Homeschooling has gained popularity in the new millennium with a small minority of households abandoning the rote learning and exam-obsessed mainstream school system to provide their children individualised primary-secondary education at home to develop their creative, critical thinking and problem solving cognitive capabilities – Arundhati Nath & Summiya Yasmeen Supriya Joshi is the poster mom of India’s nascent homeschooling movement. In 2016, her daughter Malavika, who was withdrawn from Dadar Parsee School, Mumbai when she was 12 years of age and schooled at home for six years by Supriya and her husband Raj, especially the former, a postgrad in computer applications, was admitted into the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston — consistently ranked among the world’s Top 3 engineering and technology universities worldwide. Invited to deliver a TED Talk in 2018, Joshi attributed Malavika’s success to her having learned to learn, rather than to pass exams. “There is something seriously wrong with India’s school system, in which students are forced to study only specified subjects, play prescribed sports, and mingle with children in their own age groups in strictly controlled environments. Such regimentation is contrary to the natural growth cycle of children. That’s why we took the decision to homeschool both my daughters, who on the contrary, were encouraged to study subjects of their choice including filmmaking. They were also encouraged to take up any sports and developed their social skills by meeting people of all age groups. Homeschooling is difficult, but it also promotes family bonding and great happiness,” says Joshi, also a founding member of Swashikshan (‘self-teaching’) — Indian Association of Homeschoolers (IAH, estb. 2012) which has a membership of 1,000-plus parents countrywide, who have switched to homeschooling their children. With minimal government and establishment attention paid to education — India (Centre plus states) spends a mere 3.5 percent of GDP on public education cf. 6-10 percent in OECD and ASEAN countries — even the country’s estimated 320,000 private schools, overwhelmingly preferred by the middle class, are caught in a time warp and tend to favour rote learning (rewarded by most of the country’s 34 school-leaving examination boards) in dull, homogeneous, usually overcrowded classrooms. Consequently, a multiplying tribe of well-educated upper and middle class parents, aware of the importance of innovative, new-technologies enabled education, are switching to homeschooling their children. In the United States — inevitably the pioneer of homeschooling — an estimated 2.3 million children are being educated at home with this number growing by 7-12 percent annually. According to Brian D. Ray, president of the Salem (Oregon)-based National Home Education Research Institute, homeschooling “may be the fastest growing form of education in the United States”. Although homeschooling is not unknown in India — the ancient gurukul schooling system was based on parent/teacher-led education in home environments — it has gained popularity in the new millennium with a small minority of households abandoning the rote learning and exam-obsessed mainstream school system to provide their children individualised primary-secondary education at home to develop their creative, critical thinking and…
