# How to homeschool

Homeschooling is taking on personal [responsibility](meaning.md) for your [children's](parenting-children.md) [education](education.md).

- The quality of a formalized education is defined by the educational quality of the teacher, divided by the class size (since they can only devote attention proportionally to your child).
- Across the lens of history, *not* educating your elementary-age child and trusting the government to do it is a relatively new [fashion](trends.md), and has profound [political consequences](politics-conservativeliberal.md).

The quality of a homeschool child's education comes directly from a few sources:

1. The quality of you as a person and [educator](education.md).
2. The proportional attention you must give to *each* of the children you're teaching.
3. How well you supplement their experience in places you have shortcomings.

Homeschooling your child is effectively a part-time job.

- If you're a homemaker in a double-income household, you can easily splice the work with your other responsibilities.
- [Raising children in general](parenting-children.md) requires a full-time caretaker, which means that same caretaker can also typically [educate](education.md) a small child alongside their work.

Homeschooling children is *not* necessarily better or worse.

- Bad parenting would make a child less well-adjusted than if they went to a public school, even if they were more educated about certain domains.
- In non-nuclear homes (e.g., single parenting), it's often simply not possible to homeschool and would require someone else to educate them.
- Despite any political moves to the contrary, most of the criticism about homeschooling is on the level with [any other advice on parenting](parenting-children.md).

If you [thoroughly understand](understanding.md) what you learned in high school, are a [decent-enough parent](parenting-children.md), and sufficiently committed to raising them [with someone else](relationships-marriage.md), educating your child isn't difficult.

- Public school education systems often use [dark patterns](engineering-design.md) to imply elementary education is far more complicated than you're [specialized](jobs-specialization.md) to perform.

Government-provided education is a substantial *quantity* of time, so aim for *quality* if you're homeschooling.

- If you're focused, you don't need much time each day:
  - Preschool - 0--30 minutes
  - Lower Elementary - 1 hour
  - Upper Elementary - 2 hours
  - Middle School - 2-3 hours
  - High School - 2-4 hours
- Focus heavily on what they want, and only focus on the bare minimum for what they hate.
- Generally, if they keep developing their intellectual strengths, they'll come back around to positively influencing their weaknesses:
  - An analytical child who hates history but loves math may find value in dates' chronological sequence.
  - Artistic children tend to love reading sensational stories more than history, so they may enjoy history once they see dramatizations of it.
- Since they simply need to [understand](understanding.md) the information or methods directly, don't worry about completing a specific curriculum if another teaching method works better for how they're [learning](education.md).
- Further, [government-required requirements](education-requirements.md) are relatively easy to attain for most parents, at *least* through most of elementary school.

There's really no homeschool "culture".

- Homeschooling culture in the USA is approximately 1/4 each of Christian, agnostic, Jewish, and Muslim, with smatterings of Hindu.
- *Some* Christian homeschool culture can be self-isolating, which creates most of the false stereotypes around its [indoctrination](power-influence.md) and antisocial tendencies.
- In general, abusive parents (which are a tiny minority of parents) are more likely to use homeschooling to justify further abuse, which gives *all* homeschool families a bad name when [media stories](stories-storytellers.md) draw attention to those specific situations.
- The closest thing to a "culture" is through the child's [home culture](people-culture.md), mixed with the various [styles](education-homeschool-styles.md) for how to teach the children.

One consistent aspect of a homeschooled child is *extreme* failure or success later in life.

- They receive specialized and focused support from their parents.
- The variety of children they're exposed to can give them a more diverse range of viewpoints.
- When they're in key developmental years, they can [sleep](sleep.md) for longer if they need and the [food](cooking.md) is better.
- However, a lazy child has even *more* means to slack off than a formalized school system.

## Prerequisites

A. The child *must* agree to homeschooling and promise to be serious about it.

- Children often hate their private/public school:
  - They may not be learning fast enough at the school.
  - Their teachers might be bad.
  - They might be a victim of [bullying](power-types.md).
  - They simply might hate the school itself, the course work, etc.
- If they love their school and everything about it,
- On the other hand, if a child doesn't take their education seriously at all *while* they're homeschooled, their parents won't be their best educators, no matter the reason.
- However, if both the parents and children are willing, homeschooling is straightforward.

B. Homeschooled children do *not* need as much time learning as formalized education.

- Generally, 30 minutes of hard, formalized education a day (preferably in the morning) is enough to cover the basic educational requirements for their current grade, with the rest of the day as reinforcement of the idea.
- Children [learn](understanding.md) at different rates, and homeschool allows a tailored experience relative to each child's [personality](personality.md).
- Give them freedom to explore and play on their own, *without* structure.

C. Don't over-test or over-drill them.

- [Understanding](understanding.md) transitions through gradations, and needs some cooling-off to prevent burnout.
  - Sometimes, it may work best to work on one subject a day or week, instead of a little of each subject every day.
- We don't measure *adults* who [specialize](jobs-specialization.md) in one role by their weakest roles, so we shouldn't do that to our children.

D. Every good homeschool parent *must* be humble.

- You're *not* qualified to teach them everything about life, and alongside [your spouse](relationships-marriage.md), you'll still miss some parts.
  - You will absolutely *need* to find [specialists](jobs-specialization.md) in the areas you don't understand as well, typically through your community or homeschool groups.
- You will *not* be able to shelter your children, even if you homeschool them.
  - Parents who obsess about protecting their children's innocence tend to raise bad kids who are good at concealing bad behavior.
  - Teaching the value of [morality](morality.md) is *far* more important than protecting them.
- You have more flexibility to adapt to their needs than any formalized educational system could give them.
  - If they need more time on a subject, you can focus exclusively on that one than the rest.
  - When they're extremely talented at a subject, you can equip them with advanced projects in that domain.
- Eventually, once they reach high school, you will need to give *much* more of their specialized learning to others unless they want to carry on your family practice.

E. Your geographical region has a profound influence on how your government sees homeschooling.

- When you live in a population-dense area, many government precincts require children to attend a government-approved school.
  - Generally, governments prefer to school children themselves for [financial](money-economics.md) reasons, and any [indoctrination](power-influence.md) reasons are simply a bonus for them.
- The challenges you're *far* more likely to face will come through the [bureaucracy](bureaucracy.md) from [government requirements](legal-safety.md) more than the education itself.

F. Find a healthy homeschool community that can plug you into homeschooling resources at large.

- No matter how resourceful or intelligent you are, the community has *way* more support than you can give to your child alone.
- Many homeschool networks are so powerful that they can lobby for *[political action](legal-doctrines.md)* to keep homeschooling legal (e.g., [HSLDA](https://hslda.org/)).