Home educating – and beyond!
Written by and published here with the permission of Ross Mountney.
I sometimes think the government would like to devise an injection for all kids at birth that would make them all grow exactly the same! It would make it so much easier for them; if all kids learned the same, achieved the same, at the same time, in the same way, without having to pay attention to individual needs! Then the politicians could have control over everybody. Certainly, that’s what the proposed Children’s Well Being and Schools Bill, makes me feel. Although my scepticism about education politics being increasingly designed to stop people thinking for themselves started long before this.
For some reason unbeknownst to me I started my working life in teaching. It was probably because I was Miss Average and the careers advisors didn’t know what to do with me. I certainly had no shining talents, except perhaps for creativity, but that wasn’t a proper job was it!
It wasn’t long before serious doubts about what I was supposed to ‘do’ to children in the name of educating them began to well up in me, along with niggling questions about this process of trying to clone kids’ abilities and label all those who didn’t fit as ‘failures’. Plus not being able to give them proper time to develop at their own pace, which would be far more conducive to their success. It overtook any pleasure I might have had in being with children. It was greatly concerning.
The education system; the curriculum restrictions, the endless testing and judging to a narrow criteria, the behaviour in schools (not necessarily the kids’) and the ‘social’ climate, the handling of those who didn’t fit or were unhappy, it just didn’t work in my view, not for enough children anyway even if for a few. It made ‘no-hopers’ out of intelligent youngsters. Even worse, it clearly made many quite ill – and that was just from the climate they had to endure day after day, which just wasn’t conducive to learning for some. Because no one is allowed to have individual preferences about school, or crowds, or noise are they? If they don’t like it, they must be at fault.
I began to hate it. Hated witnessing the damage this did. To the children. To me as well. I left.
When it was time for my own children to go to school I put all that aside. Everyone else seemed to think school was okay, I must be wrong. Or perhaps it had changed?
It hadn’t.
A few years in and I could see the same horrible things happening to my children that I’d witnessed in others. They became constantly ill. They stopped smiling. They turned into alien unhappy characters I didn’t recognise any more. They even stated that they hated learning, when they’d always been so curious about everything before. Yet they were perfectly fine during school holidays. Finally, they began to lose their talents, their ability to achieve, their interest in anything, their interest in life even, so dulled down did they become. They were heading for the ‘no-hopers’ pile.
We knew we had to do something different. We began home educating and almost instantly our children began to bloom again. They became well. Their interest in the world was reignited. They learned voraciously. We never looked back. Ever.
You can read a more detailed account of our story in my book ‘A Funny Kind of Education’, how we started, what we did, what life was like, and the fun we had. Many of you reading this will know it. And be familiar with my writing from my site.
But what people probably don’t know is what happened after that. And that’s often what every new home educator wants; to hear from someone who’s been through it and come out the other end, as it were.
Not that learning ever ends – my thirty-somethings are still learning and developing new aspects of their careers as I write. But when you’re starting out you need to know that HOME EDUCATION WORKS.
Be reassured; our family is among thousands of home educated youngsters out in the world of work now, for whom home education worked and I thought it would be comforting for you to know that.
The blog on my site that had more hits than any other is called ‘Do Home school kids ever manage real work?' It’s also part of the Epilogue in the latest edition of my book ‘A Home Education Notebook’ which shows what all our contemporary home educators, the ones we grew up alongside, are doing now. It makes for inspiring reading – hearing their stories of beyond those home educating days. Because, if we’re honest, that’s what many of us worry about. What happens after?
The thing is – there isn’t really an ‘after’, as in ‘after education has finished’, there’s just constant flow. As I said both ours are still learning and developing, as we all do throughout our lives. Education is not just for school years. Our children didn’t have any trouble moving their home education on into more formal settings, like college and Uni for example, despite not having the standard entry requirements that we’re indoctrinated to believe every kid must have. We just tried different avenues. They did not have any trouble finding work, and are moving through various career choices even now, knowing, since home educating taught them that you can do things differently if you want to, that they are free to change, move on, reinvent yourself as much as you want. And not be afraid to rise up to challenges, have a go.
Home educating did not make them unable to leave the home or the apron strings of their parents, as some like to suggest. They are extremely social, articulate and personable, mixing freely and confidently with all aspects of the world, busting another myth perpetuated by those who are ignorant of home educators. They are no different from any other young people in the world, not weird as some fear their children might become if they don’t go to school. They confront all the same challenges all youngsters do, and are able to overcome them, as all youngsters do, either with support or without, the same as anybody. And when they apply for new positions, or promotion, or whatever, neither of them feel that home education has had a negative impact. In fact they would say the opposite. From being out in the ‘real’ world, not cloistered in a very unreal ‘school’ world, their skills (especially social ones) exceed many of their colleagues. They also have a real sense of who they are, how to be true to themselves rather than the trend. And the courage to question, challenge and adapt, rather then just accept the herd instinct.
There is absolutely nothing that any of our family regrets about making that decision to home educate all those years ago. Except that we didn’t do it sooner!
I admit that for many, school really works. But for just as many probably it doesn’t. And home education is a wonderful choice.
Take heart and courage; home education; or perhaps we should more accurately call it out-in-the-real-world-education, really works. There is a productive, valid and successful life beyond.
