- My husband and I homeschool our son so we can travel.
- In addition to the homeschool curriculum, he attended schools in different countries.
- We noticed the differences and similarities between the schools he attended in Europe and the United States.
My son has been homeschooled basically his entire college career. This allows us to travel multiple times a month without worrying about my son missing school. This is possible because I am a writer and my husband is a film and television composer and investor.
Not only was I able to take my son’s work home with me, but I was also able to experience schooling in different countries by participating in classrooms and homeschool groups while traveling. Although his curriculum is based in the United States, integrating local schools will help you learn different languages and cultures, and of course, make friends.
We spent extended periods of time in Portugal, the Netherlands and Italy, which allowed us to experience how some schools in these regions more closely approach education. Although we experienced some similarities between the schools he attended, such as classroom size and curriculum structure, we also noticed distinct differences in approach.
School in the Netherlands was less stressful.
In the Netherlands, where we lived, children as young as four years old were often happy to walk to school on their own. My son’s school in the Netherlands ran like a well-oiled machine, but still maintained a playful and innocent atmosphere.
The school administration was strict about punctuality. I have often observed that if a student is even one minute late, it is considered late without exception. However, for the children, discipline was nothing more than harsh words from their teachers. Teachers said that if children have problems with each other, they are expected to resolve the issue among themselves while adults observe from a distance.
Friends who have children in other schools in the Netherlands confirmed that a focus on resolving conflicts autonomously with minimal adult intervention is common. Until the age of seven, play was the center of the day for children. In the early years, the main focus was on children learning to coexist with each other, rather than academics.
Learning to swim was also an important focus in the early days of the Netherlands, and was considered more important than learning to read and write by many locals we spoke to. Once compulsory, only some schools now include swimming lessons in their curriculum. This emphasis is understandable considering the large number of canals throughout.
Children at her son’s school spend most of the day outside, regardless of the weather, and that is typical, parents said. The Dutch often say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.” At school, my son helped prepare the daily vegan meals and sometimes brought home crafts.
Friends with older children in the Netherlands told me that once their children reach middle school, they get more homework, where the emphasis is on academics. I am truly grateful for this low-stress environment that I encountered during my son’s elementary school days.
In Portugal, collaboration was valued over individual performance.
In Portugal, emphasis was placed on projects that children completed together to develop their collaborative skills, and praise was often based on the collaboration itself rather than individual performance.
Based on our own observations and conversations with Portuguese parents, we believe that children rarely have schedules full of extracurricular activities like they do in the United States, and are more likely to stay up late with their families. I noticed that there are many times when
Although I loved the really “crunchy” atmosphere of my son’s school and the kindness of his teachers, I believed that my son would benefit from more structure and consistency in his routine. I did. So, for a while, we supplemented him with more schoolwork than usual at home to increase his short-term academic consistency at his school in Portugal, and eventually transitioned back to home-schooling only. , met with a homeschool group for a field trip.
I noticed that competition is less encouraged in Italy than in the United States.
I quickly learned that my son’s Italian school treated food and meals as an important part of school life. Students get a proper dining experience with a formal table setting. Elementary schools have two full hours of recess during the day, including lunch and free time. Riposocan lend a much longer school day overall.
Football (soccer) is also taken seriously, so most of the schools we visited have special schedules specifically for kids who want to play soccer and perhaps pursue it as a career. It has been. Participation in art, football and music is encouraged, but football is the most popular activity in our school and in our area.
So far it seems to be much less rigorous in terms of curriculum emphasis than in the United States. Rather than focusing on tests, cognitive and social skills seem to be the main goals. There seems to be little encouragement of competition as we witnessed, and cooperation seems to be the focus until middle school.
My son isn’t in middle school yet, but from what I’ve heard in advance conversations with the school, on open days, and in Facebook groups with other expat parents, there is a more rigorous academic approach in middle schools across Europe. It seems that it has been taken. For example, in some countries like Italy, children know their main learning focus by the time they enter high school and are then placed into specialized school programs geared toward that area of interest. I’m looking forward to it. Middle school seems to help make this decision by focusing on more specific subjects such as robotics, engineering, and anatomy. Because they are expected to already know how to collaborate.
Regardless of the country, the unifying theme that appeared throughout the European schools my son attended was that children should be allowed to be children and serious learning should take a backseat. In almost every school my son has attended or observed, in the early years children’s ability to coexist and work cooperatively on projects and assignments is more important than core subjects such as math, science, or history. was emphasized.
Each country had things we value and things we had to learn to adapt. Overall, I think the European city elementary school we attended was much less stressful compared to our group homeschooling experience in the United States. As the children grew older, schoolwork seemed to become more of a priority. I am very grateful that the lower grades are focusing on cooperation and coexistence.
