I have been asked so many times if homeschooling is legal in the Philippines. The answer is a definitive “yes”, as stated in the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines Article XIV:
Section 1. The State shall protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality education at all levels, and shall take appropriate steps to make such education accessible to all.
Section 2. The State shall:
(1) Establish, maintain, and support a complete, adequate, and integrated system of education relevant to the needs of the people and society;
(2) Establish and maintain a system of free public education in the elementary and high school levels. Without limiting the natural right of parents to rear their children, elementary education is compulsory for all children of school age…
It would help if you talked to experienced homeschooling families if you’re considering homeschooling your children. There are many ways to get affiliated in homeschooling, but you would be shocked to know that some people in the Department of Education (DepEd) may not be able to answer your questions. I have spoken to five people at DepEd who were unaware of the concept of homeschooling (speaks a lot about our educational system). Based on my research, homeschooling families have experienced the same thing so please know that you’re not alone in this challenge. Looking for the right person to talk to at DepEd about homeschooling would be a challenge, I kid you not, so go ahead and look around so you can assess the best homeschooling method for you before you attempt approaching DepEd about it because I don’t want you to end up discouraged.
The first two things thing that you might want to know is how to get back to regular school later on if you decide to; and what happens if your homeschooler is ready to fly high to college. We will deal with that in the next post.
We have been homeschooling for a total of four years now and we unschooled during the first two years. Unschooling is a learning method which allows the learner to develop his interests without following a curriculum or a set of lesson plans. If say, your child is interested in skateboarding, you allow him to develop this interest and inject knowledge in science, math and vocabulary into this particular interest. How? If you look closely, the ollies and kickflips apply the basic principles of physics. Ask your learner to write an essay on what makes skateboarding so interesting for him or her and that’s English subject (theme writing and grammar) for you. So on and so forth.
This can be a challenge to your creativity as a teacher, but imagine the fun that goes into learning.
Now that our son is 13, we decided that getting him to a more structured learning would benefit him. We are independently homeschooling, which means we create our own curriculum.
“How is Homeschooling Done?!”
Yes, we get that kind of reaction a lot. Deciding on what your children should learn for a homeschool year is not an out-of-this-world concept although it may sound that way since we have always relied on expert curriculum developers and teachers to design our curriculum and create lesson plans for our learners. One thing that makes homeschooling work is that you can customize your lessons.
Lesson planning in homeschooling is based on what you think your child is ready to learn, how much information your learner can take in one homeschool day, the method of teaching that works for your learners and creating lessons that will also make way for their interests.
“Homeschooling is Impossible!”
Yet again, so many people tell us that they can never be homeschooling parents like us because “they can’t do the impossible like we do”. We’re not hiding wings inside our shirts and we don’t morph into superhumans when no one is looking. We simply are parents who know our children better, therefore we brought education home.
There are so many exciting things about homeschooling, and you just learned one of the most important information — that it is legal in the Philippines. Consider this a good beginning.
Cure for Mondays 