Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Why Home Education
I am often asked this question. It isn’t an easy one to answer, and as time passes the reasons become more numerous! Generally most people really only want to hear the historical reasons - why did we start 'teaching' our children at home? It is a long story.....
In 1986 we opened our eyes and looked about us for the first time. We became paranoid with fear, nuclear arms fear, fear for our children's future living in a polluted, violent world. At twenty eight years of age we had finally become aware! And frightened. We looked for alternatives. Alternative lifestyles. Conscious, life affirming attitudes and decisions.
In a cloud of idealism we listened to the 'prophets' (the authors of the dozens of books I read), and the 'gurus' (those that went down this path before us) and then made our 'informed' decisions (how little we knew....). Instincts also led the way (luckily).
We found permaculture at the same time as natural learning and home education. It is interesting that the choice to educate our children at home is a vehicle for supporting both philosophies. This included convergent attitudes and values about the environment, conservation, health, and just about everything else!
However, you really want the truth, don't you? Not this philosophical rambling, but the plain old, practical truth...
We were running a weekend business, and if April, our then five year old, went to school, we wouldn't see much of her. We couldn't bear to be separated for the six hours a day school would steal her away from us. And I was pregnant with Thomas, our third child, due to be born just weeks before her sixth birthday. Who would send a young child to school for the first time, only a few weeks after the birth of a sibling? The psychological repercussions of being 'replaced' would reverberate throughout her childhood and adolescent years...perhaps never to heal. We couldn't do that.
But that isn't the whole truth. Not yet. There's more. We loved our daughter too much to
share her. We needed, with a burning instinct, unrecognised at that stage, to protect her.
We desperately needed to be a part of her growth and development at every stage. We
needed contact with her to help us grow and develop, not only as parents, but also as
people...
Okay, okay! I hear you - this is yet still more rambling. There has to be a more down to earth reason... and there is. Perhaps this is finally the real truth...
I am a closet teacher. If I hadn't failed Matriculation I might have gone to teacher's college..... Boy, am I glad I failed! Early in adult life I quickly realised I didn't have the patience to 'teach' a classroom of children, and began doubting my ability to cope with future parenting! Nature has a way of determining these things though, and soon enough I was happily parenting two lovely children, with one on the way. Breastfeeding and Nursing Mothers, family day care provider, playgroup coordinator, active kindy parent.... Those years were busy. A steady progression of 'on the job training' - getting ready for my, as yet undreamed of, role as home school 'teacher'.
It took years for me to stop playing teacher.... Thomas finally taught me how, but by then
April had chosen to go to high school part-time, and finally full-time, at year 11 level. I am
a slow learner. It took an adamant and uncompromising natural learner like Thomas to
show me how learning really occurs. Even John Holt couldn't convince me. I needed to see
with my own eyes....
That sounded real. Good, the final truth. But it isn't...
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
