Simple Family Life - Part Five

I love reading about some of the readers here in Rhonda’s Our Simple Lives posts this past week. It is so uplifting to read of others’ journeys different and similar to my own. Thank you all for sharing.

I have decided to post an adapted article about home education I originally wrote a few years ago for a newsletter. I hope to write guest posts for Down To Earth again, but this is the final of my five-part Living Simply series for April. Thank you to Rhonda for allowing me to write from my heart and trusting that what I have to say might be of interest to others. I feel honoured to have contributed to this highly regarded online space again.

Home education is an intrinsic part of our simple life. If it weren’t for home ed., things would be much more complicated, and I think more expensive! This doesn’t mean that schooling families can’t implement a lot of the living-simply ideas shared here by Rhonda and myself, but being at home with my children has really allowed me to weave the routines into our days. I could go on and on about our homeschooling days, but I think that sharing the why? of home education in Australia will help others to understand the essence of what we’re doing.

My children have time to cook and garden with me. We can spend hours choosing a pattern and fabric remnant from my stash to sew some clothes. Their animals are an important part of their lives. We create presents and cards together. We go out to pick fruit and come home to make preserves. We meet interesting people in our community who have much to share. Our children’s consumer expectations are generally lower than their schooled peers. Daily discussion topics include Peak Oil, relocalisation, relevant history and current affairs to explain what is really going on in the world, spiritual matters, environmental issues and more. We’re very aware of the ‘real world’ and feel that we’re more in touch than most schooling families because we have the luxury of time together to discuss and study what matters to us. Life is full and chaotic, but it’s our chaos. I feel blessed to be responsible for educating my own children at home.


I hope you enjoy this article.

Why Home Based Learning?

“Children are being freed to learn as nature intended” – just one comment I love from my research into why Australian parents are homeschooling their children. I asked friends and mailing list members, read comments from studies on the subject, and gathered some reasons as to why so many are taking the plunge into home based learning in Australia.

Some parents actively choose to home educate. They make the decision sometime – whether when their children are infants (and even earlier), or when they feel dissatisfied with their children’s schooling for any reason. Some parents feel that there was no other choice. They may have exceptional children (ranging from those labelled “learning disabled” to those with apparent giftedness – and many others in between), or their children are sick or injured, or unable to cope with the stress of school, or they are geographically isolated. In most of these cases, school was the original or preferred choice, but it just didn’t work out for the families involved – they feel that home education is the only option left for them. Yet, most declare that it is the best thing to happen to their families and continue with homeschooling even if the original hurdles are overcome (eg: in case of illnesses or living in a remote area).

Many parents lament that at 4,5 or 6 children are too young to hand children over to a system that is seen as having many flaws at the moment. Beverley Paine (homeschooling pioneer) explained, “We loved April and didn’t want to miss a minute of her five year old life.” I think many home educating parents utter a resounding “hear, hear” at that touching comment. Indeed, these early years are a sensitive time for the little ones. Many argue that it the ideal time to begin academics – the children are so open to new ideas and often learn at an accelerated rate – but at what cost? Pioneer homeschool authors Raymond and Dorothy Moore, in their book ‘School Can Wait’, give a great deal of evidence that early academics and separation from parents can do a great deal of harm.

In my research, parents reiterated that the freedom home based learning allowed them was the greatest gift. Time with their children, without the constraints of the school bus, cut lunches, school uniforms and a lot of rushing was what they valued most. Others stated that the upholding of family values and their religion are the main reasons they chose to educate outside the system. It is true that most schools today in Australia are not inclusive of all belief systems, and logically so – with so many people in an artificial social structure it would be near impossible to be so diverse in their curriculum alone!

I was touched and enlightened by a comment that home education allowed a child to evolve as a spirit at her own pace, to grow beyond what a school environment would allow. One caring mother said, “Maybe some of us homeschool out of curiosity of the possibilities. I’m sure that’s part of why I do.” And that gentle statement rang true with me. I see my children and can imagine how a school education would shape them – in and out of the classroom. I know I don’t like those possibilities. I can see the difficulties in home education and be hopeful that any obstacles are outweighed by benefits. The mother quoted above also said to me, “I think living in the inquiry and continuing each day and being open to questions allows the flexibility that gives her the space she needs to grow. And I don’t think that’s a bad place to be.”

Some parents argued that, due to the pitfalls of attending most Australian schools, home education is an ideal, holistic environment to learn. They see home based learning as a near-perfect, tailor-made education, superior to even the “best” private schools available. The school community commonly resents this attitude; they see it as elitist and therefore un-Australian. I must admit to subscribing to the idea that home education offers the Individual Education Plan which schools hope to offer, but logistically are unable to manage. We were taught at University, during my Bachelor of Education, that this was the way of the future. Over ten years on, there is still mass-production schooling happening in almost all Australian schools. Perhaps I am the only student of my class able to put theory into practice as a now home educating mother of six?

Parents are deciding to home educate for many reasons. Each family has its’ own list of reasons and its’ own method of conducting their home based learning journey.

Resources:

Home Education Association
Aussie Homeschool Classifieds
Home of Learning
Joyous Learning
Home Education Posts on my Blog


* Fifth in a series of five guest posts by Belinda Moore. Here are part one, part two, part three and part four of this series.