Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
so what will happen when your “protected and untained” kids finally have to leave the nest and encounter reality at 18 or 21 or whatever the threshold is? who will do the job of filling in the gap that exists between your home environment of mama papa and babies vs. more complex peer relationships that dominate reality?
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Peace queer
In Islam after a certain age the children are considered adults and their actions become their responsibilities … If I can put my children out with a strong sense of right and wrong, good interpersonal skills, good levels of tolerance, high ability to think critically, an ability to control desire and not to chase after every shiny object then I believe I have done my bit and that that would be enough for them in society as well. I don’t intend to shield them from the knowledge of society and set them loose after removing some sort of metaphorical blindfold - I intend to pace out the introduction of society to them, give them my experiences, moral stories, accounts of the companions, news and set them questions through challenging scenarios to understand what they need to do as part of their nurturing process. I will test their patience … inshaAllah to all of that … but I hope not to put them in to a situation where I cannot manage it until they are ready to manage it by themselves … Loss of temper, violence, damage, theft, envy, patience and jealousy are all in my view symptoms of human weaknesses - these I am going to try to get them to overcome … some humans have more some have less naturally - so they will each need to recognise how they find any of those traits easier or harder to handle … but whatever is the case they need to dislike them in the heart and they need to like and be drawn to good traits.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
I don’t find you to be a non-conformist though. You might see yourself as one…you’re still educating your kids or are you not?
I haven’t seen any data to support what you’re saying so far in this thread. Asking people to read a certain piece of literature based on again - someone’s opinion - is not data. There are no hard and cold facts…just opinions.
Again…the public schooled kids are seen as negative while your own are seen as not. Public schooled moms are selfish. And you are not because you choose to not send the kids to school? I can say its just to save money but that would be wrong. I can also say its laziness…kaun subha subha uth ke tayyar karay teen teen bachon ko. Ghar pe rehne do. Pal jayengay kisi tarha. Can this not be said about you? Why the double standard and negativity against another kind of school system? You can prefer what you prefer all you want but doosron mein keeray kyun nikal rahe hein aap? How is this teaching Islam and manners? This leads me to believe that homeschooling is not a good choice for kids…for the parents sure…but not for the child.
You find public school kids traumatized and all wrong in every way. I haven’t seen a well adjusted home schooled child. There is lack of confidence, severe lack of manners and social awkwardness. Muslims families who like you believe that teaching them how to pray five times is all they are obligated to do. But that’s my opinion based on what I’ve seen.
Psyah bhai, I don’t find you to be a non-conformist because these ideas are not radical at all. Radical in my mind would be something ground breaking or amazing and I am not one to follow norms at all. What you’re saying just doesn’t make sense. Not being able to send kids to public schools is different from choosing to home school.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Seriously? 
As I said earlier Sr. Reha… That I have been saying all along home schooling is not for everyone … So I was giving the true picture … It appears your view above does not accept home schooling as a feasible choice … But my view has nothing against people who choose to conform … But you are right I too conform … I just don’t conform to certain models for education.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Yes…seriously That is how we feel when you post harsh comments about parents who send their kids to public schools.
You say you have nothing against them but your posts state otherwise.
No, I don’t accept homeschooling when its being shown as the only way a parent can be considered a good parent.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Don’t you see who is really being harsh here? Nevermind … I shall continue to answer the OP if she has other things to ask … I shall cordially ignore your seriousness towards me in this thread … 
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Next question lol
Psyah…teaching islam/quran/ahadith/islamic stories…do you have a schedule for that?from what age have you started teaching religion to your kids and how is it going so far?
Also you mentioned earlier that you know some qualified teachers who homeschool their kids alongwith jobs…how is this working for them?
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
I don’t think that it would be reasonable for me to offer a conclusive answer as to why those kids exhibit the traits that I have mentioned.
I can tell you that the parents are both well-educated and have no financial issues that might hold them back. The children have the complete attention of both mother and father and the family is well connected socially.
A few other observations:
They do not have tv in their home and the radio is turned on only during the month of Ramadan when the sehri and iftaari shows are broadcast.
The children avoid playing with other kids…they engage with each other until such time as an “outsider” approaches them at which time they are seen to band together and retreat…even when there is no threat from the “outsider”. (A friend of mine made this observation.)
