IS HOME

SCHOOLING
INFERIOR OR
SUPERIOR TO
TRADITIONAL
LEARNING?

SOREMEKUN
NURUDEEN
 IS HOME SCHOOLING INFERIOR OR SUPERIOR TO TRADITIONAL

LEARNING?

I commence by employing learning essences yardstick for juxtaposing both means to

preclude the abuse from unknown purpose. Incontrovertibly, educations essence is to evolve

the present and prescient future into the desired while using the most efficient arsenal and

techniques; which are ingeniously consolidated from the rounded and objective analyses of

incisive hypotheses for fathoming acute historical reflections, present observations, and

future anticipations. Also, home schooling is simply any informal learning.

Retrospecting that, one comprehends why most products of traditional learning

institutions that are often run perfunctorily are averagely or mediocrely effective. The present

educational system was designed in the 1900s for people to do routine work while the present

market requires people who can imagine things that have never been thought before

(Friedman, 2006)1. Meanwhile, rather than reconcile this discrepancy; the problem got

aggravated when formal educations misconstrued essence is mostly material profits and

schooling for certificates to the administrators and guardians/students respectively.

Certificates although expedite the expedient appraisal process for todays world often

exacting roles, through approximately precluding dilettantes mob; yet, they endanger the

complacent ones construing them as security in this ever changing world, the ones doubting

their attainments inadvertently mooning them out of the stars of people. Rather, being

indifferent about certificates in fact elicits and fuels a prodigious agenda for the selfless

questers that leave fate to determine their strides corollaries.

Impressive however is the expedient diligence for traditional learners to complete

curriculums timely because their diverse assessments have deadlines, which are said to be the

best motivator. This contention is ascertained by how someone outside or that graduated from
such systems are often unable in their whole life or its remaining to amass a smattering

compared to what they could have or had amassed while in schools. Meanwhile, such

indolence and indiscipline characterize the absence of the fascinated vigour from lofty

purpose(s).

The spuriously acclaimed traditional pupils sociability exemplifies the sarcastic

thriving of animals in their simulated zoo above natural reserves; its even worse being that in

contrast to confining animals indefinitely/otherwise to the zoo, the formal students must

return to the society; and worst when considering the tendency of misconstruing their

unsupervised experiences due to their haphazardly naive curiosity.

In the previous decade (19952005), more scientific knowledge was created than in all

human history and human knowledge now doubles every ten years (Kalechman, 2009)2. Far

from misconceiving that trend as monopolizing pertinence for specialists; shrewdness rather

counselled that todays world indispensable compass isnt specialized knowledge that

supplant themselves and thereby leave their possessors obsolete, but its the acumen from a

robustly dynamical pedagogy that emphasizes methodology over metamorphic facts.

Demurred is the necessarily average traditional learning pace to fit one size to all.

While this is good for stretching the low paced learner and optimizing the average paced

learner; it translates to short-changing the abilities of even the diligent but stereotyped

(standards supplanting ideals) high paced learner. With this subsuming the idiosyncrasies that

traditional learning often abandons discerning or catering for; such unattended nuances

elicited Mark Twains remark: Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered either by

themselves or by others3.

I thus digress to salvage the latent genius by affirming to him that the real learning is on

the job and its thereby indifferent to simulated or approximate problem solving. So,
irrespective of being unschooled, a drop-out, or any grade frequency of the school products

spectrum; the avaricious knowledge seekers, complacent experts, and ignorant ones outweigh

each other in that descending order!

A clog in early home schoolings wheel is coded in the Arabs adage that reads: The

one who lacks something cannot give it to others4; this exacts the plight because some

parents/guardians dont possess either/all of the concern, time, wits, or knowledge to intimate

their children/wards through the web of knowledge. Thus establishing the need for

commercializing even one of the most sacredly flexible and sensitive chores; Education, to

the mercy of the formal systems.

Nevertheless, a promising model that Ive been nurturing for my anticipated dynamic

wards is to ingrain them into lingual (verbal and quantitative), logical, and computing

adeptness towards ingenuity, being the indisputable keys that unlock all past, present, and

future knowledge.

Moreover, home schooling does better at edifying wards, whose scarcitys value

nowadays against specialized knowledges glut amplifies its essentiality, as John Maxwell

mentioned it (integrity) as the foundation for other success qualities5. This is irrefutable

because information cannot bring transformation without application; which requires

sacrifice; which requires belief; which requires the trust thats exclusively placed in the

unwaveringly honest.

Being pragmatically sagacious, quite dynamically extensive rudiments and perhaps

some structured recognition facilitate precocious achievements; thus somewhat justifying the

twos hybrid. Anyway, eithers stakeholders are urged to consolidate on this discourses

expositions while traditional learning students should escape vicariousness by construing it

for a palliative that cant circumvent the real worlds acid test even as Mark Twain remarked:

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education6.

Quintessentially, eithers mavericks should fathom George Bernard Shaws aphorism:

The reasonable (pragmatic) man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists

in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable

man7.

Recapping all, home schooling is the best for the dynamic students; who are the best for

optimizing our indisputably dynamic world as elicited above and corroborated by the

paradoxical biographies of most of our planets greatest people (reformers, inventors, and

barons), while traditional schooling is the best for the average students; who if they so remain

are robots to be programmed or abandoned as redundant by the dynamic programmers

(students).

Invariably, such varieties are spices that balance life, pitching tent with William

Shakespeare on: This above all, to thine own self be true8; my denouement thus goes as the

cat in Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland replied Alices question cum this theme: That

depends a good deal on where you want to get to9.

 REFERENCES

1) Friedman, T. L. (2006, December 13). Learning to keep learning, The New York Times,

A33.

2) Kalechman, M (2009). Practical MatLab basics for engineers. Florida, USA: CRC Press.

3) Twain, M. Mark Twain quotes. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from BrainyQuote.com:

http://www.brainyquote.comquotes/quotes/m/marktwain104653.html

4) Arabs proverb. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from WhyIslam.org:

http://www.whyislam.org/on-faith/the-secret-to-a-tranquil-soul.html

5) Maxwell, J. C. (2003). Relationships 101. Tennessee, USA: Thomas Nelson Publishers

6) Twain, M. Mark Twain quotes. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from BrainyQuote.com:

http://www.brainyquote.comquotes/quotes/m/marktwain109621.html

7) Shaw, G. B. (2008). Maxims for revolutionists. E-book, Illinois, USA: Project Gutenberg

8) Shakespeare, W. Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78-82. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from

Enotes.com: http://www.enotes.com/shekespeare-quotes/thine-own-self-true.html

9) Carroll, L. (1994). Alice in wonderland. E-book, Illinois, USA: Project Gutenberg