So what about Geography? · Tuesday November 7, 2006 by june
History, French, IT, D&T, Chemistry, etc…
The quick answer is that we still take quite an autonomous approach to our Home Education.
The more structured “work” we do is in response to the child’s requests or their special educational needs.
For example: James has a career in mind and knows that he will need sciences, so we do Physics and Biology, he has dyslexia, so we do reading and writing and English. We have always taken time out of the day to do Maths – his school made a real mess of teaching him maths, so when he came out of school he needed help in that area (he asked for it himself – he had become so muddled). We then carried on with maths because it became a ‘place’ where he had learned to succeed, and progress, and it had become important for him to have that. To know that he was capable of learning – his time at school had taught him that he wasn’t, and overcoming that ‘lesson’ has been very difficult.
I offered James French lessons, he gave it a go and said it wasn’t for him. Liz, on the other hand, loves languages and we’ve already looked at French, Latin, and Irish in a casual way. Saying hello, goodbye, how are you? Languages will almost definitely be a big part of the next few years Home Ed for Liz.
James does D&T every day, it is one of his hobbies, he uses the computer every day (word processing, emails, internet, 3D animation, music production…). He is interested in History – I suppose you could say that is a hobby of his too. We end up covering geography from watching TV, going out and about, and talking. I could go through all the usual subjects in the same way.
You don’t need formal lessons in order to learn things.
Even when we do the Physics and Biology we sit down and learn it together, there is no “lesson” involved. James is doing the learning, I’m not teaching as such.
So… You don’t need to follow the national curriculum, there is no legal need, and no actual need to impose a curriculum in order to provide an education. There is no need to “teach”. Children will learn an awful lot without any external push to learn. Children can learn without formal teaching. I think of what I do (re. my children’s Home Education) as enabling the learning to happen. I don’t think of myself as being a Teacher.
