjects, different children, or different stages of the educational process. There are many
different ways to approach homeschooling and to make homeschooling works. There are not
right and wrong methods or system. The best education system is when the children come home
happy, driven, naturally grows into a well-adjusted adult, and useful for the society.
 Home schooling VS Public schooling

In this subtopic, we focus on comparing home schooling and public schooling in several
aspects. The audience can gain knowledge and distinguish between good and bad between
public schools and home schools. At the end of the presentation, audience will have their own
choice in their minds which is better for the children. The first aspect that is shared is the
curriculum. In short, home school curriculum can be created by their parents compared to
public schools where the curriculum is set by the school system. Both types of curriculum have
good and bad effects. Depending on the type of curriculum they want their children to learn.
Parents need to know and recognize their children's abilities and talents so they can choose the
curriculum that suits them.

The second aspect that is discussed together through the presentation is socialization.
We can conclude that children in public schools will have more opportunities to develop their
social skills than children in home schools. This is because the number of students in the public
school class is about twenty to thirty children compared to the home school which is one-to-
one lessons. Whatever parents decide, they must always be concerned about their children's
social skills as they are important for development. The third aspect is individualized attention.
In this regard, home schooling is better than public schooling. Home schooling focuses on one-
to-one lesson that can focus more on children. Children do not have to compete with other
children for attention. This is good because children will not fall behind of the lesson.

The last aspect that is explained in the presentation is health and safety concerns. Most
parents are very concerned about the health and safety of their children. If parents choose to
send their children to public school, they need to pay more attention to their children as the
children interact with more people. Home schooling is safer than public schooling because
children will not be influenced by other children. This subtopic is very important to help
audience choose what is best for the children. Education is one of the most important things in
our life to be a balanced person. Parents need to think carefully and think of all the risks they
face. Public schools and home school management can also address all the weaknesses that
have been discussed so that children can get a good education.
 Advantages of home schooling

For this subtopic, we discussed about the advantages of home schooling. most of parents
nowadays has misconceptions about home school and only see negative sides about it.
Actually, home schooling gives many benefits to children. In this sub topic, there are two
aspects that we already discussed about the advantages of home schooling first aspect is
academics advantages.

First advantage under academic advantage is home schooling actually give good effect to
children academic by One-on-One Teaching. By home schooling, parents can actually tailor-
fit the studies and lessons to be taken based on their child’s learning style. Adopting child’s
education based on their style and way of learning will keep them properly motivated and eases
the learning process.

Second advantage under academic aspect is home schooling gives flexible learning schedule
and environment. Public school students experience what often feels like a gruelling day in
and day out schedule of arriving at school in the morning, sitting through 8 hours of classes,
then go home in the afternoon.

With home schooling, parents get to decide how to schedule your child’s daily instruction.
They also could start in the morning, or you could start in the afternoon and still have their
daily instruction finished in time for other activities. A flexible learning schedule means more
time for other things such as extracurricular activities or family time.

Many students find the classroom to be a very dull and cold environment that doesn’t
motivate learning. The typical student desk in a school is incredibly uncomfortable, and yet
it’s the place a student has to sit all day long.

Home schooling also provides a flexible environment for learning. There’s no requirement
that you have to teach in the same location in your home every single day. You can teach in
your child’s room one day, move it to the living room the next day, and to the garden another
day. This flexibility allows you to go with what will work best for your situation on any given
day.

Second aspect discussed is socialization aspect. First advantage under this aspect is home
schooling gives good socialization. Many people assume that home schooled children end up
having antisocial tendencies because they’re never around other kids their own age.
However, this is a common misconception because parents who are intentional about getting
their children involved extracurricular activities such as dancing class, gymnastic class,
swimming class, and many more end up helping their kids be just as social, and sometimes
even more social, than kids who are in public school.

