International Perspectives on Home Education

Do We Still Need Schools?

P. Rothermel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349496112, 9781137446848
• eBook ISBN: 9781137446855
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This collection brings together the research of an eclectic mix of leading names in home-based education studies worldwide. It uses home education to explore contemporary education outside of school and place it into a global, political and critical context, and will be essential reading for home educators, academics and policymakers alike.

Part I

Home Education: The Learning Process

1

Home Educating Parents: Martyrs or Pathmakers?

Leslie Safran Barson

Home educating one’s children will obviously have a major effect on the lives of parents. Parents have to make the initial decision to home educate, to take on the huge responsibility for their children’s education, to deal with authorities and to reorganize the family’s lives to incorporate new schedules, as well as reflect on whether it is the right decision. Further, they need to continually analyse and re-analyse what they are doing as a family and adjust as they go along, taking into account not only their children’s development and shifts in interests, but also their own needs and the needs of other family members.

A prevalent view of children as needing constant attention and being a problem to handle is promoted by the popular press which, for example, carries articles about how difficult it is to know what to do with children during the holidays. For many people, the idea of having children with them all the time conjures up visions of whingeing children who are constantly bored and nagging for attention:

But just as you can set your seasonal clock by the first cuckoo of spring, so you can adjust it to summer with the first cry from your offspring of ‘Mum, I’m bored’. Summer holidays have a tendency to be a headache for all but the most patient, creative or, let’s be honest, well heeled mums and dads out there. (BBC, July 2003)

Given this popular idea about what it is like to have children at home all the time, parents who choose to home educate can be seen as martyrs. Further, it is often assumed that, as a necessary consequence of home educating, parents will encounter problems such as a lack of money, having to forgo a career, having a lack of time to themselves and not being able to pursue their personal interests. Therefore, home education may be seen as a ‘rod for their own backs’ by critics who cannot understand why any parent would choose to take on this life path. On the other hand, these assumptions about the required sacrifices that parents are willing to make in order to home educate can lead to parents being seen as saints by those outside of home education (Lees, 2013). It is these assumptions that are being questioned in this paper.

The data for this paper is from research conducted for a PhD (Safran, 2008) with 34 parents who had been home educating for more than three years. It was considered that this was a long enough period of time for families to be settled in their choice and therefore more able to recognize and be able to articulate what effects home education has had on their lives. Parents were questioned through in-depth interviews about how they thought home education had affected the family’s financial position, careers and work, time for themselves and personal interests. Each of these issues will be examined in turn.

Financial circumstances

Those interviewed described their financial situations in diverse ways. Nineteen parents said they had no financial worries as a result of their choice to home educate. This was for a variety of reasons including being on state disability benefits, being financially secure as their partner worked full-time and parents being able to work while fulfilling home education responsibilities by, for example, working from home or involving the children in their work. Several were able to make money through home education. Some parents found home education to be cheaper than the previous educational option because, for example, they no longer had to pay for private education for their children, and a few said home education had not changed their financial situation without specifying why this was so.

On the other hand, nearly half of the parents said that home educating had a negative impact on their finances for various reasons such as having to work part-time rather than full-time and struggling to meet home education expenses for things such as trips and educational materials. However, attitudes to their reduced finances varied enormously. Several parents thought having a lower income helped teach the children the value of money. One parent thought that as compensation for the financial loss was the opportunity to contribute time and effort to the home education community. Others changed their priorities altogether and considered a rich family life to be more important than material prosperity. Some parents were in two categories or had seemingly contradictory attitudes. For example, Dinah felt glad that her children were learning the value of money due to the loss of her income but was also somewhat upset at not having enough money.

In summary, with regard to their financial situation, some parents were better off after home educating, some were in the same financial position as they were previously and some suffered hardship because of their decision to home educate. Parental practices and attitudes toward a reduced financial situation ranged from parents feeling strongly that having less money was a problem to others feeling compensated in other ways, such as considering having less money to be a good lesson for their children. Some parents were pleased to be saving money while others had no opinion about the relationship between home education and their family’s financial position.

It is interesting to note that another possible assumption about home educating family life was challenged. It might be thought that single parents would not be able to manage to home educate because this choice requires two parents: one to take on the main home education responsibilities and one to work full-time to support the family financially. This was the case with many of the families interviewed. However, there were significant numbers of long-term home educators who are single parents: five, or nearly 15 per cent in this study. It might seem that the lack of a second parent able to provide an income would make home education impossible; in fact, single parents were able to organize their lives so that home education was not only possible but successful. Nor can it be assumed that those in a stable relationship were able to have one parent steadily working outside the house while the other parent was responsible for day-to-day home educating. For example, one family’s low income was due to the father’s disability.

Since home educating can have such a variety of effects both on families’ financial situation and attitudes, financial sacrifice cannot be considered to be a necessary consequence of home educating.

Career and work

The term ‘career’ is rather emotive as it carries with it undertones of a life’s work that involves emotional attachment and fulfilment, not simply payment. A ‘career’ ladder is also assumed in which an adult can move upward to positions with better payment, more responsibility and higher status. Further, having a career, as opposed to a job, suggests that the worker while fulfilling themselves is, at the same time, adding value to society. But careers can also require a strong long-term commitment which can interfere with other life commitments.

For home educating parents who have stepped out of career structures, social expectations for success no longer hold the emotional force that they have for those within the career structure. This can be liberating, allowing parents the confidence to entertain activities and life choices another person at their age might not entertain. But it could also be upsetting if a parent had aspirations toward a career, as well as isolating if there are not many others on this alternative life path. This situation could leave parents both with few ties to the mainstream and few pointers or instructions with regard to their new direction.

