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Everyone can Homeschool: Intelligence and Educational Knowledge are not Prerequisites for Starting to Teach Your Children at Home
© Beverley Paine A friend recently said, "It's okay for you to homeschool Beverley, you know what you are doing, but what about people who didn't finish school, who aren't so intelligent?" I get this a lot and it bugs me. These people usually know me as I am today, not twenty years ago when I began homeschooling. They haven't been on the entire journey with us. I don't think 'intelligence', or 'intelligent homeschooling' as a concept, is necessarily a prerequisite for homeschooling. I've met parents who haven't got a clue about how to educate their children and operate from a really basic position for the first year or so. They're refugees from the system, usually desperate and unwilling homeschoolers, but left without any other sane choice. These parents operate on one principle only in those early weeks and months: the need to protect their children. These are folks who haven't heard of attachment parenting or alternative educational approaches and philosophies. They just want their children to be able to learn to spell and calculate in an environment that respects their uniqueness... Over time, with support, these families discover that home educating educates them - in short, they begin to use their natural intelligence, long since atrophied, often thanks to the kind of school experiences they endured. Ultimately 'intelligent homeschooling' evolves, but it can take several years! The best thing about homeschooling is that we're always learning: if something doesn't work we don't have any compelling reason not to dump it and try something else. Schools don't have this freedom. We're answerable to ourselves and our children. We don't have to implement methods or teach our children things they don't need to know simply because it's in the curriculum, or because the parent body think it's a good idea (educational fashions and fads abound in schools, and once they take hold they're hard to get rid of, even if it's obvious they don't work). Homeschoolers move much more quickly through the silly stuff and begin working with children on an individual basis, thus accelerating the learning process and making it more meaningful. Homeschooling is largely a self-correcting approach to education! The other thing that all homeschoolers do, whether in a deliberate and conscious way like me, or simply because they come up against an problem and need to find solutions, is continually learn about the process of education. Because we're not teaching one age group every year, our understanding of how children learn and grow is constantly challenged - unlike school teachers. This keeps us on our feet. Collectively we've built up a considerable knowledge base and most of what we've learned over the last 30-40 years is now online on the internet. There are hundreds of thousands of pages dedicated to how children learn in just about any enviroment, from homes, to caravans, to boats, to tents, to classes... We're at the forefront of educational research - a living laboratory experiment. The world of school is beginning to sit up and take notice of our successes, while doing their level best to make us to conform to methods and ideas that have simply outlived their usefulness!
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education in Australia. State and Territory governments are responsible for regulating home education and have different requirements, however home educating families are able to develop curriculum and learning programs to suit the individual needs of their children.
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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 was a committee member for three years during which time she edited and produced the HEA Newsletter, Stepping Stones for Home Educators magazine, 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 Homeschool Australia Facebook page.nor do they endorse or recommend products (other than their own) listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements.