Last week, children across the country headed back to school; we asked our contributors to do the same. In this series, our writers share some lessons they learned at school – and how it shaped the way they think about education today.
When my wife suggested that we consider homeschooling our daughter, I was aghast. I had been to school. Everyone I knew had been to school. My only experience of home education was seeing Ruth Lawrence on the back of her dad’s tandem, cycling round Oxford. I knew that homeschooling was not for the likes of us. It was odd. It was possibly dangerous. It was certainly wholly other.
“But it’s what she needs,” my wife pointed out.
Like many adopted children, our daughter needed more individual attention than any school could give, even the excellent one she was attending at the time. So we decided to give homeschooling a go – hoping that it would be good for her, making it up as we went along.
We started by asking her what she wanted to study. “Greek,” she answered. (She was seven at the time.) “And can we have an assembly at the end of the week?”
Not wanting to dampen her enthusiasm, we found some resources for Ancient Greek and launched into an assembly on that first Friday afternoon. It was a reassuringly familiar ritual, so our daughter was happy. Doubly so because she was Star of the Week.
Without ever vocalising the thought in those early days, I assumed that my wife and I had an oracular position in our home school. With several degrees and decades of teaching experience between us, we could fairly claim to be experts. It was a good job I never expressed that view out loud because it’s nonsense. We were just as much amateurs as anyone else.
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