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Now… lets be honest. When it all comes down to it – it may be ideal to keep our children at home but many of us are actually looking forward to the day we can pack them off for 6-8 hours a day, am I right?

Not only that, many of us are looking forward to the day when we can focus on our career or actually getting to spend a good 10 minutes alone in the shower. The idea of having your child home with you 24 hours a day 365 days a year might sound like a death sentence to some people.

When I tell people this is what I am planning to do I can see them mentally putting those shackles on.

“God… that’s a lotta time with your kids, isn’t it?” they say while staring beyond my shoulder trying to imagine being tied down to their kids for the next 12 years.

And I am being honest – I sometimes have felt that way too (most frequently at 6 am when they are bouncing on my back). It would be most convenient to have my children somewhere else most of the working week. Imagine all the sewing I could get done!

But the truth is – I see keeping my children at home as actually the most freeing decision we’ve made as parents (well, besides babywearing!).

Those hours school would provide me child free do seem enticing until I think about what they cost me.

The idea of having to structure my weekdays from now until 2026 (and even later if we have more kids 0_0 ) with 8 am drop offs and 3pm pick ups seems almost like a death sentence to me. Structuring the kids entire childhood and adolescence around when they’re not in the classroom makes me incredibly sad. The idea of giving that time and giving my role to raise my children to someone else? Not a price I am willing to pay.

Those spontaneous afternoons to Byron Bay, the freedom to spark an interest in tadpoles and spend the entire afternoon up to our knees in creeks and mud, the ability to travel whenever we please for as long as we please?

All gone (or… at least severely narrowed down to weekends and four times year when everyone else is out cramming those beaches too).

 Not having my children in a structured school system allows me room to run a business to the hours that are convenient for me and be with our children when I want to be. Being able to dictate the hours I work around what’s best for our family – I don’t think there is anything more convenient than that.

My children can roll out of their beds into their ‘classrooms’. We can travel for weeks or years and never worry about missing school. If I notice that Theo really wants to know more about dinosaurs – we can pursue that for as long as he wants to. We have the freedom to cater education to his interests. If I notice Peach needs time just with me – I can spend afternoons out having hot chocolates and just being with her – for as long as she needs. This is my freedom – the freedom to be where I really want to be – with my children.

When I think about our years to come while our children are growing I see lazy afternoons, adventures in the gallery, swimming, kisses, good music, good books, knowing (really knowing!) my children, laughing, traveling, mornings free for cups of teas with grandmas, little business ideas, my children working alongside me, me learning alongside my children – I see the greatest adventure I’ve ever been handed and I feel beyond freed by this decision.

And all I can think is – how wonderful is that?

This is the final post in our series.

If you missed the previous posts they are What is an Education?, Natural Learning, Why school isn’t the best place for my child & Socialisation

 A while back I was waiting in the ER with Theo to see the on-call nurse. It was a long wait and I struck up a friendly conversation with a lovely lady who happened to live in the suburb next to mine. We were laughing and chatting over our similarities, talking about our children and delighting in the interaction to pass the hours. The topic somehow turned to schooling and the fact that our children would be learning at home. My new friend became silent and then almost angry. “Oh honey, you CAN’T do THAT to your kids, you just can’t, they’ll grow up to be freaks who can’t socialise with anyone”.

I laughed and asked her if she’d had any problem socialising with me – someone who’d been homeschooled?

She was reluctant to answer “Well no, but you’re just one person, most kids turn out to be freaks when they don’t grow up with a peer group – you just HAVE to send them to school”.

When I smiled and said that was not a concern of ours the conversation turned cold. This lady was genuinely upset that I was apparently ‘intent to ruin my children’s social abilities forever’ (While I might add this lady was unable to continue the conversation with someone who had differing beliefs to her and yet she was worried about MY kids social skills? Ha).

I’ve actually found that socialisation has been the main concern and the sole arguement I have had from anyone against our children not going to school. It amuses me to some extent because you would think, from the way people go on, that the one purpose of schooling is to socialise our children. Not a single person I’ve spoken to in  real life has suggested our children wouldn’t be educated well at home – no… they just won’t know how to make friends at the park.

It seems to be an accepted fact that attending school and being grouped by age with peers constitutes the normal socialisation of a child.

When I think about the standard ‘age grouped’ school socialisation historically and outside schooling – this seems anything BUT normal.

Humans are not designed to be grouped exclusively by age for the most part. Unlike many mammals we do not have our children in litters. They are designed to have a year or more gap between them. Mixed age groupings have been shown to enhance learning and productivity. When matched with children their own age kids are neither encourged to be mentors or to learn from an older child’s maturity.

Just looking at my own children Priya is constantly amazing me with her maturity and compassion for her little brothers needs. Theo is constantly suprising me by how far advanced he is compared to Priya at the same age. They work to bring out the best in each other in this way.

