Naturally

It's probably something you've all realised, but home education is a natural extension of the family and day to day life.

It takes effort to pack one or more children off to the care (sometimes dubious) of schoolkeepers.

It's natural to flow through a day as if there is no curriculum, and, actually, in our house, there hasn't been one at all.

To me, curricula are forms of control. Someone somewhere has decided what all children will be taught and will (not necessarily) learn.

How do we choose what we want to learn, how do we choose how we want to learn?

Natural questions that rise up as we breast the waves of the day.

I would rather trust my children's instincts as to where they will spend their time (and it is their time) and their energy (and that energy can be stolen by society rules) than think that strangers - strangers, moreover, who have probably moved on from the education system - will be telling my children what to do every day.

And what to think.

I find it infuriating when outsiders try to say that children are indoctrinated by their home educating parents. It's rather two-faced to have a curriculum that denies choice to every schoolchild then complain that non-schoolers are being taught what parents want to teach.

The pot and kettle are both vying for the title of 'deepest shade of black'.

As a young person, when you leave school your day might well revert to your control so why do parents not allow children to control and manage their days as soon as they can?

Naturally. 

I can genuinely say....

I can genuinely say, looking back on the past few years - is it seven or eight? - that we've been home educating that I have changed and been changed so much by the whole process.

Long ago, I accepted what newspapers told me, what the neighbourhood gossip conveyed to me, what the internet induced me to read. Anything and everybody had a naive listener in me.

What has changed?

Me, for one thing. Having the time and the ability to question, to advance my understanding, to dig a little more, to apply logic and theory, to consult those home educators who strode across the largely untrodden terrain of home educationland before me. The giants who have gone ahead.

I've delved into subjects I never even heard of at school. I've read about really difficult concepts and re-read the words until I thoroughly understood what was being said.

I have become sentient and aware. I have become ever more thoughtful and empathic.

I think I have started to see the fully actualised person, Danae, emerging from her shell of self-induced hypocritical beliefs and society-induced coma.

My eyes are open, and can use the sparkling new spectacles that I never knew existed.

My children have led the dance, and I've cavorted alongside them, and also alone along merry alleys and paused in colourful colonnaded courtyards.

I'm me, yet I'm different. Improved, I hope. Always ready for the next bout of incomprehension on my way to the aha! moment of comprehension.

I've learned that freedom isn't just a word, it's life's breath.

I've learned that nurturing yourself isn't selfish, it's society's saviour.

I've learned that home educating isn't just a thing to be done, it's everything and it's in everything.

And - ah, bliss - there's still more to come.