How to educate your child or children in Mexico is always a very big question for expat families. We tackle the homeschooling in Mexico option for expats in our new article, “Homeschooling Your Kids in Mexico.”
Homeschooling in Mexico and the world is not new. It’s been around for centuries but didn’t really get organized until the early part of the 20th century when kids had to be quarantined for the deadly Spanish Flu outbreak and other epidemics.
This education option is particularly well-suited to expat families who may not want to enroll their kids in poorer quality local schools or more expensive international schools. Concerns about language ability, special needs children or religious convictions are just a few other reasons why homeschooling may be a good option for expats in Mexico.
To explain what homeschooling is all about, we turned to experts in the field: Calvert Education’s Martha Cole and Global Village School’s Tanya MacGumerait.
“Homeschooling, broadly speaking, is the practice of educating kids outside of the public school structure,” Global Village School spokesperson Tanya MacGumerait said. “Public schools as we know them today are a very recent development, dating back to the 1840s in America and Canada. Public schools did not outnumber private options until around the start of the 20th century. So, for much of human history, we educated ourselves in ways that were outside of a formal legal structure. Much of the early backlash against public schooling came from families who wanted to provide an explicitly religious context to the education of their children. Today, there are many different motivations for homeschooling.”
Both Calvert Education and Global Village School offer comprehensive K-12 homeschooling programs, but differ in approach. Both are fully accredited. There are many homeschooling options out there, so be sure to do your homework. Most importantly, though, make sure that the programs are accredited.
“Many colleges are actively recruiting homeschooled students because they tend to be more creative and independent than their public and international school counterparts,” MacGumerait said.
You’ll want to read the full article for all the details. If you’re interested in enrolling your child or children in an international school, you’ll want to read our article, “The International Schools Option in Mexico.”
