Best Curriculum For Homeschooling: All Parents Must Take Note

By Cami Ezenwa

What is best Curriculum for Homeschooling in a Nigerian learning environment? Why is homeschooling now a subject matter of necessity, and who and who should centrally be interested in this subject matter?

These questions have become very important going by the dynamics of the time, and the need for all stakeholders to keep pace with such dynamics.

As a matter of fact, understanding and adopting the best curriculum for homeschooling should be something of interest to different categories of stakeholders, from administrators to teachers, care givers to even parents and guardians.

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The dynamics of learning – both from the delivering dimension to the receiving perspective – has changed, and all who play in the knowledge environment have to change with it

For a start, what is meant by the term homeschooling?

It simply refers to the option of choosing to pursue knowledge from home, rather than doing so in the four walls of a formal learning institution.

Many philosophers and celebrated educationists have left for us, inspiring quotes on homeschooling.

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According to Harold B. Lee, “The most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home.”

Homeschooling can get the best from children who are excited to learn

According to the great Indian philosopher Ghandi, “There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”

And it will interest to recall that some of our parents, uncles and aunties who eventually rose to occupy very important positions in society, were actually products of homeschooling of some sort.

In other words, they were first, self-taught, before many of them went further to formalise or cap their learning in formalized environments.

A supportive mother is big incentive to homeschooling

Sir Walter Scott, agreeing, added: “All men who

have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”

 Homeschooling serving under a boss/principal

It was the tradition – and still is depending on the environment and circumstance– to loan out a child to a relative or non-relative, as house boy, house girl following some mutually agreed terms.

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People in such circumstance who may not enjoy the privilege of formal school enrolment, could resort to homeschooling if the drive and opportunity are there. Some have been known to do utilising “free” or “stolen time”

Homeschooling undertaking a correspondence course

Education by correspondence has had a long history in Nigeria beginning from the hey days of such schemes and institutions and Exam Success Correspondence College, and Rapid Results College.  It was a form a homeschooling but with the learners availed a carefully developed curriculum which they studied at home.

Homeschooling foisted by social distancing

When the COVID-19 epidemic festered, many institutions of learning resorted to a form of homeschooling to keep the academic cycle running

In fact, in a regime of constant strikes by academic institutions, homeschooling can become a due alternative. Incessant strikes

Best curriculum for a homeschooling programme

What is the best curriculum for a home school? It will depend on the motive for embarking on the project in the first place. Some homeschooling programmes especially for pre-school children should be aimed at introducing the child to another realm of learning. It might just be to condition the child to regimens or a disciplinarian calendar as are usually required in a structured learning environment.

The homeschooling programme could also work for children, who perhaps are waiting to climb the next ladder of learning, for example, school leavers who are waiting to receive university admissions.

The homeschooling could also be skill-based. Many homes who are desirious of multiple-streaming their incomes, could utilise a holiday period for the purpose, in which a member undertakes a course of learning largely from home.

The best curriculum for such a homeschooling therefore take cognisance of the real purpose for the programme.

Plato, a great Greek philosopher, in agreeing, sums up this way: “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child’s natural bent.”