Home Schooling

[Holymacaroni]

Let me start off by telling you how pointless I feel my school life is.

This isn't me complaining I don't like school because my teacher gave me detention or that they are too strict. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Currently I am learning next to nothing at school, let me run through a few of the subjects so you know what I'm talking about.
Maths: We have a foreign trainee teacher teaching us for the foreseeable future. This is the 3rd trainee teacher I have had assigned to teach my class.
English: The teacher rambles on about nothing for the first 20 minutes of the lesson, followed by 20 minutes of pointless activity (Perhaps reading 5 pages from a book?) followed by another 20 minutes of his Off-Topic rambling.
Science: We watch a movie the vast majority of the time. The other minority of the time we build rockets from cardboard etc. Isn't that educational?
I.T: Occasionally we will learn how to use basic features in Microsoft Excel. Other than that we play Games on the internet..

I'll go no further..

I'll try not to be too vain here, but I consider myself to be (And my reports back this up) a considerably intelligent individual. My grades are among the highest in all classes and I find classwork (When we actually do it) ridiculously easy. The teacher will set a task which is meant to take up the majority of the 1 hour lesson, but ends up taking me 5-10 minutes. I also took my Maths GCSE exam a few weeks back, 2 years early.

I feel as if I waste a whole lot of time at school when I could be at home, studying the stuff I need to study. Learning via textbooks, and online resources. I feel I have a whole lot more potential that is just waiting to be unleashed, however it is held back due to the school I attend.

Switching schools would be pretty much pointless. Our school is meant to be the best in the area. That's extremely depressing.

So I decided to look into home schooling and/or self educating. So I browsed google for a while and stumbled across this site:
http://www.education-otherwise.org/

It seems that you can be home schooled with no approval required, you just need your parent to send a letter stating they are removing me from the school. My parent(s) can then educate me without any qualifications.

My mum is a pretty busy person, however I believe I could do alot of this on my own. I am more than willing to study my ass off and educate myself as much as I can. I believe I could learn more in one day at home, than I could in one week at school.

So, is this something I should look into? Does anyone have any experience with 'home schooling'?

I'd really, really like to do this. Sigh..

 

[deadly serious]

If you're extremly focused and would be able to study without distractions I would probably do home schooling. Also if your mum's busy she'll be out of the house a lot. Tbh I got home schooled for sports reasons a few years ago and whenever my parents were out (Quite often) I would just start watching tv for hours and never did any work. Also it's quite boring when your learning by yourself.

 

[Holymacaroni]

If you're extremly focused and would be able to study without distractions I would probably do home schooling. Also if your mum's busy she'll be out of the house a lot. Tbh I got home schooled for sports reasons a few years ago and whenever my parents were out (Quite often) I would just start watching tv for hours and never did any work. Also it's quite boring when your learning by yourself.

I consider myself to be fairly independant..

Even if I studied for an hour a day, I'd be learning more than I am now >_<

 

[Necromancer24]

As you say you can study without giving in to the distractions, then I say go for it. You're learning next to nothing at school. You're better off spending your time at home, studying.

Where I live, it's just the opposite. I go a chinese independent school and the sums they teach us in grade 7 is actually the sums we should learn in grade 11. So we're constantly getting left behind lol, but in the government based exams, we mostly all ace it.

 

[Holymacaroni]

As you say you can study without giving in to the distractions, then I say go for it. You're learning next to nothing at school. You're better off spending your time at home, studying.

Where I live, it's just the opposite. I go a chinese independent school and the sums they teach us in grade 7 is actually the sums we should learn in grade 11. So we're constantly getting left behind lol, but in the government based exams, we mostly all ace it.

I think I'm going to talk to my mum about it later. She will most likely disapprove, however I have told her before that school is pretty much useless in my case.

 

[Necromancer24]

I think I'm going to talk to my mum about it later. She will most likely disapprove, however I have told her before that school is pretty much useless in my case.

I suggest you ask to test it out for a while, while still going to school. Don't study much in school. Then see if your marks improve/remain the same/goes down. Then you can make an informed decision.

 

[1LastChance]

I suggest you ask to test it out for a while, while still going to school. Don't study much in school. Then see if your marks improve/remain the same/goes down. Then you can make an informed decision.

