Diary of a Home Educating Nobody

“How do you know that?”

These days it’s me who’s asking that question and I’ve been asking that a lot of my nine-year-old lately. Because she seems to be increasingly coming out with fascinating gems of information that, not only did I not know, but also I had no idea she knew either!
We were walking very carefully through a prickly patch of thistles and weeds watching the butterflies.

“Oh - it was on that programme we were watching the other day.” She answers in that really nonchalant tone that indicates being master of all this information over and above me!

Other times when I’ve asked her in amazement ‘how do you know that?’ she has said, ‘off the computer’ or ‘in my magazine’ or ‘from that eyewitness book we were looking at together – you remember’. Frankly I didn’t. Or ‘it’s on that science CD-ROM’ or even ‘I dunno, I just know it that’s all’.

”Well, I’m not sure,” I said. “I think it’s a tortoiseshell.’

“No, it’s a painted lady,’ she insisted.

“But it looks just like a tortoiseshell to me,” I said.

“It’s not, its wings are different at the edges.” She was very sure of herself. I kept silent and concentrated on manoeuvring my legs through the prickles, thinking “she isn’t right, I’m sure!”

Okay – so I was the teeniest bit disgruntled at all this stuff she knew that I hadn’t taught her! In fact nobody had taught her. And how could she possibly learn all this all by herself? Children need teaching to learn anything, don’t they?

I think I would be right in saying that most of us are probably under this same misconception; that children need to be taught in order to learn anything. That the children in schools learn because the teachers are there teaching them things. After all, these teachers have been specially trained to do so, haven’t they? So surely in order for our home educated children to learn anything we parents are going to have to teach them!

As I said; these are misconceptions!

Let’s think about children learning for a moment. But let’s not look at how children learn, which is the way we tend to look at children’s education. Let’s look at it from the other way round – me being difficult! Let’s look at why they don’t learn - what stops them learning.
The reason I suggest looking at it this way is because when I think of a baby/infant/toddler I immediately think of an inquisitive little being who will try its utmost, whatever the opposition, to explore, find out about, learn about their surroundings. They feel, taste, handle, chew, sniff at, scrunch, destroy, take apart, squash and generally mess with anything they can get their hands on. And why do they do this? No – it’s not simply to annoy us although it may feel like that! It’s because they want to know about their world. Because they want to learn.

Even tiny babies come into this world learning. As they grow they want to learn more. As they crawl they’re off into all sorts of things we would rather keep them out of, all for the sake of learning. They just can’t help it.

Which brings me to the obvious conclusion; children want to learn. Children can’t help learning. And children end up learning lots of things without ever being taught.

They learnt to crawl, walk, talk, without actually being taught. Just with a bit of encouragement. It didn’t need any key stages, or standard attainment tests for them to achieve it! Or a specific teacher. Just caring parents, like our children already have or we wouldn’t be doing this home education, would we?

So why don’t they continue learning? If they can learn things without being taught what happens that they stop learning as they get older?

It’s ironic that teacher training involves a lot of research into child psychology which teaches teachers that in order for a child to learn anything its basic needs must first be met! These training teachers learn how children must be comfortable with themselves and their environment, they must feel confident and reassured, their individual needs must be attended to and even very simple basic comforts must first be met, like being warm, not hungry, nor desperate for a wee!

Then what happens? These same teachers go into schools – these institutions being the most unhappy environment for children to be in, because they are set up for crowd control not individual nurturing – and they use tactics like humiliation and degradation to coerce children into learning things that are irrelevant to them. They make failure appear like a crime instead of a valuable step towards learning. They devalue a child’s own knowledge because it isn’t relevant to the curriculum. And they even deny them the right to go to the toilet when they need to!

It seems obvious to me why children don’t learn!

We’re all so lucky in our home educating community. Our children are so lucky to have caring parents who give value to our children’s basic need (and right) to feel comfortable and confident and good within themselves. Therefore enabling them to continue learning as is natural to them.

I believe the most basic need a child has in order to learn is one of confidence. With confidence they can achieve anything in life. If they feel loved, secure, encouraged and stimulated they are going to learn anyway. If they feel these things they will gain the confidence to tackle the less stimulating repetitive skills they may need to practise to gain the levels they want. Exams they might want. Even in a more competitive situation – they don’t need the more damaging competition that comes from a sometimes-threatening school environment, from peers and teachers!

So I must be very careful not to undermine my daughter’s confidence in her own knowledge. Because it looks as if she already knows how to learn despite the fact that I might not know how to teach her!

And if I’m honest, my question ‘how do you know that?’ is perhaps not about my need to know how – I suppose I already do. It is more an expression of surprise and wonderment as to how incredible our children are in the way that learn things – even without us. Children already know how to learn – we can help by nurturing that skill and adding to it. Always giving confidence.

And yes, peevish little wretch that I am, I did look it up when I got back. And do you know? She was right! It was a painted lady!

More Diary of an HE Nobody can be found here