Teacher, leave those kids at home

For most children, school is out for summer, but some have never been in a classroom. Fionola Meredithmeets the home schoolers.

Ask schoolchildren whether they would prefer to be educated at home rather than school, and the answer is almost certain to be an enthusiastic affirmative. Just imagine: no more interminable lessons in stuffy classrooms, no more detention, no more soggy school lunches, no more picking bubble gum out of hair after Nicky in the back row flicked it when the teacher wasn't looking. Eyes light up at the very thought of a school-free life of undivided parental attention and unconstrained fun.

For most schoolchildren, the closest they will come to that fantasy is the long summer holiday. But what if school was out, not just for summer - but forever? What is life like for the growing numbers of parents and children who choose to home school?

"The children don't have any lessons, and we don't use a curriculum," says Nick Gudge, an active member of Home Educators Network (HEN) Ireland, a support, information and lobby group. Gudge, a passionate advocate of home education, lives with his partner Kim Pierce in Co Clare, and they have three children: Rowan (14), Amber (12) and Cormac (eight), and they are all "unschooled".

"They do what they like to do - they get up when they want, go to sleep when they want; if they have questions, they ask us. That's it." It's a hands-free approach to home education that sounds either frighteningly anarchic or wonderfully liberating, depending on your perspective.

Many home educators find common ground in the idea of education not as externally imposed instruction, but as a sensitive process of "drawing out what is already within". Heather Rice and her partner Michael, from Mountrath, Co Laois, also allow their five children (aged between eight months and 12) the freedom to learn how, where and when they want. "I believe in natural learning; in facilitating, not teaching," says Rice, "and we have no structure, no routine. There is no typical day: life simply evolves, and whatever we feel like on a particular day, we'll go with that."

Despite Rice's assertion that boredom generates creativity, it does sound like there's plenty going on in the household, from baking cakes to guitar-playing to reading stories of the ancient Greeks.

You can't help thinking that most kids would use this child-led paradise as an opportunity to kick back, veg out and watch television all day, but Rice says that this is far from the case. "The children are very self-motivated. No one has ever told them they can't do whatever they want to do, unless it's dangerous or it could hurt someone else."

In giving their children the freedom to do as they choose, to set their own educational agenda, both Gudge and Rice allow their children a level of personal autonomy that many parents would find extraordinary. But Gudge seems to see nothing remarkable in it. "After all," he says, "two thirds of the planet thinks of someone aged 12 or 13 as an adult. I don't see why we should diminish their responsibility."

It's true that Rowan, Gudge's eldest daughter, has an impressive assurance and articulacy far beyond her years. She says: "The best aspect of home education is that it's incredibly flexible - a case of anywhere, anytime, anything."

Gudge maintains the same child-led approach when it comes to the question of exams. Although he considers them an "utterly ridiculous waste of time", he has told his children he will assist them if they want to do exams. According to HEN, "exams measure only a small part of the skills that children need to acquire as they grow up". But there are several options for those who do want to take them, including adult-education classes and distance-learning schools.

CARMEL DUFFY, FROM TRIM in Co Meath, home educated all 10 of her children; her daughter Siobhan decided to go to school for the first time when she was 16, in order to take her Leaving Certificate.

The laissez-faire approach adopted by Gudge and Rice and their families represents one end of the home-schooling spectrum. But Gudge points out there are as many methods of home educating as there are home educators. "They vary from a highly structured, formal, parent-driven process to a highly independent, informal, apparently unstructured, child-led process."

The reasons for choosing home schooling are almost as varied. Gudge says: "There are children who are home-schooled for physiological or medical reasons, or for psychological reasons, such as bullying, when parents often take their children out of school as a last resort. Then there are those who home educate for philosophical reasons - who believe it's important to let children choose.

"Some families do it for religious reasons; you'd be surprised how many Catholic home educators aren't happy with the curriculum. And the Travelling community often home educate because of the abuse and discrimination they face in schools."

One thing that riles home educators is the issue of socialisation - or rather, the common assumption that home-educated children are deprived of the chance to develop social skills that will be necessary in later life. So are home educators bringing up children who will be somehow at odds with their peers, markedly different from the mainstream? Carmel Duffy believes that between their hurling, tae kwon do, art and music lessons, her own brood had plenty of opportunity to interact with other children. And she says that by avoiding the rigidly age-segregated classes of the education system, her children were more comfortable with the "natural society" of people of all ages.

But not everyone is convinced. Tessa (32), who was home educated until she was 14, says: "I just always felt like the very odd and different child when I was around other kids."

And retired primary school teacher Chris Bailey, from Belfast, says that she seriously considered home educating her daughter Anna - but it was the social aspect that ultimately decided her against it.

"Anna was such a bright girl, and I knew that I could educate her so much better at home. But I was very wary of turning her into a precocious mini-adult, cut off from her peers. You can't stage-manage a child's education. Children need to interact with other children from a wide-range of socio-economic backgrounds, kids who operate to entirely different rules and values - they need to grapple with all the difficult and perplexing social situations that school throws up."

OTHER PARENTS WHO have experimented with home schooling report that it can lead to mutual over-dependence; a kind of "Rapunzel" effect where the wall that protects youngsters from the hurts, irritations and injustices of the outside world also keeps them cooped up inside with their parents. Isn't it true that it could all get a bit intense?

Nick Gudge says that the reverse is true. "It's less intense. We have all day. But for school-going children, time with parents is relatively short. It's condensed into evenings, holidays and weekends. The time when they're at their brightest and best, they're at school."

It's clear the "anywhere, anytime, anything" approach to learning fires the imagination of many home-schooled children and their parents.

And as for the vexed social aspect? "Well, they don't have to sit in classes all day," laughs Heather Rice, "so of course they have plenty of time for socialising."