Why We Choose To Homeschool in Ghana

Why We choose to homeschool

Credit: Pambarnhil

At the start of our homeschool year, we found it helpful to remind ourselves why we wanted to homeschool our children. I tend to doubt our decision at times, sometimes I doubt my own ability to teach, sometimes I worry about the social aspects; . This year I really decided to step it up and commit myself to this journey. Please understand this is really more for me, so that when I have a bad day at school, I can look back and remind myself why we’re doing this. (Disclaimer: We understand everyone has their own reasons for their schooling choices, these are OUR reasons for homeschooling. We are in *no way* opposed to traditional public, private or christian schools. We both had the privilege of attending traditional schools growing up. We are all-for Christian education that empowers students and families to not be confined to 

1. God. This is the number one reason: We are called. Really I could stop here. I remember about 11years ago we were not married then; We met and became friends with a Japanese missionary couple (through a mutual friend at our church in East Legon) who homeschooled their two daughters. They were a lovely family; we spent a lot of time together talking about Jesus, evangelism, philanthropy, traveling etc. Whenever we visited or vice versa and met their daughters and interacted with them and saw how smart and open minded they were plus how beautiful their family was, we would say to ourselves “WE WANT TO HOMESCHOOL OUR CHILDREN someday!” even though we were not married at that time. Well, God clearly took care of that for us, blessing us with 3 adorable children today. We later on even discovered further that our Snr. Pastor and his wife at our church had also homeschooled all their 6 children! We have been inspired by this for a long time. So when things were not quite working out with our children at a traditional private school, the thought of homeschooling came to us without hesitation.

2. Opportunity: The opportunities for spiritual, character, academic, social, and family time when homeschooling are AWESOME! Its too easy to get caught up in the business of running from one activity to the next … or whatever takes up our time…(work, work, work, LOL!) We can become so busy running around we forget to actually spend time together. Homeschooling affords our family the precious commodity of time. Time spent together, and frankly we feel incredibly blessed to be able to do this with them at such a young age. It breaks my heart when I hear people say they can’t wait for school to start again, as if their kids are burdens. Then I am reminded how quickly time passes, and how few years we have our children with us before they move on to their own lives. If the average person lives say 85 years, then the 18 years our kids spend with us is less than 1/4 of their lives. I don’t want to look back and think I didn’t spend enough time with them, and 3 hours a day just isn’t enough for me.

3. Academically speaking homeschoolers typically rate 37 percentage points higher than public school students. The average homeschool 8th grade student performs four grade levels above the national average (Rudner study). At home, I can make sure we have mastery of subjects, go at the right pace for each child, have one-on-one teaching, and I can tailor our curriculum to their respective needs.

4. Social Skills: So that leaves me with my social reservations. In the early days we debated it over and over. I think I misunderstand the word socialization as that the notion that spending time with 30 other 6 year olds is in some way ‘socializing’ my child. I read this in an article by Manfred B Zyskthis: “Go to your local middle school, junior high, or high school, walk down the hallways, and tell me which behavior you see that you think our son should emulate.”

We do think they need to spend time with friends, and we have committed to making sure our kids are involved in enough ‘outside the home’ activities like sports, science club, church, and homeschooling co-ops that we are confident that the amount of time our kids spend with others their same age is appropriate. Not too many activities though, we still focus on our family time as a priority. 

5. Our Goals: We asked ourselves “What do we want our children to look like when they’ve finished their formal education? In Luke 2:52 it says “And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and men.” We want them to learn to trust in the Word of God, to have it hidden in their heart. We want to train them in the way they should go, so it may go well with them. We want them to be healthy, confident, and to know they are beautifully and wonderfully made. We want them to keep their childlike faith, and we want them to be a light in this world. We want them to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks [them] to give the reason for the hope that [they] have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Pet 3:15) We want them to be confident, to have good manners, to be compassionate, to be respectful, and to be humble in spirit. Very importantly, we want them to internalise this; that learning should not be confined to a 'place'  but should take place anywhere you find yourself, including home, where you first learned to walk, speak, etc. 

6. Morning Rush Hour Commute cost us 3-4hours in and out everyday!
Lastly, and on a more selfish note, we can protect their innocence a tad longer. We don’t have to deal with peer pressure, We don’t have to worry about ACCRA's morning rush hour TRAFFIC!, unhealthy lunches, or bad influence at this young age. And my personal favorite, we don’t have to get up and leave home at 5:45am everyday to get out of the house for school! (This alone is enough to keep me homeschooling! even though my husband still does alone lol). Our children are too young to endure this madness! We choose peace of mind, good health and precious time with family any day. 

7. Well we're passionate, hands-on and also love what we're doing. It's totally fun!
Homeschooling is HARDWORK, EXPENSIVE and we have to totally love this to be able to survive it. I'm excited to wake up everyday to take our kids through school and to even talk about it with friends.

Well that’s it, our ridiculously long blog post about why we made this crazy commitment, and why we’ll stick with it, for as long as we're able to…