About a year ago, Shalom, now 9, decided she wanted to be like her friends. So, she dug out a chequered pinafore and a T-shirt and slipped them on. Then she solemnly walked across to “school”—a big wooden table in the open-plan kitchen of her home. “On the third day, she declared that wearing the same thing every day was boring,” laughs Shalom’s mother Sangeetha Raj, 39.
But school never gets boring for Shalom. When it’s not at the kitchen table, it’s at the back porch, overlooking a tiny garden. Occasionally, it moves into a room stacked with books and crowned by a cardboard doll’s house, or to Russell Market, where she banters with the vendor and deals with a small amount of money. “Technically, Shalom is being home-educated, but the whole world is her school,” says Bangalore-based Sangeetha.
She could have been speaking for scores of other parents across the country, who have scoped out the conventional education system—very much a part of their own upbringing—and decided to strike out on their own. Like most other parents, those who educate their children at home know that few schools serve the best interests of either the child or of learning. Unlike them, though, this growing breed is willing to act on the premise that mother knows best. Combining Internet tools, real-time resources, recommended syllabuses and mentored e-discussions, they’re looking to create more fulfilled childhoods and enable holistic learning.
Motwani, an educational consultant, and his family at their south Mumbai home. (Abhijit Bhatlekar / Mint)
At its very basic, home schooling takes ownership for a child’s education and makes it an individual, responsive, often free-flowing affair that keeps pace with his or her interests and abilities. All plugged-in parents would agree on this—and it may be all they agree on, for there are as many “methods” of home schooling as there are sets of parents.
“While we all undoubtedly want the best for our children, our ways of getting there might not be identical,” confesses Ramji Srinivasan, 40, a software professional who’s taking advantage of a career break to put together a support group for home educators in Bangalore.
Obviously, the decision to educate their kids themselves is not one taken lightly or in a hurry. “Ahead of our move back to India from the US, we began researching possible schools for our twins,” says Anand Bariya, 44, managing director of NetLogic, a Nasdaq-listed semiconductor company, and father of twins Mallika and Mohini, 12. “We narrowed in on a Bangalore school that claimed to be ‘alternative’ and admitted our girls there. But within a few months, we were disappointed with the depth of education the school was offering. We simply thought we could do a better job teaching the kids.”