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Getting Started with
Home Schooling:
Practical Considerations

 
 

Allow Time to Deschool

© Beverley Paine

It can take over a year to adjust to homeschooling after bringing a child home from school. It's necessary to rethink the whole idea of education. Classroom learning is geared to educate thirty children with one teacher. It's not impossible, but it's difficult and frustrating to simply transfer classroom teaching and learning approaches directly to the home setting.

In addition, there's a good chance that the child has had her natural desire to learn, as well as her creativity and imagination quashed. She will need time to detox, take a vacation, have some down time - or all three!

The parent needs to deschool as well. For most of us the only educational approach we've known is some kind of school - institutionalised learning. We're used to the idea that education is a passive 'they teach and we learn' kind of thing. Educators, even in schools, know this is only a tiny part of what really happens. We need to update our notions about constitutes an education. The easiest way to do this is to talk to other homeschooling families, hang out with them, and see for ourselves how children learn outside of a school setting.

Some of the myths about education we must dispel are:

  • It cannot take place without a university trained and qualified educator
  • It has to take place in a classroom or classroom environment, with desks, texts or workbooks
  • It takes place Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
  • It stops when we graduate from high school
  • Children must learn certain concepts in a predetermined manner
  • Children must learn certain concepts at a specified age
  • Children cannot learn without a qualified educator to hold their hand and guide them through the learning process

See Deschooling Defined for more information.

Some books I recommend for parents are:

  • Challenging Assumptions in Education
  • Dumbing us Down
  • Self University
  • Creating Learning Communities
  • Punished by Rewards

Beverley Paine is a mother of three young adults and a prolific writer of homeschooling articles. More articles and essays can be found in her books, available from the Always Learning Books online bookstore.

Back to Deschooling

 

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Articles Index | Curriculum Index | Directory | Blog | About Beverley
After 20 years of being a contact
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Home education is a legal alternative
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State and Territory governments
are responsible for regulating home
education. Different states have different
requirements, however home educating
families are able to develop curriculum
and learning programs to suit the
individual needs of their children.
For more information visit the
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photo of Beverley and Robin PainePioneering 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 Homeschool AustraliaFacebook page.
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