Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Where learning is fun – not a chore
About 40,000 children in the UK are home schooled, with the number rising rapidly each year. Jo Kidd, of Lower Lees Road, Old Wives Lees, explains why she feels shunning the classroom is best for her six-year-old daughter, Rosa
You really should book her into a nursery as soon as possible so that she can learn how to conform by the time she gets to school – that’s what we were told by a health professional when our daughter, Rosa, was a year old.
To us, this represented an example of how narrow and disconnected our education system has become.
With its focus on league tables and continuous testing, the system reduces children to economically productive units and consumers.
The priority is about ‘getting a good job’ so that we can spend our hard-earned cash on what corporations want us to buy. Spirits are broken this way.
How would the world look if we took a more holistic approach to our children’s education?
Of course, we know many good teachers trying to do their best within this system but they are up against it.
When Rosa was three, she did, in fact, try a small preschool for a while but after a few months voted with her feet. By this time, we had decided, as a family, that home education was the right course for us.
There are various styles of home educating. The approach we have gravitated towards is known as ‘unschooling’.
Jo Kidd teaches Rosa at home It’s also referred to as ‘natural learning’, ‘child-led learning’ or ‘autonomous learning’.
This style of home education is grounded in the knowledge that children are innately curious and inquisitive. Children do not need to be taught how to learn. Children love to learn. The teacher’s – or rather facilitator’s – role is to create an environment ripe for learning and ensure a wide variety of opportunities. Learning should be fun, not a chore.
Unschooling doesn’t mean that we don’t have any boundaries at all. Rather it is about being open-minded and honest with our daughter.
It is about us, as adults, not always needing to be right or to know everything. We love learning and discovering together and most of Rosa’s education is based on play. We also talk together a lot.
In truth, home education is a misnomer. Most of our week is spent out and about rather than at home. Typically, our week includes activities as varied as denbuilding and foraging in the woods, a science group, pottery, a parkour
club, meeting up with friends at a regular home education social group, a visit to a mosque, helping friends to look after rescued sheep, a knitting lesson, a visit to the library, an art workshop, messy church and a theatre show.
At home, we are reading, writing, drawing, talking, painting, fixing things, cooking, gardening, listening to music, researching information on the internet or in books, having friends round for a play date and talking some more!
Of course, you can do many of those things at school. The main difference with home education is that the child sets the pace and is supported to follow her interests and passions. She is also socialising with many different people, of all ages, backgrounds, ethnicities and abilities, which builds confidence. There are so many opportunities for learning all around us all the time. You don’t need to be in a classroom.
The important thing is to encourage children to question what they see and hear around them, and to never stop questioning. As a species, we should be judged on our compassion, kindness and empathy and hope that our children are happy, healthy, wellgrounded people. However, these are not the qualities our education system measures.