As with the issue of finance, there were almost as many practices with regard to career and work as there were interviewees. Of the 34 parents interviewed, a considerable number had already decided to give up their career when they had children, had wanted to give up their careers for personal reasons or were not interested in a career at all. The fact of home educating was incidental to this decision.

Of course, there were some parents that were not happy to have given up their careers in order to home educate, but many parents saw home education as a career itself while others developed new careers while they were home educating. These other ‘occupations’ took the form of studying for a degree or developing pursuits that arose from the home education experience, such as becoming a children’s book author.

As with financial issues, some of these attitudes overlap. For example, Cathy was not happy to have given up her career but was able, through home education, to change direction and find another career. Perhaps surprisingly, given the pressures on home educating parents, several mothers interviewed managed to work part-time with their previous employer while home educating.

Seven parents were working part-time as a type of compromise because paid work afforded them some personal satisfaction (Schrecker, 1997; Warren, 2004) through contributing some money to the household and providing some attachment to the world outside the home, despite taking some time away from fulfilling the children’s home education needs. Some of those who worked part-time were glad to be working but did not see the work as a career. The part-time nature of the work allowed the family to have a stay-at-home mother for some of the time (Warren, 2004; Tizard, 1991).

Part-time work and all the benefits that go with it, such as extra money and retaining an active attachment to the working world, are a real possibility for home educating parents. Isenberg (2002) found a majority of home educating mothers in her study also worked at least part of the year, evidence that the situation of parents in this study (Safran, 2008) is not exceptional.

Home education, even with its dimension of non-conformism, can give the home educating parent status beyond that of ‘normal’ parents who choose not to work. The parent who is primarily responsible for home education may gain social recognition as an educator and carer for the next generation. For example, while Cathy felt that her friends and family were critical of the fact that she wanted to stay home with her children, she felt the pressure to ‘do something with her life’ was lifted when her children reached school age and she ‘began home educating’ as those around her began to accept her choice as a reputable and worthy way for her to contribute to society. As a decision requiring parents to take on educational responsibility, home education can confer credibility and respect not normally available to a parent of schooled children who stays at home.

Quality of life research asserts that paid work is one of the main contributors toward a satisfactory quality of life, along with financial security and time for oneself (Camporese, Freguja and Sabbadini, 1998; Warren, 2004). The experience of home educating parents shows that it is possible for home educating parents to obtain the satisfaction of work even if it is outside of a career structure in some cases. Further, the home education experience has paved the way for some to take up paid educational work (Apple, 1984) after the children have grown up.

The main home education responsibilities all lay with the mothers in the families in this study. The three fathers interviewed all worked full-time and did not consider home education to have interfered with their work in any way. It would seem that home education is not inured from wider gender issues. Dominant ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood are very different, although it is also the case that not enough research has been done to understand the mechanisms and influences of fatherhood (Flouri, 2005). What research there is finds that fathers are expected to contribute financially to the household (Welsh et al., 2004), whereas mothers are expected to give up work outside the house and take care of household duties and the children (Lewis, 1991; Charles and Kerr, 1999). Traditionally, men have not been asked to choose between parenthood and work outside the home as women have. Further, child rearing as it is now, with no pay and low status, is not a position most men want to assume (Held, 1983; Richardson, 1993).

Home educating parents reflect other social inequalities such as the fact that men can often earn more than women and that there is a lack of automatic areas of male participation in the activities of the home including a lack of any role in the home or identification with it (Sharpe, 1984). This has the cumulative effect of making men seem ‘useless’ in the kitchen, and it being easier for women to do the work themselves, thereby maintaining the different sex roles. Equal parenting can only be undertaken against the backdrop of unequal social and economic structures, and parents in their private arrangements can only go a certain way toward tackling these issues (Richardson, 1993). Home educating families are subject to the same pressures and constraints as the rest of society. They have to live with these at the same time as they struggle to cope with forging new educational approaches.

The evidence from the data supports the contention that home educators do not conform to any one ‘home educating’ career or work pattern, do not, in the main, see their choice as involving a sacrifice and have attitudes to work and careers which are shaped as much by wider social and gender issues as by home educating.

Parents’ time for themselves

What ‘time for yourself’ means to a parent was left undefined in the interviews, which allowed each parent to interpret the phrase in their own way and thereby reveal what was pertinent to them. Interpretations varied from studying for a degree or pursuing outdoor leisure activities to reading a book in the corner of a room where their children are watching television.

Returning to the prevalent criticisms about home educating expressed at the beginning of this paper, critics assume that having one’s children at home leads to parents having to spend all their time with the children or dealing with their children’s needs to the exclusion of having time to satisfy their own needs. Research indicates that the relationship between mothers and children is better when mothers themselves are satisfied with their situation (Hoffman, 1974; Tizard, 1991; Yarrow, 1962) and feel that their needs are being fulfilled. This research suggests that a parent not fulfilling their own needs and thus not satisfied with their situation might become unhappy enough to lead to deteriorating relationships within the family. This is relev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I  Home Education: The Learning Process
• Part II  Home Education: Tensions and Criticisms
• Part III  Political Conflict
• Part IV  Home Education: Lifestyle and Choice
• Part V  Home Education: Models: War, Poverty and Necessity
• Part VI  Home Education: Cultural and Intercultural Relations
• Author Index
• Subject Index