The whys and hows.

Recently I blogged an article about teaching children to think and it gave rise to the following comment.

never done this before but while drifting through the home ed. sites, found yours & felt compelled to write. how do you do it all?? i totally envy the way you are raising your family, despite all the evidence otherwise (such as the article you point out above) my husband still insists school is the right place for our two children whose personalities are fading before our very eyes despite being in a school that genuinely puts child first & pupil second!hope i can ask, what helped you & are you still sure of your choices??

Now, I’ve mailed Rhona before I elevated her comment, but I thought I blog my answers in the hope that some other ppl would join in, either in the comment box or on their own blogs.

So, how do you do it all?

Well, tbh, in some ways there isn’t much all to be done at least atm. The children are now self-motivated, it’s more a case of answering questions and assisting with finding resources for them. This morning they wanted to know about air raids, which apparently was prompted by a game played at a recent party with many other home educated children. Tim fielded that one, and I would imagine he used google to show them some stuff, as well as suggesting that we can go back to a local museum that has some details about the time period. The next time we go to the library (which I’m really hoping will be this afternoon!) I’ll have a look to see if there are any non fiction books that interest them on the topic, and I’ll see if there are any novels that we can read aloud together. Reading aloud is not something I’m particularly fond of doing, but I’m hoping now that both offspring read that we can take it in turns and enjoy it as a family.

Other things that they learn from crop up in conversation, or as a result of TV documentaries – Big is especially fond of historical documentaries, and Small is persuadable, so tends to watch them with her. They both have maths books, from Smiths atm, and are prompted to have a go every now and then, although I’m not too worried about maths as it’s another thing that crops up in conversation.

So how we do it all is very relaxed, but I’m confident that they are learning plenty as well as having time to develop themselves and their interests.

What helped me? and am I still sure of my choices?

In the beginning it was books by ppl like John Holt, as I think I’ve blogged previously. Ppl like John Taylot Gatto, with Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling were a bit of an eye opener as well, and then there are comforting and encouraging books like Free Range Education: How Home Education Works. (Lent that to my mother once, didn’t make any discernible difference in her attitude though 🙁 )

But the things that have really helped me have been ppl. The friends I met through the Muddlepuddle list as was, now known as Early years HE, the friendships that were cemented through camps and blogs – I do find blogs incredibly helpful as one of the drawbacks of home education can be the lack of a local community. We’ve been fortunate in the past that we’ve always had good friends reasonably close by and transport to get to them, I’m feeling a little more isolated now, but determined to build links in this community and in the meantime, there are friends online.

But the thing that has really convinced me that HE is the way to go is our experience in school over the past year. The school that the children were at is small, child centred, run by ppl who really really care. It’s as near as you can get, I think, to home education in a classroom (or a playground, or a garden) but it’s still not home education because when it’s governed by someone else rather than the family, it just cannot be that individual and that focussed on the child and the child’s needs.

Small in particular needs his own environment. If he wants to read rolling around on the floor, then that’s fine by me, the reading is the important bit. And in a classroom that just isn’t practical, he could get trodden on, and it’s disruptive for the other children, which just isn’t fair.

If Big wants to spend two hours making a card, as she has this morning, then she can spend two hours making a card, and lunch time can flex around her – she will, after all, stop when she really is hungry. In a school, that can’t happen, lunch has got to be at lunchtime for practical purposes. And while they can be involved with making lunch, when it comes down to it, they can only really learn to look after themselves at home.

The line between school and home is an utterly artificial one, and I believe not helpful for anyone. Education is a process and pretending that learning only happens as a result of someone imparting knowledge disempowers all of us. Realising that children are perfectly capable of choosing what they need to know and then finding it out is I suppose scary for some ppl, but surely a much better way for us all to be going.

Hope you’ve found this helpful Rhona, and also hoping that some other ppl will join in with their thoughts and opinions 🙂

eta a new blog on the blogring has also been examining these questions, you can find their answers over here at if not school