Second advantage under socialization discussed in presentation is improves (closer) family

relationship / parent-child bonding. In home schooling setup and whatever approach parents
choose, they as parents play a very important role in moulding each mind, heart, and soul of
your children. One of the good things that could happen to their family is they can further
improve your relationship with their child. Home schooling makes children to develop self-
confidence and learn to appreciate the love shown to them by their parents. Moreover, it
provides more opportunities for family activities. children studying in public schools have
packed schedules, both during, and after their school hours. On the other hand, home schooled
children have a lot more time to spend participating in activities like camping, picnics,
community involvement, field trips, etc. with their parents. Participating in these activities
together helps a great deal in strengthening the bond parents share with their children.

Disadvantages of home schooling

In this subtopic, we discuss about the disadvantages of home schooling. the main concern or
the main disadvantages of home schooling is socialization. Socialization refers to social
interaction but it also refers to understanding and learning to navigate a society’s social norms
and rules of behaviour. Home school children may have less opportunities to interact with other
in comparison to children who attend regular school. it is important for children to interact with
other children at their age for their developmental health and development of social skills. it is
true that, home school children also socializate with other but only in small circle for example
their parents, tutor and other. The lack of socialization will affect them later in their stages of
life, for example when they attend university, discuss in group and involve in school
community programme.

The second disadvantages are time. even though flexibility in time is one of the advantages of
home schooling, but if there is lack in time management, it will cause huge problem for them.
if there is lack of time management skills for both parents and student, it will become easy for
the learner to left behind in their study. Therefore, time management is very important and very
crucial for home school learner.

Thirdly, the disadvantages of home schooling is motivation. the student will have less
motivation in comparison to student who attend regular school. as we know, some of the
student need competition in order for them to do well and excel in study or in something they
did. Therefore, home school children will have less motivation because there is lack of
competition and they usually learn separately compared to general school.

Next, the disadvantages of home schooling are special needs could not be meet. parents may
have good equalisation in education but that does not make him or her a good teacher. they
may find it difficult to adjust with the curriculum changes in educational system. Professional
teacher has been taught various teaching method and teaching skills to suit the student need.
but the parents did not have special train to teach their children therefore special need could
not be meet.

Lastly, the disadvantages of home schooling is cost. it is impossible for a home to be as well-
equipped as regular school especially in terms of facilities. home schooling may be costly
because parents need to buy the material, books and other. for the subject that required
experiment like physics, chemistry and biology, it will hard for the parents to buy and provides
apparatus, chemical and equipment. parents also need to pay extra money so that their children
can join sports because there is no facilities for sport at home.

Issues of homeschooling

Last part of our presentation is issues regarding to homeschool. By presented

about current events or issues in homeschool, it helps us to understand the importance of
homeschool, events, and news in homeschool. Issues here are not just the controversy of
homeschool but then it is more to make us think the good and bad things in homeschool. The
main three issues of homeschool in Malaysia are teachers’ qualification, bias parents and also
are the homeschoolers take an examination or not.

First issues that been presented was teachers’ qualification in homeschool. This is the
most important part in education is who is the teacher, is the teacher qualified enough to teach
the homeschoolers and if the parents teach their kids, is that the way they teach is good enough?
So, from this issue it made the audiences also reflect and aware about this. Second, bias parents
that may only choose to let their kids know one field of education only. Third, is the
homeschoolers take an examination or not? If not, how do they will further their study in higher
education level. If they took an examination, is that the examination is qualified enough for
them to further study in local college? Then, what we had been presented, we told the audience
that O Level is deemed an acceptable equivalent to SPM (Sijil Pemeriksaan Malaysia) in
accordance to standards set by MQF (Malaysian Qualifications Framework) and administered
by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency. SAT score means nothing to local private college in
Malaysia. Here is the big exposure that we told the audience during presentation. Then, there
is also positive side of issues in homeschool as reported in News Strait Times about the life
after homeschool. In that news, all the former homeschoolers have their own scholarship and
also managed to get a secure job.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we as a presenter for homeschool topics think that this topic need to be
more expose as homeschool is now a trend and parents nowadays choose homeschool rather
than public school. Our group already took our part by presented all the important details in
homeschool to our friends which also future teachers. Everyone have their own opinions and
view, but before decided to make a decision try to make deep research about what is
homeschool, the process of homeschool, compare between public school and homeschool, list
down the pros and cons of homeschool and lastly aware about the current issues related to
homeschool.