Home-school - The Rationale

Tills are disappearing in supermarkets and are being replaced with 'Do-it-yourself' checkouts. Banks have reduced staff massively due to automation; people can organize their finances online.

People are losing jobs and economies are going to have to adjust at an ever faster pace. Schools need to train their students for such a future too, and, in doing so, they will find themselves becoming more redundant. How will schools become redundant? Well, the mechanisms are already in place. It's called - home-school.

Home-school - The resistance

Change does not come easy, but it will come. Basically, it will come and people/govt. will have to react to it. Or, it will be taken as a target and be actively pursued as a positive option.

Teachers and school administration staff will not like it since many will lose their jobs. Ministers and Education department officials will likely oppose it too until the change becomes overwhelming.

Basically, countries, localities or people that adopt such change at the earliest opportunity will reap the benefits in the long run.

1 Students who can't cope with school for a variety of reasons (long term sickness, stress, introverted, bullying, lack of academic ability, and so on etc). Except in cases where motivation is high, these students generally do not fare so well.

2 Students whose parents prefer the advantages of home-schooling. Generally, such parents are more aware and are keenly focused on their child's education to such an extent that they take more direct control. Whether the student is self-motivated or not, their advantage is that generally, they learn to self-study to a high standard. They are sometimes thought to be disadvantaged when it comes to socializing but these days local areas have study groups where like-minded families bring their children together to share home schooling experience and ideas.

I predict that at some point, the brighter students will realize that in this information age, they can simply not bother with school and study at home. Most of what they need in high school is already available and readily accessible online.

Either, it will happen gradually, or, someone will set up a home-schooling program where the brighter self motivated children can simply do everything at home. All they would have to do is sit the exams that the ordinary school children sit at the end of each academic year.

Students who successfully pass through a system of self-education will be far better served to survive in the 21st Century. They will know how to seek information, compare and discern the good from the bad, and learn whatever they need to learn on an ongoing basis. They will be smarter, more confident, and ready to tackle all the challenge and change that the world is likely to throw at them.

If the government actively pushed home-schooling towards capable students, it could reduce it's education costs by a massive amount.

In the short term, there would be less need for teachers but being highly educated many would simply move to the private sector and become productive members of society (rather than consumers of taxes - govt. workers).

Children who are not self-motivated would not likely succeed in a home schooling programme.

 For students on the borderline, a system could be set up whereby if they passed their exams at the end of the year, they could continue with home-schooling. If not, they would have to study at the same level for another year, or, return to school led direct teaching. That would provide their motivation to succeed.

Students who cannot cope with self-education will still need direct teaching. They will still be able to become productive members of society.

I would estimate that, depending upon the area, anything from 30% (run-down areas) to 90% (richer areas) of children could cope with home-schooling. It would not be a set figure and would depend upon the region.