Learning objectives

1. Critically examine how classroom experiences affected these teachers’ choices.

2. Reflect on how these teachers, who eventually chose homeschooling, were affected by parenting and how their children challenged their pre-conceived notions of appropriate school choices.

3. Identify three reasons common to these teachers’ experiences that led them to choose homeschooling.

4. Compare and contrast the inside-school and outside-school experiences that led to the choice of homeschooling.

Introduction

In this chapter, we examine the pull to homeschooling. We asked the teachers what they previously thought of, or knew about, homeschooling before they began their journey and what it was that drew them to homeschool. One of our participants, Sassy, summed up the experiences she had in schools herself as “Why would I want my child in that environment?” This phrase was seen in all the participant interviews; all teachers who participated in this study were less than impressed with the school environment and did not want their child to experience it. There were vague generalisations around behaviours and issues and policies and procedures, as well as specific instances in their teaching careers that led to them being positively disposed to homeschooling. These are outlined in this chapter.

Previous experiences with homeschool

Teachers reported having limited previous experience with homeschooling, either having not considered it (n = five) or thought only briefly about it (n = five). Two of the cohort said they had met homeschoolers either through their church (Violet) or through family (Jeni). Overall, however, they described themselves as taking school for granted, suggesting a normative belief in the primacy of education in schools, and not thinking deeply about whether school was right for their children. Most of the cohort (n = 11) described how, as teachers, they had previously held stereotypes about homeschoolers, suggesting they were ambivalent to homeschooling, and were not aware of the reasons families choose homeschooling.

Previous experiences in schools

All of the teachers in our study had taught in schools around Australia. Significantly, a plurality of participants had experiences in non-mainstream schools (n = 9), whether that was overseas teaching (n = 2), EAL/D (n = 1), behaviour schools (n = 2), teaching in distance education schools (n = 1), Montessori (n = 1), special education centres (n = 1), or specialist literacy teachers (n = 1). It may be that teachers with non-mainstream education, most of whom did teach mainstream in some capacity, whether it was the EAL/D teacher who worked in a mainstream school or the distance education schools which offer a mainstream curriculum, may be more attracted to choosing something that is different from mainstream offerings, on campus, and with young people who are enrolled in a mainstream environment. However, it may also be that they have a different view of the education system than those teachers who work exclusively in the mainstream. For example, one of our participants, Sassy, stated that what she’d witnessed in mainstream was:

This anecdote suggests that the curriculum, pedagogy, classroom environment and expectations were not child-appropriate, were not centred on what was achievable, and that may be why, as Sassy and Catherine noted, young children were being expelled in prep.

Similarly, others, who had worked overseas (n = 2), compared Australian classrooms unfavourably with their international teaching experience. To illustrate, Lisa described schools in Europe as not the same as schools in Australia, having taught across both European and Australian schools. She noted:

This story from Lisa also demonstrates, in line with Sassy’s experiences, how the expectations were more about compliance, about good behaviour and about being quiet and obedient rather than being good learners or good students who were able to think for themselves and to add to the society in which they were based. Both these stories were about pedagogy, but they, and others (n = 2), also identified curriculum as a problem. For example, Madeline talked about how stifling the curriculum was to her as a teacher, so she imagined it must be really boring for the children experiencing it as students. She stated:

Again, the issue was that the mainstream was seen as lacking once the teacher had an experience outside it and came back. The experience of mainstream, particularly after becoming a parent, changed the teachers’ perspectives on what was appropriate and right, and meant that they realised the schooling system was broken or not working or inappropriate not just for them and the children in their care, but also for their own child or children.

These experiences are all critical of mainstream education as it is currently practised in Australia. All the teachers in the study identified that they felt the curriculum was limiting, the experiences were dull and boring, and the children were disengaged. None of our participants reported they were satisfied with the way the mainstream curriculum encouraged a pedagogy that was focused on outcomes, was transactional, and did not have time for relationships, which were foundational to the child’s experience of education. Further, there was no correlation between what was being taught and the child’s need to learn something, which came up in multiple (n = 3) interviews.

How do they report their experiences?

As has been previously argued (see Arai, 2000), the decision to homeschool is rarely an instant decision. We found that in our interviews here, with 92 per cent of our cohort (n = 11), as research has suggested (Rothermel, 2003; Van Galens, 1991), the decision to try homeschooling came after a period of schooling. In line with previous research in this field (English, 2021), families who are homeschooling are homeschooling not as their first choice, but as a decision they come to after a period of schooling. Only one of the teachers had actively engaged with homeschoolers prior to choosing homeschooling; in her case, it was in her church, and she had decided to give it a try before sending their children to school. “If the homeschool thing didn’t work out,” Violet was prepared to send her child to school. As it turned out, all four of her children were homeschooled. Teachers are, as Sassy described, “the canary in the coalmine” as they have dual experiences of school, both professional as a teacher and personal through their own children. This parent noted that, if they are not supportive of a system that they have signed up to as their profession, it does not augur well for the future of schooling. Others (n = 10) described how things became more real for them once they decided to homeschool their own children.

