What Are the Effects of the Home Environment on Learning?

Source : Jagg Xaxx, ehow.com

Children take their home environment with them to school every day. A positive, supportive and predictable home environment helps a child to cope with the stresses and uncertainties of the schoolroom. Conversely, children who leave home in the morning to go to school without a proper breakfast, or while worrying about their parents, or knowing that they will be returning to a home that is unsafe, will not be able to learn as well. No matter how good the school, children will be less able to take advantage of it if their home environments are inadequate.

Damaging Factors

Some of the primary factors of home life that may cause children to learn less effectively at school include poverty, substance abuse, dangerous neighborhoods, frequent moving and parents who are very young, single, uneducated or unemployed. The presence of two or more of these factors in conjunction greatly increases the damage they may cause the child. In addition, these risk factors often cause or exacerbate each other. For example, low-income families may move more frequently, or substance abuse may be more common in dangerous neighborhoods.

Helping Factors

Elements of home life that help children get the most out of their school experience include families that read, family discussions, access to play equipment and libraries, cultural events, travel, and a family that takes an interest in music, art and literature. Parents who are well educated take more of an interest in their children's educations. Thus, a good education has a mutigenerational, cumulative and positive effect: educating children effectively will (on average) create parents who will then see to it that their children are educated.

Raising Children Who Want to Learn

Parents who are serious about their children's educations will provide whatever effort, time and money are necessary to ensure that those educations are effective. In addition to being provided with the necessities, the child will also see by the parents' example that education is important, and will respond to that knowledge with a greater interest. Factors in the home environment that support learning include a permanent study space, resources such as books, audiovisual materials, periodicals and art supplies, and parental help when needed. Most important is parental interest in what the child is doing, and praise and encouragement when a project is completed.