Bryan (
) and Noah generously shared their experiences of being home educated. Bryan was brought up in the States, Noah in Canada.Noah started home education age 12, in grade 6/Year 7. He later attended university as a mature student, describing himself as first of all falling in love with formal education, but later falling out of love! He has a PhD in philosophy and literature.
He observed that formal education was fundamentally centred on credentialism, that even the teachers don’t like this approach, and that it diminishes students’ potential to grow as learners and thinkers.
Bryan described himself as nonconformist from the very beginning. His mother was a teacher, and his Type 1 diabetes may have played a role in choosing to keep him at home—but also, he didn’t like nursery and was very clear that he didn’t want to go! His four siblings later followed him into home education. The family joined various homeschool groups, ranging from Christian to anticapitalist, spanning left and right. Aged 13, Bryan attended a private Catholic boys’ school, and at 17 went to Princeton. He found formal education narrow, particularly his Masters, and described adjusting to formal education as like learning to play a game.
Both Noah and Bryan loved university. Noah described himself as highly intrinsically motivated, and a good reader and writer. But he struggled to do work he wasn’t interested in: “If I didn’t care I wouldn’t do it.”
Participants asked what their homeschool days had looked like:
Noah described himself as a feral child. Lots of reading, writing, and visits to the library.
Bryan had lots of social contact because of the various groups they were part of, and classes such as karate and maths. They did lots of field trips and had themed days. Lots of reading and being read to. He noted that the children had no notion of ‘abnormal’ growing up. Everything they knew was normal. There was lots of diversity in their groups, and children of mixed ages, with younger children learning from the older ones. Going to school with children of exactly his own age seemed very strange.
What worked
Both described the high motivation as a positive, although it’s hard to know if they were just like this naturally or if home ed encouraged it.
They grew up anti-authority and anti-hierarchy, which they agreed was a mixed blessing!
It was hard to fit in at school later, a sink or swim situation, which encouraged chameleon-like qualities. They said being homeschooled could lead to a certain arrogance.
The discussion then broadened out:
Participants recommended the Ken Robinson talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? And
’s book Changing Our Minds.Ben described how almost any subject of interest can lead to a child learning about many different areas, giving the example of hand dryers as a way to learn about maths, physics, and business, and recommended leaning into the local community.
One participant asked about how home educating families afford it, to which the answer is that there is no easy way to sacrifice an income and still have enough money. Participants mentioned not owning cars, not going on holiday, having very tight food budgets. One participant mentioned setting up her own business alongside home educating. The financial sacrifice might be the biggest sacrifice home ed families make. But parents also noted the huge privilege of home educating, and that it doesn’t have to be expensive in itself.
Finally we touched on the question of GCSEs, which are not a legal requirement but are a minimum requirement for many careers, so although not required in theory may be essential in practice.
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The image for this post is from Unsplash.