Homeschooling: The Merits and Demerits of a Growing Educational Phenomenon

Homeschooling is regarded as kind of private education based on family and led by parent generations, without reliance on public schools or institutions. In many regions, private tutoring at home is in the progress of renascence, gradually being obtained as a option of educating practice. It seems homeschooling to be avant-garde phenomenon, but it is a return to a far more earlier education phase (Ray, 2017).Though investigations have been conducted in recent decades on the outcomes of this form of teaching, unanimous voices on whether homeschooling is effective are still a lack (Guterman & Neuman, 2017; Merry & Karsten, 2010; Ray, 2017).

This literature review contains merits and demerits of homeschooling, followed by a brief summary at the end.

Home-schooled students are likely to have a healthy and sound attainment in terms of sociability (Guterman & Neuman, 2017; Ray, 2017). According to White et al. (as cited in Ray, 2017), children enroll in homeschooling usually show better development in socialization than those attending normal schools, with no research contradicting this finding.

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In regards to the relationship between homeschoolers’ social encounters and families’ engagement in socializing, Guterman and Neuman’s (2017) discovery is in accordance with Ray’s (2017) discovery as they reveal that these two items are positively correlated. However, no distinction between different categories of homeschoolers’ social relationship was identified while Guterman and Neuman (2017) conducting evaluation. Apart from that, Guterman and Neuman (2017) only examined children’s social encounters from an aspect of personality factor.

Scholars also agree that by practicing this form of domestic education, their children would have development of strong and wide family bonds (Guterman & Neuman, 2017; Ray, 2017) whereas some hold dissenting view (Merry & Karsten, 2010).

According to Guterman and Neuman (2017), Parent-child contact is more concentrated than normal as they have more time interacting with each other. As for the breadth of people they interact with, Smedley (as cited in Ray, 2017) believes that home-schooled children turn out to have more communication with a larger variety of ages. However, though Ray (2017) cited the study on homeschoolers’ interacting preferences of age, the study was conducted two decades ago and lack timeliness. On the other hand, Merry and Karsten (2010) argue that homeschooling does not contribute to a heathy relationship as children’s liberty and welfare would be damaged. Homeschooled students have less chance to experience different life as parents stress absolutely authority while homeschooling their children. Yet they provide no evidence of neither statistical nor experimental results on how children’s interests being ignored.

It is noticeable that conducting homeschooling can help students achieving good academic performances (Ray, 2017). Cross-national researches in the USA and Canada suggested that students who enrolling in homeschool receive averages scores in persistent and standardized tests ranging from 65th to 80th percentile. Meanwhile, student in institutive schools range the 50th percentile (Ray, 1990, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2010; Rudner, 1999; Van Pelt, 2004; Wartes, 1990, 1991, as cited in Ray, 2017).