My mental image of families that decide to home-educate their children was all very bohemian and a bit hippy and I wondered if my daughter and I would have to start making our own clothes and eating quinoa. Would we have to start growing our own fennel in the window box and clapping incessantly while strumming away on a homemade guitar? I feared I would always have to have one eye on the front door all day waiting for someone in authority from the local council to say I was keeping my child hostage and depriving her of friends, a social life and parties by not sending her to school. I asked myself night after night if my daughter might become one of those children that twitches and chews her hair while avoiding eye contact with other humans and then finds comfort in talking to the neighbour’s guinea pig. Was I going to ruin my daughter’s life by not sending her to a traditional school and teaching her at home?
Home Education, also known as Home Schooling, is on the increase. It is estimated that around 30,000 children in the United Kingdom and more than 2.5 million children in America are being educated at home, which shows how more and more parents are becoming increasingly frustrated with the state education system and are taking the responsibility of the child’s education into their own hands.
The current legal situation in the UK regarding home education is that ‘Education is compulsory, schooling is not’, which, therefore, means that education isn’t about attendance in a school, but more to do with ‘learning through living’ and allowing children to find their own rhythm and pace in any environment. Research suggests that children who have been Home Educated are more mature, more independent and more socially skilled.
Taking your child out of traditional education is a big decision though and one surely not to be taken lightly. I mean, there are so many brilliant reasons why we send our children to school (just bear with me while I think about it ...) and people in Britain have been doing it since 1880 when free elementary education was made compulsory in the UK. When I look back over my own school years (an age where shoes had to be polished the night before and children had to stand when a teacher entered the classroom) school was a solid foundation that formed the wonderful people we have become today.
So why is it today that parents feel they have to look beyond the school system to get a good and right education for their child? Is it that as parents we have different and higher expectations of the education system than our parents did? Are we more hands-on parents nowadays who take a more active role in our child’s education?
Maybe we are more critical and feel we have the right to question.
I’m not sure, but maybe it’s a combination of so many factors and of how our society and communication is changing.
In an age of social media and reality TV, the younger generation is absorbing different and sometimes disturbing messages.
Nowadays, it seems to be OK for young girls to wear make-up for school, phones to be used in class, inappropriate language to be voiced to a teacher and bullying to be left unnoticed. Many children struggle with the pressure of constant testing and exams in a traditional schooling environment and due to overcrowded classrooms, many children are left to slip under the radar and without teacher guidance and encouragement, they simply give up.
My young daughter and I have come to Home Schooling unexpectedly after a grammar school in England didn’t do what it said on the tin and with a huge amount of apprehension and an uncomfortable quantity of soul-searching, I decided to follow my heart and lead the two of us down an unknown path of learning. We are seizing this opportunity with more gusto and hearty enthusiasm than an Italian at a pizza party and with our new-found flexibility, we are seeing the world while looking up with joy rather than down at our boots with disappointment.
Although I am relishing my time with my daughter, I do however, think about all the things from school that she’ll miss out on: A history teacher with food in his beard, a biology teacher with breath that would strip the paint off the front of a house, a painfully dull geography teacher who looks as if he hasn’t slept for a fortnight and of course, we can’t forget school meals with lumpy custard and cold, mushy peas (not together).
Yes, I am depriving my daughter of all the pleasures of a traditional schooling and I have taken on the responsibility of teaching trigonometric ratios and electromagnetic forces, but I followed my heart and not my head and broke all the rules by not conforming to the traditional. So I say in the words of Albert Einstein: “The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.” And on that note, we’re just off to explore Copenhagen ...
Charlotte Arrowsmith is taking a short break from lecturing and with her daughter, is exploring Europe.
