It seems to provoke heated debate, with some people seeing Home Ed as a form of child abuse bound to end up with ignorant, billy-no-mates children, while others are positively evangelical about it giving modern children their childhood back. What do you think?
I think I am actually giving my children the gift of their childhood. Once children start school these days they seem to have no time for anything else and other interests become relegated to second place and 'not as important' as schoolwork, much of which is just 'filler' anyway. Who should say that a child's interest in reading, writing, music, sport, computers, or whatever, should not be as important as anything else they do?
Or is it just interests which may not earn them a living that are ignored in this way? I notice that child-entrepreneurs are positively encouraged as are child geniuses, but a child who just enjoys playing the guitar isn't given the same freedom. What is more important than discovering what you enjoy doing and are good at? Many adults have lots of qualifications, a really high-powered job and lots of money and yet happiness levels are at the lowest in the Developed World that they have been for a long time. People need to discover who they are and what they need. They need to develop self-reliance, confidence and inner resources. Children who go to school often don't have the time and leisure to do this.
Another objection often made is that children who don't go to school won't learn to socialise or 'how to be bored' or to be told what to do. Good! From what I remember about school socialising and what I read about the problem of bullying in the papers, I don't want my children to learn that kind of socialising! Involuntary enforced social contact with people of your own birth year within an institutional setting doesn't sound particularly useful to me, especially when you consider the alternative of actually being out and about in the community during the day meeting real people, doing real things.
As for learning authority, my children learn boundaries from me, but I don't want them to be indoctrinated with the idea that 'Authority' is a huge megalith that rules their lives. It may be difficult and uncomfortable for them (and me!) at times, but I want them to question things and not just take them as read. And the idea of learning to be bored at school because you will have to be in your working life strikes me as downright depressing! Who says we have to be bored at work? I know a lot of people are, but surely it shouldn't be like that? I hope that by teaching my child the responsibility of filling their own time rather than having it timetabled for them, they will be able to carve a more interesting and alternative working pattern to many of my own generation.