Argument Essay
Windows to the Society
In 2019, the population of homeschooling students is almost three times more than that in the past five years. (Wang et al., CTWANT, 2021) According to Flipped Education, Hsu and Chang (2019) also mentioned that homeschooling allows those who don’t agree with the modes of traditional schools to create their own study plans. As people start to discuss the disadvantages of traditional schools, homeschooling becomes an option that draws more and more attention. Although homeschooling forms a trend and provides parents more freedom to create their own learning styles, school life plays an important role to shape children’s personalities and guide them to find their goals of lives. Traditional schools indeed include several crucial values that prepare children in school age (6-12 years old) for adapting to systems and developing social skills.
Traditional schools train students to get used to rules and systems. Every part of traditional schools is telling students to work in a regular mode. If students tend to be late for class, they will have to do campus service, so that they will learn about the importance of being punctual. Students will also know about the value of honesty when they failed the course because of cheating in the final exam. Through trying to fit in the frame schools provide, students will learn to connect their individual lives with the outer society. In addition, the former homeschooler Ning (2021) wrote about a sense of competitions makes students in traditional schools are more likely to survive when they entering the workforce. On the contrary, homeschoolers are protected so much that they lose connection to the reality. Rules and systems in traditional schools help students to adapt into a group, or in a community. Hence, children in early period must be exposed to such environment in order to be adaptive to the various laws and norms in the future.
A gregarious style of lives in traditional schools forms a better opportunity for students to develop their social skills. Schools gather children of all kinds in the same classrooms and push them to see how differently their classmates live and think. Meeting one another at least five days a week, students have considerably abundant chances to ponder and test their way to interact with their classmates. A clinical psychologist, Chou (2022), points out that it is important for children to learn how to make friends in schools. Otherwise, the lack of social skills may cause emotional problems and even survival crisis. Without the exposure to social situations, homeschoolers tend to confine themselves in the comfort zone. While students in traditional schools are challenged by each small “culture shock” among the classmates, homeschools usually skip those whom they consider hard to communicate with. Overall, living in group strengthens students’ ability of dealing with interpersonal relationships in traditional schools.
Although traditional schooling provides many benefits, many parents argue that the systems are so rigid that they restrict students to think in a liberal way. These parents embrace homeschooling because it is thought to bring out children’s potential and creativity. To be honest, traditional schools surely have their limits, and its rules and systems need to be improved. Nevertheless, if children do not know and experience the system, how do they observe its disadvantages and speculate the solutions? To face the rules and the systems is not to be obedient and accept them with no conditions, but to know oneself better. After children involve in traditional schools, they will start to think about whether they like this way of studying and have a standard to decide which path they want to give it a try. Providing that the choices are wide open initially, children will be lost and take it all, or question it all.
To sum up, it is suitable for children in school age to go to traditional schools and have their first peek of the world. The rules, the systems, and the social skills training are helpful for students in traditional schools to proceed on the road of being socialized. Until they attain the rough picture of what is happening around them and what is valued in the society, they will acquire the ability of making choices about their approaches to equip themselves and pave their ways to their future careers.
References
王文吉(Wang)、洪浩軒(Hung)、游念育(You)（2021）。〈台灣掀起自學風 5年人數成長近3倍〉。《中國時報》。
Retrieved from
https://www.ctwant.com/article/107183
周彥君(Chou)（2022）。〈學校學什麼？人際技巧最重要〉。《親子天下》。
Retrieved from
https://www.parenting.com.tw/article/5092302
許家齊(Hsu)、張益勤(Chang)（2019）。〈自學申請書如何準備？國小、國中、高中資源怎麼找？自學問題全解析〉。翻轉教育網。
Retrieved from
https://flipedu.parenting.com.tw/article/005263
寧(Ning)（讀者匿名投書）（2021）。〈【投書】從曠野走入人間：從實驗教育回到體制內學校的反思〉。《獨立評論＠天下》。
Retrieved from
https://opinion.cw.com.tw/blog/profile/52/article/11672
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