Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Conversation Is Learning Too!
All too often I forget where most of my children’s learning originates - in our everyday conversations! Most of the reading I have done over the last couple of months has reinforced this belief in me, and with the hindsight of twelve years of home based learning I know the truth of it. April, Roger and Thomas know a lot about the world they live in, not because they have read about it, or even seen it on the television, but
because we talk about things a lot. Anything can spark a conversation, and conversations often
lead to in-depth research, experiments and activities.
Although quite often we already know the answers to many of our children's questions, there are times Robin and I have taken a topic much further for our own interest. The children get on what whatever they are doing, having had their curiosity sated, while we discover much more about the world than we knew before. I love this aspect of home education. Learning through conversation, with a little research thrown in when necessary, is fun and spontaneous. It certainly seems to cover all of the important things without the need to closely follow a prescribed curriculum. All too often reading, writing and arithmetic, the traditional ‘basics’, take precedence in our minds when we are thinking about education. I believe learning suffers as a result. 'Book work', because it leaves a tangible collection of records that can be looked at by anyone, and judged as evidence of learning, is usually considered more important than the everyday learning derived from conversation. How can anyone prove they have 'covered' a subject if all he or she has ever done is talk about it? Such demotion of conversation for the sake of 'evidence' is a sad fact of school education.
Books have dominated learning for more than a century. That civilisation progressed before the advent of mass publication of texts is beyond refute. And it was able to do so because of a long tradition of story telling and passing on relevant life and community building skills by demonstration and conversation. Talk is still the primary method we learn by. It is sometimes very hard for home educating parents to put down the books and to get on with the real work of learning - simply enjoying the conversations as they flow in, around and out of, the interests of the family.
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
