Home education grows up

Our eldest child has a unique learning style and we are absolutely convinced that had she attended school she would not be where she is today - third year of Bachelor of Science (Latrobe University), majoring in Mathematics. We are sure that attending school would have resulted in a distressed, bullied child who didn’t learn much and dropped out early. Our younger child would have coped at school but wanted to stay home with her sister. She has completed a Bachelor of Science (Melbourne University) majoring in Zoology and is doing honours this year.

Ben and Joel Loxton’s education consisted of following their interests which in retrospect always dominated their play, their choice of reading and their choice of activities. If they found they needed to learn to use a particular computer program to enhance their model making or film making then they learnt it either from books, by just doing or from a knowledgeable friend or relative.

When the time came for them to enter their chosen fields of study at university, they had amassed an incredible amount of general and specific areas of knowledge. Ben is now doing a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and has recently been awarded the Aerospace Staff prize (Fourth Year) for outstanding academic and social performance. Joel is in his third year of a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University and has directed several successful small films with many others being planned.

These are not isolated examples. The largest study of home educated adults in America showed that they were more likely to have taken university courses than the general population. The research shows that the social outcomes of home education are just as good - home educated children grow up to be thoughtful, competent, sociable and involved in their communities.

None of these parents followed the state curriculum in the home and there was much about their methods to concern department officials. In fact Dindy Vaughan was continually hassled by Education Department Inspectors and told that her educational provision was inadequate and that her daughter ought to be in school. Were these parents therefore irresponsible and neglectful? No.

Although these parents did not reproduce the school system at home, they encouraged learning at every opportunity. Not following the curriculum does not mean neglecting a child’s education. Dindy stood her ground. Her daughter was free to explore the world in her own way and time, and she was certainly encouraged to learn. Dindy says children have a natural desire to learn, and among the home educated children that she watched grow up she observed that a lot of material could be learnt very quickly and efficiently, simply because a child suddenly “wanted to know”.

Carleen Sing agrees. Her observations of children led her to question whether adults knew very much about how children learn after all. “Who said that the person who wrote the curriculum got it right?” She believes that children have an innate love of learning and, if provided with whatever materials they need they will retain that desire to learn. Carleen is still home educating her younger children and much of their learning takes place informally in a self-directed way - through conversation, reading, making and doing.

It is not a matter of letting children run wild. Home education represents a large commitment on the part of the parents in terms of being available to facilitate learning. Dindy emphasises that:

For parents it is a long, dedicated slog. Children with a passion for learning are very tiring. Seven times a day they will challenge your own preconceptions: one of the first things you learn to say is, ‘I don’t know, but we can find out.’ Sometimes that’s a hard task. I vividly recall a small person pirouetting along the pavement on the walk back from the Post Office, gracefully closing the last turn with a gesture of the arm and the question, “And I take it you can’t have factors of a minus number?” We worked that concept for a number of weeks.

Dindy says that, of the small home education group she belonged to in those days, all the children have succeeded in their chosen fields and not, as might be expected, in the so-called soft subjects. Her own daughter is now completing a PhD in Social Linguistics and teaches English to Sudanese refugees on weekends.

Katharina Russell Head says:

Having got to know many home educating families over many years I can say with confidence that children who grow up outside the system are generally friendly, thoughtful, delightful, natural people whose wisdom and intelligence recommends them to everyone. I would call them “well-educated” in every sense of the word, whatever the particular method or philosophy held to by their parents. The secret is that their inner drive to learn and their intuitive knowledge of what they need to learn has not been artificially masked or stopped by handing their education over to an external agent.