Stephanie Pollock gave her view on home education on the ABC radio’s Viewpoint. The transcript appears below:
The first time I met these kids, I was left in awe of them. They were centred, spoke with eye contact and interest and I think exuded much more confidence at 11 & 13 than I did at age 22. It struck me, whack, in the middle of my head. Home ed. had to be one of the most sensible and loving experiences you could bestow upon your child. To nourish their educational experience, giving them one-on-one attention in our home. Home is where children establish their groundings, their roots and where self-confidence can be nourished. It’s a place where you know and have complete trust in your child’s ability to learn, because learning is a natural instinct, which children excel in. And we as their parents get the most privileged job of all, to guide them in their lives under complete love.
Even before children were born, we always knew that home education would be our first choice. My sister-in-law has home educated her five children and this gave us great access to the wonderful attributes of home education.
People often ask, “How is the home schooling going?” It always leaves me at a loss because this is our life and everything we do incorporates learning on a daily basis – there is no separate distinction between our home ed. world and the rest of our lives.
So my answer is “Great!”, because it is life and life is pretty okay. Yet that is not to say that parenting is not challenging, as all parents know, children make us face our truths, our motivations, our honesty, our communication and ourselves. Yet these issues occur whether you home educate or not.
Home ed. is extremely diverse depending upon each family and how they choose to live. We follow a natural learning approach, which has a lot to do with listening, watching and interacting with our boys, who are 7 and 3. Our eldest Finn is keenly into dragons, much to do with the fact that he was born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon.
To celebrate his birthday recently we went to Chinatown in Melbourne on a dragon hunt. Leading up to this we borrowed books from the local library and explored Chinese history, buildings, boats, weapons, emperors, and the Great Wall of China. And in Chinatown we located dragons on abalone cans, statues and guardians and we indulged ourselves in all things Chinese, from taste to texture.
An average day of learning and fun, fun, fun surrounded by people who love you and will always want the best for you.
Sometimes I get a bit insecure about the choice we have made as a family, especially when it comes to the birthday parties that our boys will miss out on because they are not in a class of 20. And this generally happens when I am feeling low and vulnerable within myself. But most of the time we all feel liberated and free to explore the world at our own peril and to take in so many wonderful things at the rates we choose.
When we attend home ed. camps and catch up with the diverse and extraordinary bunch of people, who have a love for life, education and play then we know without question that we are in the right world, for it is these families that inspire us, with their truth, honesty of this journey. It is like finding your mob. We truly love it and are thrilled at the possibilities of where it can take each of us in our lives.