My School Experience Made Me a Homeschooling Advocate
From Classroom Confinement to Homeschooling Freedom: A Journey in Progress
Introduction
When I graduated high school, I didn’t feel triumphant—just relieved to escape a system that spent 15 years teaching me to memorize, obey, and conform. From nursery at age two-and-a-half to year 12, I attended one of my country’s top schools, where over 50% of students scored above 90% in ISC/ICSE exams. Yet, looking back, I see wasted time, crushed curiosity, and a one-size-fits-all machine that didn’t care what I could become. That’s why I’ve been pro-homeschooling ever since—a belief forged in classrooms I’d never wish on anyone else.
My Schooling: A Personal Case Study
I was a solid student, topping my class until year 9, when a city move forced me to a new branch of the same school. My grades slipped—not because I got dumber, but because the system stopped making sense. We crammed literature quotes, history dates, and geography facts, only to spill them onto exam sheets. Maths and physics were the exceptions—I needed a teacher’s guidance there—but everything else felt like a memory game, not learning. The worst part? Notebooks. We scribbled what teachers wrote on the board, then raced to perfect them before head office inspections. Miss a page, lose marks. It was discipline for discipline’s sake—proof we were busy, not proof we understood. By year 12, I aced my SATs and A-Levels, but I’d already decided: schools were more about control than education.
In 1909 a factory inspector did an informal survey of 500 working children in 20 factories. She found that 412 of them would rather work in the terrible conditions of the factories than return to school.
- Helen Todd, “Why Children Work”
McClure’s Magazine, April 1913
How the System Fails
My story isn’t unique—it’s a symptom of a broken system. Rote learning didn’t just waste my time; it dulled my mind, turning subjects I loved into checklists. Then there’s the absurdity of grouping kids by age, teaching them the same lesson at the same pace, and judging them with identical tests. I watched classmates who grasped concepts faster get bored, while others who needed more time drowned—all because the system ignored how different we were. Notebooks and inspections didn’t teach discipline; they taught us to fake effort and dread scrutiny. Schools churn out obedient test-takers, not thinkers, and I can’t unsee that.
Why Homeschooling—and Its Challenges
Homeschooling, to me, is the antidote. It ditches the cookie-cutter approach for tailored learning—letting kids dive deep into what clicks for them, at their own speed. I could’ve explored physics with real experiments, not just equations, or read history for stories, not dates. But it’s not all rosy. I know some parents send kids to school because they won’t obey at home—a challenge I’d face too. Without a teacher’s authority, how do you keep a kid on track? I’ve seen friends thrive in homeschooling, but I’ve also heard of chaos when structure’s missing. That’s where I’m starting from scratch.
Learning to Homeschool Better
To make homeschooling work, I’m turning to experts. John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down nails why schools stifle kids—his take on hidden control resonates with my notebook nightmares. John Holt’s How Children Learn promises a blueprint for tapping into natural curiosity, which I wish I’d had. And The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer offers a disciplined framework—perfect for tackling obedience issues without recreating school’s rigidity. I’ll read these, and try to understand how to build a system that’s structured yet free, disciplined yet alive. My school years taught me what to reject; these books will show me what to create.
Conclusion
I support homeschooling because I lived the alternative—and it failed me. Not in grades, but in spirit. Schools taught me to follow, not to think. Now, I’m betting on a better way, one I’ll refine with every page I read and every lesson I learn. The challenge isn’t small, but neither was surviving 15 years of a system I outgrew.