It is my greatest resource to have friends of varying ages and abilities. I have friends in their 50′s and friends who have just left school. When I am with people younger than me I tend to take a mothering role. When I am with people older than me I am encouraged by their maturity and act accordingly. When I am grouped with a whole bunch of people my own age and maturity we goad each other on until we’re stealing street signs from the corner (I am sadly not joking).

When I think about my children’s socialisation I want them to have friends their age but I do not want this to be their main source of interaction. I do not believe that is a healthy socialisation for a child. Children learn how to be confidant, mature adults from (surprise!) confidant, mature adults.

Errol and I would also like to to have some  influence in the company our children keep. In a school system children’s peers have an incredible influence over them. Until my child is at an age where they can exercise discernment over who is a good influence for them – I’d like to have some guidance over who they spend their days with. I don’t think this is fearful parenting, I think this is my job as their parent – to provide my kids healthy interaction wherever I can. While my children are in my care – I would like to know their friends.

We want to give our children a rich socialistion with all ages, races and experience. I can’t think of a better way to do this than to keep them out of school! This leaves us free to give them access to lots of activities with other children of varying ages (through sports, art classes or musical groups etc), to let them have lots of unstructured time with their friends and siblings and to let them be involved fully in our lives and normal social interactions of society outside school.

This is the fourth post in a five part series.

If you missed the others you can find them here: What is an Education?, Natural Learning, Why school isn’t the best place for my child & Convenience & freedom

I’ve noticed amongst my mama friends that there is a perpetuated tone that we are not the best for our children. We live in a culture of institutionalisation. We live in a culture of guilt. We are constantly being told how things ‘should’ be. We should have our babies in hospital, we should put them into daycare, we should go back to work, we should be sending our kids to school.

Lots of people I talk to about educating the kids at home respond with ‘Oh, I’d love to but I’m not… [good enough]‘. They might believe they’re not patient enough, or educated enough or driven enough. They believe they just aren’t good enough to facilitate their child’s education.

And those people aren’t to blame because everything around us is designed to tell us we’re not – even mothers are telling mothers they’re not good enough.

Now the thing is – I absolutely believe Errol and I are not only GOOD enough to educate our children at home but we are the BEST people to educate them.

We love them more than anyone else, we KNOW them better than anyone, we have the greatest vested interest in their personal success.

No one, not even the most gifted and committed teacher, will be able to match our desire to see them become happy, intelligent and whole adults.

Which is why I think – we of all people – should be the ones in charge of their education.

This Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson is an excellent look at many of the issues our children are facing in the school system. It’s twenty minutes long but well worth your time. Put it on and paint your toes nails while you listen! Watch it!

Now. Don’t get me wrong. I did well in school. I loved school. I did well as an ‘academic’. Annnnd I also believe there are incredible teachers working in schools every day, who share their love of learning with their students. I love this speech which was giving by a graduating valedictorian speaking out against the school system (the description below has the transcript of speech if you’d prefer to read it). I think it’s important to note that not all the people who are against the school system feel this way because they didn’t excel within that system.

The truth is – the fundamentals of our current school system are flawed and I don’t want my children to grow up in this institution.

You know what gets me? Our children are children just once and Errol and I are not prepared to give up this precious time with them to a system that cannot cater to who THEY are (and instead requires them to cater to their system).

I want to spend my children’s childhood WITH them – growing and learning together, as a family. I genuinely believe this is where they belong and how humans were designed to survive and flourish. If I have learned one thing since becoming a parent it’s that I have a whole lot more to learn from the kids than they do from me. Nothing excites me more than thinking about all the incredible things my children and I will learn together.

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”

Helen Beatrix Potter

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

— Albert Einstein

This is the third post in a five part series.

If you missed the others you can find them here: What is an Education?, Natural Learning, Socialisation & Convenience & freedom

To start the post off I would love if you could watch this little video.

Children learn naturally. It’s as simple as that.

As a society we’ve accepted this to some extent – children are born and we expect (and know) that without too much help along children will learn to speak, they will learn sentences and the language of their parents. Their vocabulary will grow regardless of whether you sit with them and show them flash cards.

“They’re sponges” we exclaim to each other “It’s just amazing the things they can learn!”

By the time a child is Priya’s age they’re bursting with knowledge, opinions and ideas but then suddenly – something changes.

Your child is school age.

Yep, suddenly a kid stops being a sponge and starts being a jug – ready to have their education tipped right in.

Social conditioning expects that a child’s education cannot continue at home.

These amazing years of natural learning are expected to be required to end.

But, I have a question for you.

What if they didn’t?

What if instead of being taken to a classroom at four years old a child continued on as they had been, playing, learning naturally and enjoying their childhood’s?

