Organic Education

As your baby grows you will be entranced by the way he absorbs everything around him; how he seems to know what to do in order to learn to walk and feed himself. The smatterings of first words soon follow and once again, you are amazed at how quickly your toddler picks up language skills. All this seems to happen naturally and without much effort from you. You are eager to encourage, to hold his hand, to read and look at brightly-coloured story books but you instinctively know that he'd still be inspired to explore his world whether you were an active participant or not. The point I am trying to make is that your baby learns automatically... organically, if you like, by absorbing, experimenting and taking little risks every day.

Now this kind of learning sticks. She is unlikely to forget how to walk or talk. She is making constant progress, more or less all by herself. She observes; she imitates, she goes a little bit further everyday. Her skills are growing immensely. At no other time in their lives do humans pick up so many new skills as quickly and as effortlessly. We demand nothing from our child other than that she is happy, healthy and growing.

So then what do we do?

Maybe a few hours a week to start with or perhaps longer if mum has to return to work. Now, demands are starting to be made. Social skills are important and any toddler who fails to conform at this stage is quickly identified and labeled. Efforts are made to coerce the child into what is deemed to be acceptable behaviour. Let me give an example; my affable, keen-to-please three-year old son had a favourite sit-on toy at his nursery. When the children were told they could play on the tractors he would always gravitate towards this particular toy. The nursery staff decided that he was 'wrong' to do this and he would be made to stand in the naughty corner until another, unclaimed toy could be allocated to him. Being a gentle and compliant child he took this 'punishment' without saying a word to me. I didn't find out this until two years later when he was able to tell me more about his experiences. I don't know how often this happened and I am not accusing the staff of acting badly but it must have left some impression on him for it to have surfaced later when his younger sister started at the same nursery.

Nursery soon passes and 'proper' school beckons. My son started at four in the nursery class at his primary school. We were slightly concerned as at his previous nursery he would finish at 12.30pm, come home, have lunch and then nap for two hours. We worried that he wasn't ready for a full day. Another anxiety was that, at the meeting arranged for parents of new pupils, we were informed by the headmistress that these four-year olds would be taught to write 'script' ready for when they would do 'joined-up writing'. When I told a close friend about this she was aghast. She works as an outreach officer, working with severely disabled children and their families. She explained that a four year old couldn't possibly have the required fine motor-skills (wrist and fingers) to write in such a controlled fashion because they are still developing their gross motor-skills (arms and shoulder) and that we must be vigilant to ensure that he wasn't under pressure to write 'correctly'. She told us that forming letters in whatever fashion they could was achievement enough for a child at that age.

Well, our son did well at school; his teachers were pleased with him and that was all that mattered. Wasn't it?

Read on.....

There was the problem of him completely withdrawing after getting home. He would be really cross, whiny and miserable for about an hour. Every single day. We put it down to tiredness; he would still nap in the afternoon at weekends now and then. Then there was one day when my partner brought him in a big hurry. Our son was in tears and my partner carried him straight upstairs. After a few minutes they came down and my partner explained that our son had asked to go to the toilet about 20 minutes before school was due to finish but his teacher told him he could wait until he got home. The poor kid was in agony. I was sufficiently disturbed by this to immediately contact the school and ask them to let his teacher know that this was not to happen again. He was five years old at this time.

At about this time I realised that our son was busily teaching himself to read. He carried a ToysRUs catalogue around with him for about a year - it had to be the same catalogue, re-stapled and sellotaped numerous times - it was a constant companion. Meanwhile he was being sent home with reading books from school with instructions that he was to read them to us everyday. It was clear that these books were far below his reading level and we mentioned this in his 'reading log' many times. When we raised the matter with his teacher we were told that all the class had to read at the same pace. It became even more obvious that he was learning more outside of school than he was in.

When he was in Year 1, we were considering a change of lifestyle, which would necessitate us taking our son out of school. We began to look into the possibility of home-education and I started to devour all the information I could. The idea was very seductive and after much discussion we decided that we would not return our son to school after the summer break that year.

Meanwhile our daughter was attending the same pre-school nursery for three mornings per week. She was never happy on the walk to the hall. She would cry and demand to go home but I was indoctrinated into the, "it's for your own good" belief and the old, "she'll be fine once you've gone...." routine. Then one day a light bulb went off. I was walking her into the hall and started to take off her coat; she was crying. I stopped and looked at her and said, "You want to go home?" "Yes, mum", she replied. The staff were less than happy but we left and went home. And never went back.

Read on....

