While driving along in the car today, I was thinking of a way to explain and encompass just how a Home Education really works and why. We give it that name but really what we’re referring to is the human right to thrive, grow and achieve. To fulfil a personal purpose and desire to obtain knowledge that we may or may not be able to share in an attempt to pass on history, experience or skills and legacy.

The answer suddenly dawned on me and I just had to share with you because there have been so many times someone has asked me and I’ve not known how to put it into words. How to get across just exactly what learning and learning at home means? But now I have it and I want you to have it too in case you’re asked. You can summarise it, (I have, over on Instagram) but here is the long version.

As a race, we tend to learn by watching, listening, talking and doing. We invented reading and writing and began to utilise these as ways to access information too. Now we have television, computers and the internet and the world can be a whole lot larger…if we want it to be. But it’s all fine if we continue to talk and listen and watch and do. It always has been and always will be.

When we take children out of this rich living environment (called Life Happening) and put them into schools, we suddenly remove Opportunity. Organic, authentic opportunity. Common sense and trial and error don’t come so easily. We realise this!

We now need someone to show the children how to do the things they would have likely learnt had we left them be.

At home, they were growing, living and discovering a world that was already more easily accessible to them when they were a part of it. When they could visit it and utilise it freely without having to set particular days or times to do so.

So, we brought in a teacher to take the place of parents and extended family. A teacher, instead of trusted family friends, neighbours or elders. And in time we have given the teacher a curriculum of topics to teach. These consist of literacy, numeracy, science, history, physical education and so on.

We forgot that our children were doing these things before, once upon a time. They didn’t have academic name boxes. Instead of school, we called it today. Sometimes, yesterday and often tomorrow. We have come to the conclusion over the years for example, that being active is good for us. But, when in school, we need to make specific time for PE because we removed the opportunity to come about it, in a day. Why? Because we are in school! Instead of the garden, the fields, the small holding, the kitchen, the workshop.

We forgot how we ever learnt these things, how it is in our innateness, our very being, to enjoy the in-built instinct of curiosity and to want to improve. Slowly, progressively, joyfully, sporadically, in time, in the moment, with practice and by revisiting over and over again. Forever. While adding new knowledge and skills with every year that passes. Life, being a journey and not a race to the finish line.

Now, we begin to believe that without school our children will be unable to learn. That we can’t teach them and that they could never be trusted to learn things on their own.

So, we learn the things we learnt before but in schools instead, with a limited amount of time it seems.

But our children were never meant to grow inside, in manufactured environments. They were supposed to be free to pursue their passions. They would become people who were kind, interesting and hardworking, skilled and accomplished. School begins to feel like a competition, a place to survive and to become the best. Tests and scores seem important. More important than family, health, decency, working together, helping each other and taking care of each other. And children don’t know how to play anymore.

They are restricted on when, where, what, for how long and who with. Instead of play naturally giving way to maturity and eventually becoming “protector” or “provider”, we now tell children when they are too old for play and force them to exchange it for regurgitated information and the pressure of choosing a career. Children are tired of being told they must reach their full potential at the price of mental wellbeing and happiness.

Life goes on until occasionally, a parent removes their child from the system of schooling and when they bring them home it takes a great deal of time for all to realise that learning is akin to breathing. There is no desperate and vital rush. By providing access to an environment of possibilities and watching the child, the parent starts to see them spontaneously discover a new way – that is the old way. The lessons disappear and instead there are questions. “I wonder what..? What happens if..? What can be? What will be?”

They find things they are good at. The parent facilitates what they can, as often as they can. Deep and meaningful conversations take place. Sometimes just the simplest of comments. “Look at the steam from my tea! See how it goes up?”

Of course, not everything will be. There is never enough time and besides, other adventures will be taking place instead. Relevant and real to the child’s life. Everything, even their geographical location on this earth, will contribute to what they will learn and who they will one day become.

One of the reasons many Home Educators choose not to recreate school at home and call it Home Schooling, is because they have come to understand that school is the interruption. The place where learning really stopped happening. Life is the education and it does fine without school. School is a place for everyone to learn the same things at the same time or be left behind! A place for children to be taught. Without its restrictive model, they are capable of far more.

It makes no more sense, to take a hatchling from its nest and have a human teach it how to fly than to take a cub from a lioness, and have a human teach it how to hunt. No more sense to take a fish from the sea or an ape from the forest and give it instruction on how to swim or swing. Then to try and claim the credit.Everyone has the right to a fulfilling life and a broad education however, it seems that school is the place to learn only about school.

A place to put children and to convince us to forget that, we never needed it in the first place.

© 2025 Juliette Proffitt ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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