Every once in a while, you’ll meet a family that refers to themselves as “After-schoolers”. After-schoolers are folks with children enrolled in schools but who reinforce and/or supplement learning at home, after school hours, in a homeschool-like fashion. It’s a great term, really, as it means exactly what it is — schooling after school.
Whatever your feelings on why this may be necessary, how people manage to squeeze it in, or why people would choose to do this at all — the question is, Is after-schooling okay? The answer is, yes it is. And though there is no research, it appears to be growing [slightly] in popularity, too.
Much like many parents oversee and supervise the completion of homework after school, – parents conduct homeschool after school. And like many parents help with homework that is assigned every day, after-schooling parents help with material at home, too.
What takes place during after-schooling is up to each individual family. Some families like to study new things after school, like foreign languages, hobbies such as ham radio or model trains, or hands-on activities like building furniture or organic gardening. Other families prefer to stick to the basics already being introduced in school, like language arts, mathematics or history — either doing more of what is being taught in school, or adding on to what teachers don’t have time to teach in the regular classroom. Some even enroll children in outside classes, tutoring centers and other academic activities during summers and weekends, either to catch kids up on skills or advance them beyond what they have been able to accomplish in school.
So, to answer to the question, after-schooling is certainly okay. Parents are well within their rights to teach children at home (after all, they’ve been teaching the kids things all along anyway), whether before school, after school or on the weekends. The practicality of after-schooling is another matter altogether, but as long as everyone has the desire and the time, there is nothing wrong with it.
Though some would argue that school children are busy enough and that parents need to protect their child’s down-time, family life and social life, the decision really lies with the parent. After-schooling may work in some situations but not in others. But there is nothing wrong, and certainly nothing illegal, about doing so.