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
respectfully psyah bhai,
I don’t want to come across as picking your post apart but I found it impossible to pass through this thread without attempting to show you how your opinion/writing/approach could be seen as having the exact opposite effect from what you obviously would like…
there are two points in this sentence that contradict my parenting style and I find disturbing…
again…I am preplexed…why do you not find it important to know what they would do? don’t you use the behaviour, actions/reactions of your children to understand how to better educate them? I do. I constantly watch for nuances, hints that my child gives away in her actions/tone/language/mannerisms to interpret her mindset and adjust my methods in order to better reach her.
so if such principles of justice and fair play are being implemented and taught then why not allow exposure to other kids? you should feel confident in your teachings and their efficacy to allow the kids to practice what they have learned, no?
that’s great! I have yet to see any set of siblings that do not act in this way whether they are home-schooled or not.
first and foremost…none of the behaviour that you have mentioned, either good or bad, has one iota to do with the method of schooling. children from both backgrounds will behave in both ways.
it’s wonderful that you have children who are better mannered than the ones that you visited…but I would hesitate before I labelled those children as having “evil traits”. I find that quite harsh coming from someone that I expect much better from.
as for not visiting that house again…well there are two ways to look at it…you can avoid a difficult situation or you can use it to your advantage. while we all seek to protect our children from adversity, we should not be so keen as we are likely to leave them lacking in the skills required for conflict resolution…and if you are going to tell me that they learn enough of that within their existing social environment of each other’s company then I would have to suggest that they really haven’t learned it all if there were unable to secure their fair share of time on the game console with the host kids.
furthermore…your reaction of avoidance may be fine for now but what happens when the kids are adults and they don’t have the option of avoiding an “evil” co-worker or neighbour or in-law? what will they do? change jobs? move? avoid the wife’s relations or perhaps take a different wife?
I’ve cut my post short. Please keep in mind that my intention is not to criticize the children’s behaviour but to question the points that you have put forth.
I want you to see that there is another side…
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Hmm.. avoiding relations, not keeping friends because you can’t get along with people.. why am I getting a strong sense that we have been here before, except not in reference to children.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
I’m surprised that you can’t see the reason why people have taken offense at your approach.
after reading this, I really am curious as to how my values differ from those of you and your wife…
I certainly do not want my child to know 200 curse words…I’d rather she didn’t know 2 of them…but my personal reality and success stems from the satisfaction that she may know them but she will not use them. to me THAT is education and upbringing.
for the woman that wants to toughen up her kids…just as you cannot say or think that she is wrong, you cannot say or think that her kids will be tough…having exposure to something doesn’t necessarily mean that you will become that way. yes…you can say that probabilities will encourage certain outcomes but only when counter measures are not taken. you and I do not know what counter-measures that woman might be taking to prevent her children from becoming “tough” themselves.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Peace Peppermint
We teach the basics of I’man and Islam, continually correct and fine tune their understanding of right and wrong - good and bad and try to reward them for being good and give penalties for knowingly showing their bad side …
The eldest is memorising the Content of Character Amazon.co.uk and the Aqeedah At-Tahawiya The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi : English Translation of Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah (Shaykh Hamza Yusuf) (both in Arabic and English for both books) and I am memorising it with him … soon the second will be starting, inshaAllah. We have dzikr gatherings and the kids join in and they have learnt many qasidas and nasheeds and the second son has started to pick up some beats from the Daff that I use in the gatherings.
Jum’a is a collective exercise and when praying at home they stand behind while we recite so they can learn the prayer … We teach them to read Arabic and we reinforce the Surahs by listening to them and help the kids memorise. We ask them if they would like to pray and do not require them to pray, not yet anyway …
The Islamic studies starts from the Seerah - so we explain the life of RasoolAllah (SAW) to the children with greater emphasis, because the dogma stems from the story … We want them to develop an intense love for the dear prophet Muhammad (SAW), through learning about his (SAW) life and by sending many duroods. Their global outlook is all about Islam - so we are trying not to make it appear like another subject to learn … but we try to bring Islam in to all of their works … which includes all of their studies as well … they do Bismillah before doing all their work - not just before reading the Qur’an, but also before eating and before studying Maths, etc … It’s going okay Alhumdulillah, but it’s slow to my liking, but it’s constant and my wife is okay with it so far …
They seem to have a good grasp of Tawheed …
The other homeschoolers/teachers I have been acquainted with had older children who were capable of self-study by the early teens … First they were homeschooling and delaying their school going time. When they came abroad at first it was private schooling and then they had a nanny to take care of their basic nutritional needs, came back out of school and the routine seems to work fine because schools here end quite early so the time the teacher/mother had was enough to catch up with her kids every day … but the key success factor here was that the hard work had been done when the kids were between the ages of 5 to 13 to have the ability to self-study.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf | “Every time they ask me, what about your children”
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
I personally won’t for my kids. Yes I’ll help them with their studies and make sure they understand the material, etc.
