By Maggie Shannon

Most parents, students and teachers will agree that before COVID the public system was failing children on many levels. Let’s not forget that right before the schools shut down the government was pushing for online learning for children. Parents, teachers and students all pushed back yet look what happened; the children are all home learning online. Funny how that worked out isn’t it?

COVID schooling is taking its toll on the family unit. Parents who were accustomed to sending their child off to school 5 days a week are now trapped home all day with their child. Not only are they caring for their child but also trying to navigate the new learning system while either working remotely from home or losing their job all together. This puts a tremendous stress on the family unit. It comes as no surprise that reports of child abuse, divorce, overdoses and suicides are skyrocketing. How can a parent focus on supporting their child’s learning when they are worried about not having enough money to feed their child or that their marriage is falling apart? How are single parents supposed to juggle it all? What about the parents who were just hanging on by a thread financially or emotionally before the schools and province shut down? How are they supposed to cope with a child who is trapped home like a prisoner with no outside support?

Parents of multiple children are finding it particularly challenging to meet everyone’s needs at the same time. Making sure each child is online ready to learn according to the teachers schedule which in some cases changes daily is impossible to do. Families who are essential workers had to scramble to find suitable childcare during a time where most people are terrified of COVID. Many children who were thrown into emergency childcare cannot meet with their teachers or classmates at all. Rural parents have the additional challenges of sub par internet service that results in glitchy connections making it difficult to engage and follow along with the lessons.

Children, the future of this country, are also suffering from the government’s decision to close the schools and shut down the province. Regardless of being public schooled or homeschooled, children need to be around other children. “Online schooling is difficult. There is so much work, so little time, and it’s hard to ask for help. When I think of school, I think about hanging out with my friends. That was the only thing I looked forward to and now I can’t even do that” Grade nine student Ely Wright. Thanks to the lockdown and constant fear mongering, children at disturbingly high numbers are suffering from anxiety and depression. Calls to mental health hotlines are at an all time high.

It is beyond ridiculous to expect children of any age to sit in front of a screen 5 days a week. Before online learning there were studies, reports and many professionals stating that children were already spending far too much time in front of a screen. A study from Psychological Today concluded that anything more than one hour a day screen time for children was detrimental on many levels. “Generally, the study showed that more hours of screen time were associated with less curiosity, more difficulty with friendships, more distractibility, less emotional steadiness, and less ability to complete tasks”. Children are built preprogrammed to move, explore with their hands and all their senses. Children should not be trapped in a 2-dimensional environment. It goes against basic nature, common sense and all logic. Staring at a screen day in and day out is terrible for developing brains and mental health. It also causes eye strain, fatigue and bad posture.

Ask any child, would they rather watch someone online bake cookies or would they like to go into the kitchen and bake cookies? Most children would choose working in the kitchen. The real-life activity of baking means using reading and math skills to prepare the recipe, gross and fine motor skills to measure the ingredients and hand eye coordination of dumping ingredients in the bowl. The sensory experience children receive includes mixing the dough, hearing the sound of an egg cracking, using their hands to form the dough into cookies, smelling the cookies while they are cooking and the best part: tasting them when they are finished. That is a child living in a 3-dimensional world, experiencing it with all their senses and retaining what they have learned. No online program can compare with in person learning. That child will remember baking cookies and the lessons they learned faster and with more joy than watching it happen on the computer.

Many parents have stated since the COVID schooling they knew for sure that they could never homeschool their child. Ask any homeschool parent and they will tell you they would never homeschool their child in the way that COVID schooling works. COVID schooling is absurd!

There are still a lot of misconceptions around homeschooling. One is that homeschooled children are sheltered from the “real world” or live in a bubble which is simply not true. Another common concern is that because homeschooled children are not forced into a room with 30 of their peers who are all within 12 months of age, from the same geographical area and doing the exact same thing as everyone else in the room they lack social skills. They will never know how to survive in the “real world” Where is this real world where everyone is the same age, from the same area, working on the same thing at the same time? It doesn’t exist. Studies have proven time and time again that homeschooled children perform better than their peers (including private school students) not only academically but socially and emotionally better. Homeschooled children are also more likely to vote, volunteer in their community, have a higher life and job satisfaction. Homeschooling turns out intelligent, community minded adults who are independent and pursue their interests. How is that possible when the children are not in “real” school? The answer is simple, easy and logical.

Most homeschooled children spend a lot of their education outside of the home, some homeschoolers call it life-schooling. There are endless opportunities these days provided in just about every community for homeschooled children to participate in planned activities, clubs and sports. This allows the children to collaborate and learn from other children and adults of different ages, backgrounds, interests and geographical areas. A nice perk of homeschooling is that the majority of these programs are offered during the school day and sometimes at a discounted price for homeschoolers. Homeschool parents do not need to have the extra stress of taking a child who just wants a break from spending the whole day stuck in a desk to their lessons after school.

Many older homeschooled children volunteer in the community and hold part time jobs. Some are young entrepreneurs pursuing their passions. These children are learning real hands-on life skills that are not taught inside the four walls of a classroom.

Another common misconception is that public school parents feel since they are not “teachers’’ they are unequipped to teach their child at home. They are relying on the fact that a public school system who educated them left them feeling inadequate to teach their own child. It was the parent who taught the child to speak, walk and eat with a fork. It doesn’t need to change when the child reaches school age. Research has proven that a parent’s level of education had zero bearing on a homeschooled child’s learning outcome. What mattered was the parent’s commitment to teaching the child. You do not have to be a teacher to homeschool your child, any more than you had to be an early childhood educator to raise your baby and toddler.

As the frustration of COVID schooling increases plenty of public-school parents are turning to homeschooling. “Many families who have experienced online learning are moving to a blended or fully offline homeschooling model. Why? Quite simply, fully online schooling does not meet the needs of most children. Children need to move, to create with their hands and to go interact with people in person. Fully online learning cannot do this” Edna Latone of homeschoolhelp.ca and homeschool mother of four.

Do you want to start homeschooling but unsure where to start? The good news is that there are endless options when it comes to homeschooling. Parents can choose from a variety of home-schooling styles such as Waldorf, Charlotte Mason, Unschooling, Free-schooling, Montessori, non common core, eclectic and many more. A good place to start is www.thecanadianhomeschooler.com for a wealth of information including a book titled “How to homeschool in Canada”.

A few key points that new homeschooling parents need to accept is that it takes time for a child to de-school. The child is used to being told what to do, what to be interested in and when to do it. They are not used to the freedom that homeschooling allows while also providing top notch education. Another very important aspect of home-schooling is that it is not meant to recreate public school at home. Homeschooling can take place anywhere; in the car, at the beach, the library, kitchen table, outside under a tree; the possibilities are endless.

Homeschooling doesn’t have to break the bank. Parents make use of public libraries, homeschool free lending libraries or printable free activities online. Many parents share materials and curriculum amongst themselves. Let’s not forget that hands-on learning such as baking, volunteering in the community and walking in the woods is FREE!

Home-schooling is about meeting the individual child’s needs, interests and learning styles instead of trying to force every child into the same one size fits all system. You wouldn’t expect every child to wear the same size of clothing, why would you expect every child to learn in the same way? COVID schooling is not homeschooling but the good news is that making the transition to homeschooling is easy and very rewarding