I say that if your parents are ok with you self educating go for it ,other wsie you should continue to stay in school but you could join after school classes?

 

[cescfabregas]

The one thing I would say that you'd probably regret most after switching to home schooling is lack of a social life. Do you have a lot of friends at your school? While school is mainly there to get an education, another big role it plays is teaching you your social skills by interacting with your peers. It would be bad if you just stayed home all the time, because when you get out to college, the real world, you would struggle more than others to communicate. Just make sure that you're not locking yourself into your house if you begin homeschooling. If you really think it's the thing for you, go for it. Best of luck, and if you want to talk just send me a PM.

 

[Holymacaroni]

The one thing I would say that you'd probably regret most after switching to home schooling is lack of a social life. Do you have a lot of friends at your school? While school is mainly there to get an education, another big role it plays is teaching you your social skills by interacting with your peers. It would be bad if you just stayed home all the time, because when you get out to college, the real world, you would struggle more than others to communicate. Just make sure that you're not locking yourself into your house if you begin homeschooling. If you really think it's the thing for you, go for it. Best of luck, and if you want to talk just send me a PM.

Thanks for pointing that out. However, I have already considered that. I do have a fair number of friends at school, but if it means leaving them to excel academically, then so be it. As I stated before in this thread, I am generally quite an independant person, so lack of communication with other people wouldn't bother me too much. I would probably arrange to meet up with friends on a regular basis.

Update:

I spoke to my mum last night about it. At first, as expected, it was a definite no, and she didn't agree with it. However, after a few words of persuasion I managed to change that no into an 'I don't know'. I'll see how school is today then talk to her about it later. I'm really hoping she goes through with this ^_^

 

[obstinato10]

just wondering how old are you?
you might think its a good idea at the time but it is ALOT of hard work..
If you think you are willing to do this for the rest of your school life and feel you will get something more then school can offer out of it, go for your life..

but what grade are you in atm? sounds like my 10th grade classes... it changed quite a bit in 11 and 12

 

[Holymacaroni]

just wondering how old are you?
you might think its a good idea at the time but it is ALOT of hard work..
If you think you are willing to do this for the rest of your school life and feel you will get something more then school can offer out of it, go for your life..

but what grade are you in atm? sounds like my 10th grade classes... it changed quite a bit in 11 and 12

I turned 14 yesterday (Year 9, I'm English). Fairly young, yes, but a tad more mature than most of those in my year if I do say so myself.

I'm more than willing to try hard, hence why I don't want to stay in school where things are too laid back.

My mum is at the hospital at the moment (Visiting my Great Grandad). I will be talking to her again later, so I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[The Phat Big Kid]

Good luck mate, my dad would just laugh at me, and say nice try of getting out of school, so I wish you best of luck, if I could of done something like this I probably would of, seeing as my school was basically the same thing, waking up at 6 in the morning just to go listen to stupid non sense. Oh well I'm heading into my last year of school so I have no complaints anymore.

 

[astalavistababy]

I'm 14 aswell man i wouldn't recommend home school you will prolly end up messing around I was homr schooled for about 2 weeks coudn't handle not being able to talk to with all my freinds!

just continue at school or if you feel you not learning enough learn more when you get home lol

 

[Holymacaroni]

Good luck mate, my dad would just laugh at me, and say nice try of getting out of school, so I wish you best of luck, if I could of done something like this I probably would of, seeing as my school was basically the same thing, waking up at 6 in the morning just to go listen to stupid non sense. Oh well I'm heading into my last year of school so I have no complaints anymore.

That's originally how I thought my mum was going to react, and she did, but when I talked to her in a little more depth about it she could see where I was coming from.

I'm 14 aswell man i wouldn't recommend home school you will prolly end up messing around I was homr schooled for about 2 weeks coudn't handle not being able to talk to with all my freinds!

just continue at school or if you feel you not learning enough learn more when you get home lol

As stated twice above, I'm a very independant person and prefer working on my own. I don't tend to rely on other people nor require them to get the job done. Continuing at school then using all my free time learning would be illogical. Why waste a decent 6-7 hours 'learning' when I could use that vital time to learn at home. Properly.