The school holidays arrived. We made a few attempts to 'teach' the children but mostly they played and when the time came to send our son back to school, instead I posted our deregistration letter by recorded delivery, just to make sure. I was quaking. Luckily we had discovered that South Wales has quite a lively home-educating community so I was pretty sure that we could do this.

Fast forward a couple of years... our son is now almost 11 years old; our daughter almost 8. Alex has a huge range of interests - his passion is designing, building and construction. Lego is his favourite, followed closely by K'nex. He loves reading, drawing, inventing and experimenting. He did Tae Kwondo for a couple of years but is now looking for something else.

Tegan is not such an enthusiastic reader as Alex but we have learned not to push her. She will read material that supports her interests - currently Hannah Montana! Both children are superbly competent on the computer - they have one each (a great investment); they like the Discovery channels on TV and they love being read to. We use Whizz.com for maths but everything else they are free to discover for themselves. Messy-time is a big favourite and as well as painting and drawing, we do collage - using National Geographic magazines so that the collage often gets temporarily abandoned in favour of reading and picture-gazing, we have worked with clay and beads, we make salt-dough and 'slime' out of cornflour and water. The most important thing our children do, though, is play. They play make-believe, somehow managing to create a mutually absorbing universe; My Little Ponies and Bionicles happily co-existing and going to war with the 'bad guys' whilst playing homes and stables.

We attend special home-education days laid on by the National and Science Museums. Other home-educators also organise events all over the place. We are free to go, or not. We meet up with other families often so the children have plenty of friends, both schooled and unschooled.

And that is the key. Freedom. Our children are free to follow their interests. We see ourselves as facilitators rather than teachers. Enablers rather than dictators. We do not direct their education except in the most basic ways - our 20 minute workbook time is accepted and undertaken by the children as a routine activity. I tend to gauge each child's mood. If they are enthusiastic then we carry on until the enthusiasm wanes; if they are less than absorbed by the material, then I cut it short and try again the next day. One thing all this has taught me - you cannot teach a child who does not want to learn. If the child is enthused and inspired, then they will absorb information like a sponge. If he or she is eager and encouraged they will develop new skills at a rate of knots.

Keep reading below.....

There are downsides to this way of life... and be assured, it is a way of life. Children are learning from the minute they open their eyes until the end of their day. All experiences can be part of the learning process. The trick is to not push it at them as a learning process. Relax and let it happen. Because it will. Where was I? Yes, the downsides. We have to live on a single income. My partner is an LGV driver. Money is tight but we both feel that it is worth the sacrifice. Time to myself is sometimes hard to come by - luckily the children get on well together and as they get older require less intensive input from me, so it is getting easier to grab the odd hour through the day.

And sometimes, I just have an 'off-day'. It's not always sweetness and light... the kids squabble; their rooms are untidy, the weather is horrible but somehow I have to pull it together, find an activity they both enjoy and simply go with the flow until my mood improves - can't be Supermum all the time!

Other people's attitudes have to be dealt with. Many people are keen to hear more and quite a few say that they wish they had the courage/time/intelligence/whatever to do the same with their children. I reply that all that is needed from a parent is the willingness - everything else follows. You certainly do not need a degree in teaching to be able to facilitate a child's learning. Rarely someone will be quite hostile to the fact that my children do not attend school. One elderly woman told me, "Of course children belong in school - where else should they be?" We are often asked the worn-out, "Why aren't you in school then?" by shop assistants. Our kids are used to it now and simply reply, "We're home-schooled". Interestingly, the reply is accepted more and more often nowadays - the word must be spreading.

Another frequent question is, "What about exams? How will they do their GCSEs?" What does the future hold for our children? As they grow older, we will discuss their options with them. We feel that GCSE's are unimportant and put far too much stress on a child who has to sit ten or more of them at once. If the children show an interest in doing them, then we will help them in anyway we can. It maybe that they will want to take one or two early, say around 14 years of age, and then perhaps a few more later on. For A-Levels, they can attend a college or do evening classes. They may be more inclined towards vocational courses and that shouldn't be a problem to organise. We shall encourage them to find work as teenagers, maybe in a local shop or charity organisation. At the moment Universities will interview home-educated children simply because they know that these kids have a different outlook on life. They are problem-solvers and lateral thinkers because they have not been boxed-in with someone else's idea of what an education should consist of.

Of course, they may even ask to go to school - and that's okay too!

Home education is not for everyone but all parents should be made aware that there is another way...use your child's happiness as a guide. If they are happy in school, then they are learning. If they are happy at home, they are learning. An unhappy child cannot learn.