The problem with autobiographical content is that it always involves other people. In the early days of the internet, when it felt like nobody was reading and those who did quickly became friends somehow, that didn’t seem to matter. The nefarious side of things, or the naturally accompanying sensitivity about privacy, hadn’t yet emerged. When I blogged 20 years ago they were streams of consciousness, uninterrupted by such concerns.
Nowadays, my fingers hover uncertainly over the keyboard. Every interesting period of my life concerns – implicates – involves – other people. In talking about my experiences, I can’t help referencing theirs to some extent, even with the space between the words, when I don’t mention them. They were there. It was their time too and they might, probably will, have experienced it completely differently to me.
Anyway, my kids didn’t go to school. Well, the older ones did, for a few years, but it didn’t work out well for them and they preferred not to go, so I deregistered them. The younger two didn’t go at all, because home ed life was our life by then. We were fully immersed in the meetings, family friendships, clubs and activities that go along with home education in the UK.
We unschooled, which means… well. It means different things to different people, but to me it meant following the child’s interests. Allowing them the space to explore their world so that learning was almost a by-product of this, like it would have been for thousands of years before children went to school.
They could all read and write. They could type faster than most, because of a natural proclivity for computers. They played, swam, skated, rode horses and bikes and in general their lives were like one long summer holiday, which was my intention. And at the same time, almost accidentally, they learned.
People think of children learning as something that has to be forced or at least coerced, but it doesn’t. They really are like sponges. Sure, if you lead a dodgy life and parade that infront of them with a house full of criminals or whatever, they’ll learn from that, one way or the other. Most parents obviously don’t do that.
But parents aren’t the only – or even the major – source of learning for home educated kids. They learn from each other, the “real world” – and screens.
The ‘screens’ part is controversial now, with talk of screen addictions and so on. It wasn’t so much when my children were growing up. And when I was a child, before home computers were invented, let alone consoles and smartphones, I craved all of that. It was so frustrating to me that the television wasn’t interactive.
Sure, I read books but everything – the reading, the watching – was so passive and separate from me. I wanted to be part of the action, which we now can be.
And so why would I deny that to my children? It made no sense.
Anyway. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. And this is the part where my fingers are hovering, because I don’t like to talk about them online any more and they don’t like it either. But suffice to say, one is at college. One works in corporate and the others are self-employed. Financially, they do just fine but success isn’t just about that, is it?
Success is about whether you’re bored or desolate when you’re not working. Whether you’re curious. Whether you can make good relationships with people. Whether you develop your personality. Whether you can set goals and work towards them. Whether you challenge yourself and your own thinking. Whether you still, as you grow older, want to explore the world and experience and express your discoveries in your own way.
I think my children are successful in all of those things but I sometimes ask them if I did the right thing in home educating them. They all say yes. But I think I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t sometimes wonder about that.