Essay Title: “After the Covid19 pandemic, parents’ perception of education has been

altered and they are thinking of homeschooling their children.” Is homeschool a better
future plan for our children’s education in Mauritius?

Approximately two million children in the United States currently learn at home.
Homeschooling is increasing in popularity, with a growth rate of 7% to 15% annually.
Parents in Mauritius might choose homeschooling for these four reasons: dissatisfaction with
the state schools, concern about academic excellence, the wish to build stronger family
bonds, and the desire to freely impart religious values.

Homeschooling a good option because Homeschooling is a bad option because

Parents are responsible for ensuring that This debate should focus on how best to
their children receive the best education educate our children, not on parental rights.
possible. They do not have to surrender that With their resources, experience, and
responsibility to the state; if they think it expertise, traditional schools can do this
best, they have the right to educate their best. High-minded arguments about parental
children at home. Studies have shown that rights are all well and good, but a child’s
homeschooling can be as effective as future is at stake. You cannot make up for
traditional education. If some bad schooling, and no one has developed a
homeschooling has failed, so has state reliable method for ensuring the quality of
education. Moreover, this is about who has homeschooling.
the greater right to guide a child the state or
the parents. We stand firmly on the side of
the parents; given the responsibilities
inherent in raising a child, parents should
have the freedom to choice.

Parents are entitled to make judgments Hundreds of educational researchers and

about the quality of state schools. If they experts with many years of experience
think these schools are failing, why labour to ensure that schools employ the
shouldn’t they be allowed to make the best pedagogical (teaching) methods. How
considerable sacrifice that becoming a presumptuous of parents to think that they
“home teacher” constitutes? know better. State schools may not be
perfect, but they will only get worse as
those who can afford to opt to educate at
home.

Saying that homeschooling necessarily will It’s a pretty good bet that parents won’t be
be of poor quality is ridiculous. Many as good as a teacher, unless they are a
parents will be fantastic teachers. member of that profession. Furthermore,
Furthermore, it’s not as if learning occurs in even if parents excel in one area, will they
a vacuum simply because education occurs cover all the things a school does? Support
in the home. The Internet makes all this groups can’t make a parent into a teacher,
possible in a way previously unattainable any more than a book on engineering makes
and allows every home to have better one an engineer.
research facilities than any school library
had 10 years ago.

Homes beat schools on two significant Schools beat homes on the two fronts
fronts: facilities and an atmosphere that mentioned here. For example, homes are
encourages learning. The needs of one or a very unlikely to have extensive science
very small number of students are the focus laboratories. Also, having a parent ask a
of the entire educative process. Parents young child to switch from “learning mode”
often find that local and woefully ill- to “play mode” in the same environment
equipped public schools cannot address must be very confusing. For the older child,
their child’s specific needs or adapt to a homeschooling gives ample opportunities
child’s learning style. The home also lacks for abuse—for pushing activities they enjoy
the many distractions found in schools: peer instead of a lesson or manipulating the
pressure, social stigma attached to parent to slack off “just this once.” Schools
achievement, bullying, show-offs, general are for learning—that’s their
rowdiness. essence, their function. The home is an
altogether a more complex environment, ill-
suited to instruction.

Classroom education often fails the bright The benefits of education in a wider context
and the slow and those with special needs. more than offset this objection. Of course,
A teacher must, of necessity, teach to the the state doesn’t just leave high achievers
group rather than to a specific individual. and strugglers to rot! While students may
This leaves some unchallenged, some not get individual attention, the experience
humiliated, and some under- or unserved. of growing up alongside less and more able
Special needs students, in particular, often students and those with special needs
suffer because large school systems cannot produces individuals with a greater
individualize instruction. Home education understanding of their society.
avoids this pitfall.

Homeschooling doesn’t just offer a better Parents and children spending day after day
education; it encourages family bonding. at home are sometimes subject to a
Family bonding is an extremely important phenomenon sociologists call the “hothouse
element of a child’s development, one that’s relationship.” The closeness between them
constantly undermined in modern society. becomes exclusive, with reaction to
Isn’t it appropriate to educate a child in an outsiders almost aggressive by instinct.
environment that cements family bonds? Such a relationship makes adaptation to life
in a wider community even more difficult
when the time comes.

State schools cannot teach the religious Those who wish their children to be
values so important to many parents. Also, educated in a religious environment have
public schools teach subjects, such as the chance to send them to a religious
evolution, that are antithetical to some school, the quality of which can be
people’s religious beliefs. Parents have the monitored by the state. Furthermore, what is
right to teach their child in an environment the guarantee that the moral structure
that caters to their religious needs. parents might be instilling in their children
is beneficial? Exclusivity of belief is
extremely unhealthy. Children should
engage with society as a whole so that they
can understand other people’s beliefs and
points of view. (Cultural Tolerance) In
addition, State schools must teach the
dispassionate conclusions of science,
regardless of parents’ religious beliefs.