In her story, Violet talked about a child who’d really affected her in her teaching career. We will call this child Amelia. Amelia was struggling in school, and her mother had approached Violet to ask her what she was going to do to ensure Amelia was able to improve. At that moment, Violet realised there was nothing she could do to ensure Amelia was successful, while this parent’s concern was this one child, Amelia, Violet’s concern was for Amelia and the 29 other children in the class. There was no way she could meet the child’s needs in a mainstream classroom. She stated:

For Violet, as this anecdote shows, there were serious limitations on what a teacher was able to do, was able to achieve, was able to help with when the teacher has 30 children under her care and, in high school as Violet’s experience was based, there was only three 70-minute lessons in the week in which to meet that child’s needs. When there are 30 children in the class, it means that each child could hope to get, on average, seven minutes of uninterrupted teacher time in any class.

Similarly, Cathy talked about how, in her teaching experience, all the relational elements of learning were dispensed with in order to get through the curriculum in the time allotted. This relationship also extended to behavioural issues. She stated:

Again, the quote here shows how our teachers’ perspectives on the issues in schools were mostly concerned with how young people were being forced to move at the pace of the curriculum, not the pace of the child. They reported their experience was one of limited space in the learning environment to provide the opportunity for catch-up, and distractions, because the curriculum moved so fast to cover it all, were unable to be met with compassion or understanding. The young people these teachers witnessed were left to their own devices and had to learn what was being taught without the relationship with the teacher or their peers. Relationships were seen as something for break time, not the core business of the classroom. In each of these stories, the teachers relayed how their experiences in the classroom as teachers had coloured their beliefs about what was wrong with schools.

Bringing it all together

As Sassy was quoted, teachers who are parents have the dual experiences of school, both professional as a teacher and personal through their own children. They sit in the unique position of seeing a child’s education from both sides. They see the system and work within it, and the whole picture. These parents then take the individual lens of that inside knowledge on education and apply it to their own child’s education and experience. If we take Violet’s story of trying to help Amelia, a previous student of hers and the seven minutes a week she could apply to support Amelia, and then apply this to her own child’s education, Violet argued the impact the system would have had on her own child’s education.

By comparing these teachers’ stories to the analogy of the canary in the coalmine, there is a common link. Historically, canaries were used down in mines to test for toxic gases that could not be monitored in a time before the technology for this purpose had been invented. Canaries were taken down into the working mine to test the air quality. Once a canary fell off its perch unconscious or stopped singing, that was used as an early danger warning system for the miners to remove themselves from the situation. (Not Your Grandfather’s Mining Industry n.d.).

This analogy is applied here in this book; in fact, the title is inspired by the quote from one interviewee (Sassy). Teachers who choose to remove themselves and their children from the mainstream system are the early warning detectors that the system is in its current state. It is not new information that teachers as a whole are leaving the system. Media reports suggest that, in Australia, up to 70 per cent of teachers are considering leaving the profession in the next five years (Longmuir, 2023). However, what is relatively new is the rise in teachers removing themselves and their child from the school and choosing to homeschool. They are completely turning their backs on the system they chose as a career for both themselves and their children. They are the early warning detectors that something is amiss within the system that needs attention; they are the canaries in the education system coal mine. If they are removing themselves and their children from the system, what does this say?

The curriculum is mentioned multiple times through interviews. It is a common topic among teachers, the growth and weight the Australian Curriculum now has on its impending learners.

There are some study points to consider at the end of this chapter:

1. Our teachers were very unhappy with the standardised nature of the curriculum and the pedagogy it necessitated. They argued it didn’t work for the children in their classrooms or their own children, and that this curriculum and pedagogy dynamic was influencing their choice of an education.

2. “There is limited space in the learning environment to catch up…” Perhaps the standardised, centralised, inflexible nature of the Australian Curriculum has played a role in the rise of workloads and struggling students and may also influence the workload experiences and struggles facing teachers.

3. Time was discussed as a limitation in giving Amelia the help she needed. What other factors are occurring in schools that provide a negative experience for both teacher and student?

4. What is missing between traditional mainstream and homeschooling? Is there something that could sit in between?