I was born and brought up in Canada so I’m familiar with the curriculum and know what kids go through.
I think both systems have their pros and cons but eventually your child has to head out into the world, you can only
prolong so much. I want my kids to interact with others and learn in an environment like that. I cannot provide that at home. I would rather reserve my home for a place where they can relax and see me as more of their mother and not a teacher 
That’s my take. No offence intended to those who are for it.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Peace Sister Muzna
I stated earlier that my value system is different and was penalised for saying that by another here - that it comes across as being arrogant. When you copied the part below … the reasons why you do not like it - is precisely that it proves me right - we simply find different things of greater or lesser importance.
I need not answer your questions fully, because any justification may bring me under the same accusation … but I can say that I have my reasons and they are comparative to the gains of missing certain things out in order to ensure other things are kept in tact …
When I stated earlier that I don’t want my kids to learn 200 curse words, I meant I don’t want that so strongly enough to remove them from that environment. Others may not want it too, but they will tolerate it for other reasons - hence - different value system.
To explain my stance on this … conflicts can be resolved in several ways … there can be intellectual methods, physical methods and a mix of different types of methods including the truth, lies, seeking sympathy, seeking subservience … we can either back away or we can confront … To many people backing away could be seen as weakness - children are more prone to this … Otherwise, backing away can be advantageous in the long run … it may be a wise choice - again children are unable to see wisdom. Children are simply not equipped to deal with conflict in all of its expressions … and when children get in to conflicts they emit an animal like survival behaviour … they will be subdued by other children or dominate other children and that is harmful in both cases … they will be unable to understand compromise …
Kids will use lies and harm others in certain situations - which is unacceptable for us … that is all. We want conflict scenarios to be minimised at this age … We don’t believe that they will develop properly by being subjected to conflict this early … that is all.
Have you read Lord of the Flies …
Lord of the Flies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”
“Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
psyah bhai…when you say that children are unable to compromise you lose me.
I believe that children are able to do most of that which adults do when it comes to intellectual reasoning provided they have been given the tools. It is our responsibility to provide them with those tools through education and grooming. Yes…the less “groomed” will lie, cheat and cause harm but that does not mean that we segregate/isolate them or ourselves. I believe that to be a defeatist attitude.
Not only do I feel that I have a responsibility for my own children but for the community and society around me. If not for the good of all then, at the very least, for the good of my own children who will, at some point in their lives, become contributing members of that group. I feel it necessary to encourage good morals and behaviour and I can’t hope to do that without participating in that community. Charity certainly does begin at home…but it should not end there.
And yes…I have studied Lord of the Flies and agree with the concept that the “Beast” is within each and every one of us. It is by instilling a sense of order, justice and accountability (reference is to deen) that we keep the beast at bay.
We do have different values. I see it now.
Thank you for indulging me.
Peace.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
On Classics and HomeSchooling
More than once the reader is reminded of the value of an intensive study of at least one subject, so as to learn the meaning of knowledge and what precision and persistence is needed to attain it.
Yet there is elsewhere full recognition of the distressing fact that a man may be master in one field and show no better judgement than his neighbor anywhere else: he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it.
I would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which offers an explanation of what the writer rightly calls the distressing fact that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education are not readily transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired then: he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it.Is not the great defect of our education today a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils subjects, we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning.
It is as though we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play the Harmonious Blacksmith upon the piano, but had never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized the Harmonious Blacksmith, he still had not the faintest notion how to proceed from that to tackle the Last Rose of Summer:.
Why do I say, as though? In certain of the arts and crafts we sometimes do precisely this requiring a child to express himself in paint before we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There is a school of thought which believes this to be the right way to set about the job. But observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman will go about to teach himself a new medium. He, having learned by experience the best way to economize labor and take the thing by the right end, will start off by doodling about on an old piece of material, in order to give himself the feel of the tool.Let us now look at the mediaeval scheme of education the syllabus of the Schools. It does not matter, for the moment, whether it was devised for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it. What matters if the light it throws upon what the men of the Middle Ages supposed to be the object and the right order of the educative process.
