Why home-education

If you’ve been following me for a while you will know my family made the decision to remove our children from school at the start of 2020. It was not a spontaneous decision, in fact it had been in our minds for a good few years before the pandemic, however this was the nudge we needed to receive that a life out of the school system was for us.

Our days are different nowadays and we truly live a life of flow. We are all growing, learning and discovering stuff about ourselves and the world and we are all doing this together.

I feel it important that children learn when they are ready. I hate the concept of testing and grading and structuring according to ability. This is so myopic and really feeds into children’s insecurities at such a vulnerable age. My eldest at 18 - who is fit and active and loves to be moving his body - still feels sports are not for him. We both feel this is a trauma response from setting children into sets for team sports at a really young age - team sports!!!

There are a million other reasons why we are here today too. A big one for me was that I could not align with the online learning which the children were expected to follow during the lockdowns. Attempting it in the beginning simply crushed us all as many families will understand. The youngest boys were 5 and 9. How can we expect young children to sit before a screen in a virtual classroom and expect them to truly understand and learn, let alone be inspired? My boys wanted to be outside, playing with their parents and animals. Lockdown was a strange and confusing time - there were so many messages of fear and paranoia everywhere. They needed to be held and supported by their big people and encouraged to immerse themselves in the things they loved, rather than be made to ‘school’ in such a strange non-human way, hearing the same monotonous message - ‘stay home, protect your grandparents, there is a killer virus out there’ etc. I can’t bear to imagine the damage this messaging has done to our young people. Something I feel will sadly become more apparent in the years ahead.

So, we had meltdowns. Big meltdowns. We went through deep searching of our souls and intentions and puzzled over the practicalities of what home-education really could look like. We are both small business-owners. Could it work, us all at home?

We explored our own school-conditioning and reflected on how the school paradigm has shaped us. I have carried negative beliefs through my life that still sabotage my growth today. Knowing this, should we do something about it?

So de-registration letters were sent. We were implored to reconsider. We were told it would be a mistake. We were told our children would not grow to be sociable, educated people.

But we listened to our hearts, because it was too big a risk to take to keep them in a system we both felt increasingly alienated from.

Today life is so very different to all those years of uniforms, Sunday-evening angst, packed lunches, forgotten home-work diaries.

Expectations. Compliance. Regimentation. Conditioning. These are big concepts that the schooling conditioning feeds into.

Our days are filled with colour and music and energy. We have friends in and out of our house, we craft and bake and travel and read and explore. And the marvellous, truly marvellous thing is that we are all doing this together.

I feel I am healing from my own school-based trauma through this time home-educating my children. There is a lot of trust and a process of surrendering when facilitating the education of your children. They teach me so much, about life, about them and about myself.

Nothing is in detachment, and we are are all happy and content this way.

As a family should be.