by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Homeschooling could be of great benefit to the Planet, not to speak of the children.
As far as the Planet if concerned the fact is that if every child would be homeschooled millions of school bus journeys and even more car journeys in a day would become history.
Those journeys alone pump much pollution into the atmosphere, and I include the always exclusively CO2 emissions in the work pollution, often unnecessarily, as many children could walk or cycle to school.
The public school system, or let me rephrase that, the government school system, which should really be called brainwashing facilities, do not give children the chance to develop their individuality as should be their right. Instead they mould them, as is their task, into little slaves of the government.
Aside from the savings for Planet and pocket in not having to get the kids carted to school if they are being educated at home there are those savings of clothes and other things, including text books, exercise books, etc., as much of the writing the child needs to do can be done on waste paper, such as single side printed stuffs.
A child educated at home does not have to dress in a dress code appropriate manner and he or she can either be schooled wearing his or her play clothes or even his or her birthday suit and thus, once again, there are savings for the Planet and the parents' pocket, as no special school clothes or even school uniform will have to be purchased.
At home a child can also have a hairstyle that suits them and their parents and if that means that a boy has long hair and wants to have long hair, something that often does not go down well at all with the school, then he can and again a saving as no barber costs (unless one would cut the children's hair oneself).
The more children who are being homeschooled the less cost would be incurred by the local authorities as well as there would be no need for facilities, for school buses, for heating of school rooms, etc., and in many ways that also means another saving for the environment.
The fact is that homeschooling is legal in most if not indeed all of the USA and also in Britain. It is, however, illegal in Germany, while it would appear that some other EU countries have a much more lax approach to children being educated at home by their parents.
In the UK the minimum daily schooling a child must receive if being taught at home is two hours per day and I should think that that is possible for most people to achieve and it is also not necessary to follow the national curriculum.
This means that any child can develop at his or her own speed and is not being held back nor unduly pushed by targets and quota and all that jazz.
Homeschooling is a win/win for all including the Planet.
© 2012
