Jan 8, 2023 6 min read Parenting

How to answer the 'homeschool' question

"Really? You're going to Homeschool? Why?"

I look away, briefly checking the dog is still visible as the kids blitz blissfully around the park in the watery sunshine on their balance bikes, and allow myself a quiet breath as I decide how I'm going to answer the question this time.

It has become steadily more tiresome trying to provide a polite and non-inflammatory response to that same question, over and over, from so many people.

It is, of course, innocent enough in its intention but so wearily judgmental at the same time.

"Really? Homeschooling... why?"

You can almost hear the distaste in their voice as the word rolls of their tongue, and as a parent, I always feel that gutwrenching fear of 'what if they're right? What if I'm making a terrible decision?'.

I'm sure you know the feeling too

If you too have made the decision to home educate your own children, for whatever reason, then I'm sure you've been in the same situation yourself, feeling that lonely burden of having to justify your decisions yet again to someone whose business it most certainly is not.

Well rest assured, friend, you are most welcome here, so pull up a chair and relax.

Hopefully we can make you feel somewhat comforted that the constant doubt and second guessing - wondering whether such a significant decision is in fact the right one to make - should in itself serve as reassurance that you are doing what is best for your own children.

The parents who worry whether they're doing the right thing, are usually not the ones who need to worry.

So why are you homeschooling?

It's a fair question, no doubt, and most people genuinely mean well when they ask. After all, it is an interesting decision purely by virtue of the fact that you're going against the grain and doing something different to the norm.

Especially when you consider that both my wife and I were very much conventionally educated and considered 'high achievers' at school, following a traditional vocational pathway and ending up in the field of medicine. It's no wonder people show surprise when we say we're taking our own kids' education into our own hands and sauntering off the beaten track like lost ducklings wandering merrily into the abyss.

But it's precisely because we've been through the system ourselves that we feel even more strongly that this is the right decision for us and our own children, and I'll endeavour to explain my own response succinctly.

School is a scary default

The idea of 'School' is deeply ingrained in our society, to the point that it pretty much defines our life as children, so it's understandable when people show interest and hesitation when you decide that you're rejecting the concept entirely and doing your own thing.

"What year are you in?"

"What school do you go to?"

"Who's your favourite teacher?"

These are just three of the standard off-the-shelf questions offered up by most well-meaning adults to any individual who looks vaguely under the age of sixteen.

Personally, I feel this immediately constrains the topic of conversation and denies the child the opportunity to discuss things that genuinely interest them. In my own work as an anaesthetist I frequently have to do my best to build rapport with young children and their parents before an operation, and I can promise you it's far more interesting for both parties to open with a question such as,

"If I handed you fifty pounds right now, what would you do with it?"

But that's a whole other topic for another time.

Stuff what other people think

Returning to the issue at hand, in constructing my reply to this increasingly infuriating question, I used to start my response with tentative phrases such as

"Well there are a lot of things about school that we're not so keen on..."

"We really want to do as much of the teaching ourselves as possible"

in a half-hearted attempt to simultaneously bat the question away while not offending anyone.

But I found that each time I was doing this I felt like I was cheating myself, and hiding my true opinions away, scared to reveal them as if they were forbidden or taboo. One of the most important things I want to teach my own children is never to apologise for their thoughts or opinions, and here I was trying to placate strangers so that they wouldn't judge my choices for my family.

However all of this has changed since the birth of our third child, as I am now far too sleep deprived to care what a stranger thinks of my life choices, and to be quite frank, it's made the whole process vastly easier for me.

I now simply reply with another question from the list below, and usually they stop talking and leave me alone rather quickly.

Why do kids get bullied at school?

Kids get bullied at school for being different.

Humans are tribal creatures, and in general we love to conform to a group. As soon as a group of likeminded kids forms in a year group at school, any child not in that group automatically is an outsider. If they can find another group, then they're safe, but if there is nobody that shares the same interests or hobbies as them, then they end up alone.

And if they're perceived as weak, then they get bullied.

If you don't conform to the average, and don't simultaneously have a ridiculously strong sense of individuality, then you are pounded, metaphorically and sometimes physically, by societal peer pressure into the same square hole as everyone else, and the spark that makes you you is gone forever.

No thank you.

I was a weird kid - I liked juggling, riding a unicycle, playing with dolls and dressing up - and I was made to feel ashamed of it at the time, causing me to give up on a lot of hobbies and pursuits that I now look back on and wish I had continued.

I'm now an even weirder adult, and a relentless nerd, but it's now a badge I wear with pride, as I desperately try to re-learn how to ride my unicycle and juggle at the same time. It's so refreshingly invigorating not giving a damn what anyone else thinks, and I feel a weight that has been sat squarely on my shoulders since I was about twelve has been lifted off forever.

I want to nourish, cherish and encourage every little shred of my kids' personalities that make them unique. I plan to surround them with experiences, books and people that will help them blossom into the fantastically weird, brilliantly bonkers and spectacularly strange individuals they were always meant to be. If you can find me a school that can do this better than Marie and I, I'm all ears.

What's your favourite memory from school?

Most people claim to have 'fond' school memories of one sort or another, usually of playing with their friends in the playground at lunch time, or packing off on an exciting school trip without their parents for the first time, or maybe an after school sports club that was the highlight of their week.

Notice how none of these actually involve the 'school' aspect of school. I have never met anyone who has replied to this question with,

"Sitting in a hot classroom on a sunny Friday afternoon learning French grammar from a whiteboard".

Even an unapologetic nerd like me, who spends his evenings reading academic material for his own enjoyment, enjoyed the 'non-school' bits of school far more than sitting in a classroom being told information that statistically I wouldn't ever need (including all the statistics I had to learn).

And finally... My favourite question-response of all...

How much do you think it would cost to send your child to a school that had one teacher for every two kids, each teacher has two post graduate degrees, and cares more about your child's happiness and development than their own job?

Because that's the school my kids are getting.

Truth be told I've come to love the resistance, the judgement and the querying glances. The more I go through life and the more people I meet, the greater the number of opportunities I find that are missed by children stuck in school, and the weirder and more different I want to be.