The case for home-school: family
Updated on 26 September 2007
Parents Janet and Phil Ford from Sheffield, decided upon home schooling from an early age for both their children, Christopher and Meredith.
My husband and I first considered home education when as newly weds we met a family who were home educating and we were impressed with the maturity and sociability of the children. That was 23 years ago, my husband was a teacher and feeling disenchanted with the schooling system he was part of.
When our first child Christopher came along in 1985 we started off by learning through fun and games. Chris learned about maths by counting the studs on the Lego he built, by measuring out dinosaurs, baking dinosaur biscuits, weighing and measuring ingredients, and working out the volume of cake tins needed instead of writing out dry maths problems in a book.
We learned about geography by visiting other countries, history by role playing and visiting historical monuments and museums. When he got to 5-years-old and school loomed, he had been reading for two years, he enjoyed complex maths problems and it seemed silly to send him into pre-reading schemes and learning to count. My parents, teachers with over 40 years experience agreed that we were doing a great job with him at home.
We carried on following his interests, without any structured lessons, individually tailoring his education around whatever fascinated him, and many things did. A computer game exploring the planets and mining minerals, set him off on a lifetime interest, first into minerals and gems, of which he amassed an extensive collection, then on to fossils, the origins of life and hence natural history.
Being free to choose his own path made him very self motivated and able to decide where he wanted to be, at 12 Chris chose to work his way through the Maths syllabus and he took his first GCSE when he was 13 as an independent candidate, he then went to college at 14 to do more GCSE's and A levels, which was followed at 17 by a Biology degree at Sheffield University, gaining a 2.1.
Whilst at college he talked a friend into giving him guitar lessons, working his way up to Grade 8, then he and friends set up a band which was popular on the Sheffield heavy metal scene for a couple of years.
He also worked as an assistant tutor at a ju-jitsu academy to help pay his way through college and university.
Next he went on to Manchester school of Medicine, where at 20 he was the youngest entrant onto their PhD programme. Now at 21 he is in his second year of his PhD studying the mechanics of skin aging.
Meredith who was born in 1995 has also been educated at home, following her interests, which are completely different from her brother's.
She spends much of her time meeting with her friends for drama, swimming, skating and other activities. She is sociable and confident with people of all ages, recently meeting a Japanese lady at a car boot sale and persuading her to come once per week for a conversational Japanese lesson.
Now aged 12 she enjoys drama, reading Shakespeare, writing poetry and giggling with her friends about boys.
We have a wonderful time, living our lives together and learning together.
We have learned at least as much as the children and being together so much has given us all a very close bond. Our kids have grown up knowledgeable, successful, supremely happy and confident - what more could we ever have wanted for them?
