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Homeschool Australia
Teach your children at home!
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Save time and simplify your homeschooling life... |
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| "Thank you... The information you supply is real and generous - fantastic reading. I am so inspired... Your honesty is rare. Most books do not really explain 'how' as well as you do." Tracy "I cannot seem to get enough of your writings on the whole home ed subject! You portray a lot of wisdom, knowledge and experience..." Marie "A fabulous source of information and inspiration. I am very pleased to have some of your titles on my bookshelf... providing me with wonderful, detailed information and resources." Faye |
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Better Than Average
© Beverley Paine Often, in my reading on home education, I find the children mentioned are either all very 'gifted and talented' or have some 'learning difficulty'. The latter generally draws sympathetic comments, fails to help many such children. The first description, though, seems to echo a common misconception in the community, an expectation that homeschooled children have to do better than average to be 'okay'. Although statistical research repeatedly demonstrates home educated children rating better on standardised tests, why does the perception remain that they all have to? It seems that anything less than 'brilliant' represents a failed home education system, whereas 'average' is an acceptable outcome from schools. Home educating parents keenly feel this pressure to perform better than teachers at school. Is it because home educated parents have to 'prove' their children are progressing educationally, whereas teachers and schools are by and large unaccountable? Unlike homeschoolers they don't face deregistration if they don't come up to scratch. Or is it the blind faith the community puts in the 'trained' professionals? Sometimes home educating parents feel that others in the community are waiting for them to 'fail', and any perceived character flaws observed in the children will be blamed solely on the fact that they are home educated. Some home educated children excel in certain areas, but what about the children that 'lag' behind their same age peers, academically or socially? Home educators agree that the education provided for their children can easily be superior to that offered elsewhere. There are plenty of people in the education system who would readily concur. It is only the people indoctrinated by the idea of one, singular 'school' education system that try to scrutinise home educated children to make sure that they 'measure up'. Their expectation for achievement is higher for home educated children than for the majority of schooled children. This places unwarranted stress on home education. We, as home educators, know our children are better off, so why do we need to continuously prove it to anyone? Who are we accountable to after all? Other people, the school system, or our own children? We need to resist the urge to continuously 'prove' that home education is as good as, or superior to, school education, as this leads to stressful comparison and competition, and reinforces undesirable stereotypes in the community.
After 20 years of being a contact and support person Beverley no longer takes phone call or email inquiries. Please join one of her yahoo groups if you want to know more about homeschooling or have a question.
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Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia, Beverley and Robin Paine are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families. They began homeschooling their children in 1986 and three years later started the South Australian Home Based Learners network.Beverley wrote Getting Started with Homeschooling in 1995-97 and since then continues to write books and booklets on home education. She balances spending time helping home educators with working in her garden and renovating her home, as well as continuing to build her collection of writing on a variety of homeschooling subjects. Beverley maintains an extensive collection of websites as well as several Yahoo groups supporting families teaching their children at home. In 2007 Beverley joined the HEA and became a committee member in 2008: she also edits and produce the HEA Newsletter, HEA magazine, Stepping Stones for Home Educators, annual Resource Directory and other HEA publications. If you'd like to keep in touch with what Beverley is up to her in her life, sign up for the Homeschool Australia Newsletter or visit her Facebook page.