Task 2
Questions 13-18
Read the text below.
For questions 13-18, choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D).
Mark your answer on the answer sheet.
Our home-schooling story
I’d left my career for parenting. I was passionate about raising kids. Yet, a mere six years after their birth, I had to send them off to school and resign myself to seeing them for a few hectic moments in the morning and exhausted, homework-ridden hours at night. I wanted to hear about their dreams, but instead had to wake them before they could remember them and jam clothes over their heads. I wanted to give them my complete attention, but instead had to tell them to hurry up and leave. However, I had to brace myself, and off they went – to school.
It’s a long story, but we dragged our younger son Tim through the first grade, beaten down and miserable. Home schooling was an exotic idea then, so we took him out of his school and considered transferring him to a new school recently opened in our neighbourhood. Due to considerable loss of income, we ended up sending him back to 2nd grade in the previous school. Fortunately, he had an understanding teacher who helped rebuild his self-esteem.
Shortly afterwards, he received five out of 20 in a maths test, and we saw a downward trend in his grades. We arranged a meeting with the head teacher, not out of concern about the grades, but because we wanted to address any developmental issues he might have. Our initiative surprised her. She said he was doing well. She thought the score of 25% was acceptable. We decided to never again leave our children’s success or failure to the school system.
Once we considered home schooling, the floodgates opened. Alleviating stress, a healthier environment and a more profound learning process became the next most pressing reasons for us to home-school. Home schooling gave us the flexibility to relocate to our weekend home when my husband decided to leave his job to start his own business. Since I had left my job years before, my husband and I had already adjusted our finances to make living on one income work. Moving also helped our sons’ immune system, which had been besieged by staying indoors for most of the day together with a large group of kids at school.
Surprisingly, home schooling put more pressure on our budget than regular school, but we calculated we could still manage to send our kids to good colleges if they wanted to go. And many other things worked out as well. I’d been a rule-follower all my life, but I discovered a new trait in me – I have a bit of an independent streak when it comes to scheduling our life. I love being able to decide when to do what.
My chores are their outings. While waiting for the laundry, Josh plays chess with the housekeeper. Tim has a betting game with the cashiers at the department store – he calculates the exact sum of everything in the cart and tells them the sum before they start scanning each item. They both help out with the animals at the nearby farm. Tim worked out how many piglets would be spotted or single coloured, counting their grandparents’ as well as the parents’ genetic influence by using fractions. However, they yearn for spelling bees, science fairs and talent shows. Although I know they are excelling, they can’t tell how good they are. This is a new challenge for us, and, as with all the past ones, I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to meet it.
What did the writer see as the biggest problem when her children started going to school?
What influenced the parents' decision about their younger son's second school year?
What made the parents finally choose home schooling?
Why did the family move home after starting to home-school their children?
What does the writer see as the biggest advantage of home schooling according to paragraph 5?
What do we find out about the writer's children from the final paragraph?