The phenomenon and movement we are going to talk about here has not even got a fixed and common term. Looking for it in the English-speaking world you would have to use such phrases as: “home schooling”, or “home-schooling”, or “homeschooling”, or “home education”. The different terminological traditions spring from the legal formulas used in different territories. Many people (and me personally) use the term “home education” because it sounds “unschoolish”. In Polish we may use the term “edukacja domowa” – proposed by a group of pedagogues – although in Polish educational law (Article 16. Part 8. of The Educational Act 1991) it is called: “fulfilling the school obligation out of school”. If we are to treat it literally, it is like fulfilling the “marital duty” in some other “beds” than one’s own. But let’s give up with all those linguistic games and go to the real meanings of those terms.

Home education is the form of education where parents take over the whole responsibility from the state and educate their children themselves at home, not sending them to a school at all. Practically one can find some “hybrid” forms of it where:

- not only the parents but also siblings, grandparents, or some other persons teach the children;

- the “lessons” are conducted in some other settings than at home – in a friend’s (friends’) house, or museum, or park, or some other place;

- the responsibility is “shared”, because children attend some lessons (chemistry or sport for example) at school and the rest at home – not a common situation now - or visit houses of members of a home education support group where they have their different “lessons”.

Typically mentioning the phenomenon of home education urges people to ask “troublesome” questions like:

Nowadays in the world there are countries (like United Kingdom and Portugal) where the law not only makes home education legal but also enables doing it in a “soft” and helpful social environment. In other countries although generally home education is legal but with a few (different parts of USA) or many (Poland) constraints and conditions that make it much harder to realize. Unfortunately there are also countries (Germany) where home education is forbidden and those people who would like to do it with their children are threatened by severe punishment. We can add here that such situations were typical in all totalitarian states like fascist Germany or communist Soviet Union. It is a little bit strange because of a global international agreement on parents’ priority in choosing education for their own children and stating anti-monopoly in the field of education. So where you find many obstacles against home education it looks like the unjustifiable (unfounded) bureaucratic preservation of social power.

 To think that people must socialize in big groups of peers is a kind of mistake. No social situation is more artificial than that one. In normal conditions we meet people of different ages. Sociologists have found that socializing with older people gives children a big developmental potential incomparable with the one stemming from staying in children’s “ghettos” and the time spent with peers is longer for homeschoolers than for “schoolboys” and “schoolgirls”.

Research show that parents’ having been formally educated is not important for the results in standardized tests achieved by homeschooled children. The most relevant agent here is motivation for education.

According to much scientific research the academic outcomes of home-educated children are better (15-30%) than the national average. In USA (from 2000) 750 universities and colleges are “aggressively” striving for home education “graduates” because they show good academic competence, high motivation, open mindedness and learning independence.

Here we have reached the issue of “autonomous” learning. Homeschooled children start with relative educational dependence on their parents but in their “teenage” years they find their own way to learning independence with a small amount of help on the part of their parents. The kind of education we could call “very autonomous” has its own name: “unschooling”. Adults roles are limited here to supporting not to leading. Roland Meighan has shown that teaching (“external” education) brings about 5% of knowledge retention compared with 90% retention from learning (“internal” education).

Home education is the oldest form of education, beginning with the children of Adam and Eve (or if you like: the children of Lucy and her partner/s) and the main one till the emergence of public government education in the late nineteenth century. Now in USA there are 2 – 2.5 million children educated at home, in UK 50 – 150,000. There are many groups and associations working together for the good of the “homeschooling community”. In Poland however there cannot be more than 10 families homeschooling their children. Among other subjects kids learn foreign languages. Although parents are rarely language teachers children learn them helped by friend specialists and using traditional and available methods.

The effects of it could be much better if we - homeschooling parents and homeschooled children – could receive professional help from TD&AL SIG members.

If You would like to help us – please do!