What the Syllabus Won't Cover

My fifteen year old niece came back from school one day and was reciting the way water usually circulates word for word: evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. She was effortlessly saying this out loud in one breath like a song she had memorised and taught herself to always sing out loud rather than something she had obviously seen happen. And when I moved closer to her and asked her the reason why the rain usually falls, she was just staring at me with a semi-smile on her face, and then when I looked away, she started repeating what she was saying earlier. But this time, she was saying it very slowly and thinking, 'I won't ask again, or she might likely get her answer from this this time.

Though I don't have any children of my own yet, that very moment when I saw my niece singing and in-between the questions I asked settled something in me that I had been undecided about for a while: if going to school alone is enough or if it makes more sense; maybe homeschooling alone is what will be needed.

Well, after several thoughts and deeper thoughts, I feel pure homeschooling is not the answer, not because parents might be inadequate or have the capability to teach, but because isolation is real, and when children have their childhood taken away from them in the sense of them not having physical or daily contact with other children, that means they won't be able to build something a curriculum at home will be able to teach them.

As a kid, or let me say while growing up, one of the best things my parents did for me was putting me in a school and not doing homeschooling because I was able to learn how to share a mat and desk with other kids. Got to know how to bond and disagree with other classmates and learn friendship over time, even though some lasted while some didn't. These little and ordinary frictions were able to shape my childhood as a child in a very careful way that home instructions, however thoroughly they've been put, can never teach because they tend to skip some ordinary things entirely.

And I got to see some areas where school has failed from what I have seen around recently and watching my niece that day. Because most schools now have a good structure without deep or real understanding, allow kids to memorise things with knowing and teach them how to reason through them. And you see that gap right there? That is when I know I will definitely show you when I eventually have children of my own. I won't be replacing school with homeschooling, but I would have to fill what it leaves out.

From Monday to Friday schools will remain for them, where they get to learn what the government curriculum teaches and write exams and show discipline or show up whether they feel like it or not. Weekends and evenings would be for me, and I won't be teaching them again what they have already learnt in school but putting them through what is not in any syllabus: the importance of money, how it works, what our family or cultural history is like, and the difference between reciting an answer and actually reasoning one out.

I have not yet tested any methods, though, only my niece semi-smiling and her staring at me and a decision that I consciously formulated in my head. Seeing her fumble the question I asked her has already made me know what I'll be doing differently when it's my turn, because there is a big difference between understanding something and repeating it several times.

Thank you for reading.

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