The syllabus was divided into two parts: the Trivium and Quadrivium. The second part the Quadrivium consisted of subjects and need not for the moment concern us. The interesting thing for us is thecomposition of the Trivium, which preceeded the Quadrivium was the preliminary discipline for it. It consisted of three parts: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that order.Now the first thing that we notice is that two at any rate of these subjects are not what we should call subjects at all they are only methods of dealing with subjects. Grammar, indeed, is a subject in the sense that it does mean definitely learning a language at that period it meant learning Latin. But language itself is simply the medium in which thought is expressed.
The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning, before he began to apply them to subjects at all. First, he learned a language; not just how to order a meal in a foreign language, but the structure of a language, and hence of language itself what it was, how it was put together, and how it worked. Secondly, he learned how to use language: how to define his terms and make accurate statements: how to construct an argument and how to detect fallacies in argument. Dialectic, that is to say, embraced Logic and Disputation. Thirdly, he learned to express himself in language how to say what he had to say elegantly and persuasively.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
While I don’t want to take this discussion off on another tangent…I do want to ask Peppermint if she has considered the Montessori method for her child…
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
I’m an only child so homeschooling would have been terrible for me. I learnt a lot about interacting/sharing with other people my age from my friends. It’s one thing for parents to tell you that beta, share or be a good human being but it’s another to actually act it out and learn from your mistakes.
I remember being offered non-halal food at school and I thanked the kid and pointed out that I had my own lunch. I was four. My parents had been worried about this issue and they had hinted at it and assumed they would have the big offical talk when I could understand religion better. They hadn’t realized I was mimicking their actions and all the stuff I had overheard from them.
I’m also grateful that they let me be my own person in my own space and trusted me to make my own friends I know people whose helicopter parents have destroyed their lives and made them incapable of handling any stressful situation. Children are like springs. You can push them and push them and they’ll either push back or go wonky.
My mother taught me how to read, write, count before I went to school and that gave me a massive head start over the other children. She bought me an encyclopedia and I spent days just going over it for fun. I think that’s the best thing she could have done for me.
Re: Home schooling…pros and cons?
Peace
As far as the criticism goes about contributing to society … adults do that … It is not my understanding that children have any direct obligation to society; parents don’t have to put their children in to society to qualify as contributing to it … Islamically the duty of society is on the grown up.
The above post is confusing me so much … 
… Welcome StrangeOne 
The first paragraph states single-child reasons to not be home schooled and sets an argument for schooling by suggesting the kids learn from one another. That makes sense …
The second paragraph perhaps intended to be showing an example of that but ends up supporting the view that children don’t in fact need other children to learn from as they mimic their own parents, she already had prior knowledge of the haram food being offered to her and she avoided it. Furthermore, had she not been coached by her parents she may have in fact eaten the haram food. Talking about haram food my brother was force fed haram food by a dinner lady, he was in tears … yes, the kids know from a young age what to eat, thanks to the parents … in the early 80s the school staff were not as aware of cultural differences as they might be now … still there is still the chance of getting offered haram by your own peers.
The third paragraph is another example of praise for the parents. It juxtaposes two parenting styles and does not really credit school … Giving total freedom in choosing friends, I accept as a parent I do not allow that, but at the same time I don’t push my children … home educators are not necessarily people who subdue their children. Rather you will find most parents who feel the need to push their children do so after giving their kids too much freedom in childhood and when they reach their teens and real damage can be done - then they switch and choose to go army style on their kids. We would rather not have to go through that.
And the last paragraph also credits the parent … for teaching at home before school. She recognises the head start she had … but the head start itself is not that important - for then school is reduced to a racing track … always looking to get ahead of others. Rather as StrangeOne mentions going over books for ‘fun’ is the most important aspect to learning as a child. We try to inculcate that through an environment where the children are not competing with others to keep the stress away from them … for they will then associate studies to being “a chore” rather than “fun”.
I don’t understand the sway of the argument above … those who liked it obviously do understand it …
I have many friends and they have children going to school in the UK … there is no love lost between us - our children interact just fine … They never try to convince us of sending the kids to school, rather they praise the effort we put in at home … that does not make them feel inferior and we are not accused of acting superior … they know that we know that their predicament is different to our own … So again home school is not for everyone. And May Allah (SWT) reward all of us for our good intentions and acting upon what we see as fit … and May He Guide us to Himself in safety … Ameen.