Well, they just might grow up to be an articulate, educated, incredible woman like this grown unschooled woman - Leigh from Marvelous Kiddo. Now, I bet you’re thinking – Well, that’s all very nice in theory but how are they supposed to get into college to become a doctor and support you into your old age when they haven’t finished school?!

It’s true, there are some occupations that do require a degree or a certification of study (even though these days it is becoming much LESS important to have that piece of paper).

The fact is that if your child grows up and decides they want to be a rocket scientist – they can go on a path of adult study. You do not have to have been to or finish school to start higher education – In fact Stanford University accepts a higher percentage of homeschool applications than they do of school leavers (they also say they have found some of the highest ‘intellectual vitality’ amongst homeschooled students’).  I myself did not finish high school and went on to study and excel at higher education.

I am never surprised when I find out the most successful and vibrant people I know have an unconventional educational background.

Here is just a few of the people who didn’t complete their ‘education’:

Quentin Tarantino, Drew Barrymore, Julie Andrews, Vincent Van Gogh, Sophia Loren, Jude Law, Errol Flynn, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Branson, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Jay-Z, Macy Gray, Natalie Merchant, Diana Princess of Wales, Ronald Regan, Ben Affleck, Steve Jobs & Bill Gates

Here’s also a list of people who were (for at least some or all of their schooling) educated at home:

Monet, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrant, Serena & Venus Williams, C.S Lewis, Beatrix Potter, Hans Christian Anderson, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, Mozart, Whoopi Goldberg, Justin Timberlake, Louis Armstrong, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchhill and Albert Einstein.

Now all of this is to say that you can be educated and successful without conforming to mainstream expectations.

The truth is that through play, through interacting with adults, friends and the world around them; children learn. Not only do they learn but they WANT to learn and they learn genuinely. You can hand a child all the information or advice in the world it won’t mean a thing unless they really understand it, unless it’s real to them. What better way to do that than actually experience it themselves! I want my children to have the space and support to find what they love and to do it well.

If you have the time and are after some evidence of children teaching themselves – The following video is 17 minutes long and it’s an absolutely fascinating look at what happened in India when street children were left to teach themselves.

To get straight down to basics to decide how we wanted to educate our children Errol and I sat down and asked ourselves ‘what IS an education?’. And how are we going to get it for our kids?

There is this elusive title of ‘educated’ that we are all subconsciously pushing our children towards and sometimes I am not so sure everyone has actually decided what educated means for them and their children.

 Is it finishing high school? Is it earning a bachelor degree? Or a Phd?

For me, I think Mahatma Ghandi summed it up well when he spoke on modern education:

“The real difficulty is that people have no idea of what education truly is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock-exchange market. We want to provide only such education as would enable the student to earn more. We hardly give any thought to the improvement of the character of the educated. As long as such ideas persist there is no hope of our ever knowing the true value of education”

Errol and I have always agreed that we wanted to make conscious decisions for our children’s parenting, not be dictated by what anyone else is doing. When we’ve brought home these incredible tiny people we’ve talked a lot about the childhood & adolescence we want to give them and the steps we want to take to help them reach their full potential.

So, it was never assumed that we would send our children to school (even though Errol and I both met at university studying to be teachers!).

We have had active discussions where we have sat down and talked about the sort of adults we want to raise – about what elements of their characters we want to nurture and encourage and what kind of adults we hope they’ll be; about the education we will provide them. Raising a kid is kinda a big deal and we don’t want to go into it without thinking about where we’d like to end up!

For us – we found that we wanted to raise adults who are content, grateful, well rounded, creative, respectful, able to think critically, have healthy relationships, use wisdom, maintain curiosity, are entrepreneurial and have self confidence. These are our priorities, they are the ‘education’ we want to provide our children and everything else is just details. I truly believe that school is not the ideal place to teach our children these life values.

 Statistics show that 58% of children schooled at home report that they are “very happy” with life, compared with 27% for the general U.S. population. 73% find life “exciting”, compared with 47.3%

 When Errol and I  talk about the things we learnt at school we never once think of the things we wrote out in exams, do you? Students are loaded with information year after year to pass exam after exam to be labelled as ‘educated’ at the end. I am always curious about how much of that information is actually useful to them? Or how much is even being retained? I am never surprised that the people I find the most talented, the most creative and true in their field were never formally trained in that area (um, hello, KIMBRA!).

 It seems that so often the focus is on getting our children to mimic facts and information instead of nuturing their own curiosity and intelligence and ability to learn and create on their own. We want to sail them through kindergarten to college and have them popped out the other end ‘educated’. Certainly many college graduates are academically well prepared (and certainly some are not!) but often I think we miss children’s real education;  what gives them substance and creativity and makes them unique – in sending them through this system. Academia is a beautiful pursuit but Errol and I firmly believe it is only a small facet of a one’s education.

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

-Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)

Please read on to the next posts in our series Natural Learning, Why school isn’t the best place for my child, Socialisation, Convenience & freedom