Homeschooling

Education is one aspect of child rearing that really stresses parents out. In the Financial Planning class that I attended, the example given was a child's education expense. Considering current tuition increase rates, college education in Ateneo would cost around $2.4M in ~15 years. That amount needs to be planned for early to make sure there's enough when the time comes. Grade school and high school education are not even in the equation yet. And that's just the financial aspect. We also care about their safety, the influences in school, etcetera.

I subscribe to Bo Sanchez's blog and at the end of each post, he promotes homeschooling. The pastors in church also mentioned that their kids are homeschooled. A few days ago, our friends mentioned that they are considering, or are pretty much set on homschooling their son. So that got me really interested. I clicked on the link from Bo and I must say that there are strong and compelling arguments for homeschooling. Below are the Core Principles on homeschooling. For the details, I will direct you to the site itself.
  • Follow Your Child’s Passions
  • Follow Your Child’s Learning Style
  • Follow your Child’s Learning Pace Per Subject
  • Never Use Fear & Punishments As Motivation
  • Use Tests And Grades As Tools For Gauging Mastery, not as Tools to Label and Terrorize your Child
  • Nurture A Great Love For Reading
  • Make Ordinary Life Events As Your Classroom
  • Make Work And Service Essential To Your Child’s Education
  • Build Your Family Relationship (The Greatest Reward!)
  • Personally Share Your Faith and Values With Your Child
Homeschooling is not yet a very popular idea in the Philippines, but just reading from the testimonials, I think it will continue to gain steam.
We will definitely look into homeschooling more seriously when Neil's older.

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