To Home-School or Not To Home-School?

It was around Christmas of 2004 when the idea of home-schooling the children first saw the murky light of day. It was a scary idea. Almost as scary as the day, eight years ago, when we elected to send the children to independent (private) school.

We passionately believe in the good of the pursuit of knowledge, but for its own sake and for the fulfilment and richness of life it can bring. We are not ambitious – neither one of us cares much for the rat race or the material values of the world. Gary has recently completed an Open University MBA (Master of Business Administration), and I was fortunate enough to be able to enrol on a BA course in Economics at Sussex University. Neither of us have any career aspirations, but even though it was undoubtedly tough, both of us loved the pursuit of knowledge imparted to us through our respective studies.

To be fair, it was probably only through doing my degree that I began to have confidence in my own academic ability. Prior to the course, I don’t think I would have dreamed of taking on the seemingly vast challenge of educating my children at home – having said that, I don’t believe that you need to be an academic parent to teach your children. The most key thing is wanting to spend time with them, and enjoy the pursuit of knowledge.

The children had been at St Bede’s Preparatory School in Eastbourne for nigh on eight years – both since they were just over two years old. Having been brought up on a diet of Enid Blyton adventures such as Mallory Towers and St Claires, I loved the whole atmosphere of a prep/boarding school, and loved even more that I was in a position for my children to enjoy this too. The school gave them every opportunity to do practically everything you could imagine – they had a swimming pool, so the kids were swimming from the age of 3; they had a huge sports hall, so all sorts of activities were possible there; they offered a huge range of after school clubs and activities, and the children were always dead keen to stay on after 3.45 (until 5.30) doing arts and crafts, board games, french club and more swimming.

Jonah, our eldest, was happy enough, although he had one or two problems with learning and concentration, and so was having extra weekly help. Hannah, however, on the move up into Year 2 (at the age of 7) began to show signs of disinterest. This continued on into Year 3, when she didn’t seem to trying very much at all.

Now, I don’t believe in trying to make your children more than they are, but I firmly believe that they need guidance and encouragement – even pushing, sometimes – to be the very best person they can be. We sat down with Hannah for a chat, and it turned out (as we suspected) that she was bored at school. She has always been extremely bright – they constantly told us this at school – but she wasn’t being stimulated enough by the work being done by her peer group. I had spoken to her teachers about this, but of course there is only so much they could do, since they had 30 or so other children to accommodate as well.

We arranged for Hannah to go for taster day at another local independent school – this time an all-girls school (which we weren’t sure Hannah would go for, since she always tended to play football with the boys!). Although we were impressed with the place, Hannah was not, so another avenue was closed.

We were stumped. We are not the sort of parents who sit back and just let things be (rightly, or wrongly!). We talked and talked. A friend of mine had moved to Canada a couple of years ago, and had begun home schooling her children. Although I had been against it at the time, I started to look into the possibility of doing the same. If we left the children at St Bede’s, I would have to go out to work full-time, in order to meet the fees. With my economics degree, the type of work I would look to do would probably mean a commute to London. Although the challenge of working in a professional environment appealed to my ego, the thought of getting into that sort of life was definitely not what I considered right for us, as a family, at this stage. I had, at one point, considered training to be a teacher … so the thought process began – what if, instead of training to teach other people’s children, I simply stayed at home and taught my own? The idea seemed logical enough, but would I have the “bottle” to actually do it? More to the point, would I not want to strangle the children after day one of lessons?!!!

Rigid or Flexible?

Once I began to make it known that I was embarking on home schooling, the biggest question – actually, more like assumption – was “will you have a strict timetable?” At first, I thought absolutely yes – I would devise a timetable which set out how long and exactly what we would study. I would prepare the work a term in advance so I knew exactly what we would be doing and what we would achieve.

I don’t think so!

Firstly, the more I thought about it, and the more we actually got into our term, the more I realised that although the children do need a sense of regularity, I wasn’t trying to recreate a school-from-school within our home. The key for me was to aim for an atmosphere of learning within a comfortable, enthusiastic environment where the children, hopefully, wanted to learn and explore the world around them. I knew they would need a degree of structure (as would I), but as the days went by, I found myself unable to plan too far ahead, simply because I needed to evaluate what we had done each day before I could plan for the next. In this way, as all passionate home schoolers will tell you, the work is children-lead. There is little point, in my opinion, in trying to reproduce exactly the same type of teaching environment as in a school. The problem with schools is that they are so controlled by goals and targets that they are unable to apply much flexibility when it comes to actual lessons. At home, I am able to spend as long or as little time as I choose on subjects, according to the children’s understanding and enjoyment. We spent an entire term in maths concentrating on times tables, but then were able to virtually fly through long multiplication and even long division. On top of that, the children (mostly) enjoyed what we did.

Although it is often difficult, in the face of the expected norm, I am learning to stick with my own “gut instinct” regarding what and for how long I teach the children each day. Again, many home schoolers point out that there is only a real need to teach in the mornings, since the one-to-one attention means the children learn far more quickly than in a classroom environment. This is, I think, probably true, but I found myself struggling to fit in everything that I wanted to learn with the children. Thus, in our case, we often work through to 3.30 in the afternoon (depending on what time we start in the morning – I’m not overly strict about that either – we simply carry on in the afternoon until we’ve finished the day’s work!). Don’t get me wrong – we are not constantly sitting at the table with our heads down from 8.30 am until 3.30 pm. Our day includes a half-hour mid-morning break and a 1 ½ hour lunch. It also incorporates weekly trips to the town library, a couple of private study sessions (which I have only recently introduced – watch this space!) and sports and music sessions. When reading is timetabled, we usually snuggle up on one or other of the children’s beds. Our modern languages lessons are spent either one-on-one at the table, listening to recordings of stories in the appropriate language (usually in one of their bedrooms, again cuddled up on the bed), or working on specific internet games on the computer. I may not have planned a computer session on a particular day, but if Jonah begs me to play on “Hennings Haus” which is a German children’s educational website, I will often postpone my planned work and indulge him, since I believe enthusiasm is the key to learning.

These days, if I am asked – “do you have a strict timetable?” – I might respond that our timetable is more for guidance than anything. It is there to enable me to prepare what we are to study, and for the children to know the subjects we are to tackle. Other than that, the times themselves are, once again, a very loose guide. Alternatively, if I’m not in the mood at explaining how we work, I might just agree “Oh yes, of course – wouldn’t dream of doing without it!”