It might surprise you that I was homeschooled for a while back in the day. What might surprise you even more is why. I'll keep it short.
- Mum and Dad got divorced in the early 80's.
- We (my siblings and I) moved with Mum to a small Victorian country town. Mum volunteered at the local school but was a qualified teacher.
- Mum's niche subjects were drama and performing arts, and she choreographed an end-of-year concert ahead of her time (or at least the town's time).
- The school community and audience gave a five-minute standing ovation. Everybody raved about it.
- There were some scenes in the play where the kids had to act out violence (they acted out Neil Diamond's song Brooklyn on a Saturday night).
- ONE parent complained.
- The 90-year-old priest said Mum was "Too much a woman of the world" to be involved in the school unless she wanted to listen to the preps read (let's not belittle that job, though - reading is a crucial skill).
- With that, Mum took us out of the school and wrote to the government to get permission to homeschool us, and she did.
When I think back, I remember doing workbooks in the morning, learning to sew, maths by budgeting and counting money, and exploring nature and the outside (finding sheep bones but thinking they were dinosaur bones and inventing stories that went along with that idea). I remember the movie Never Ending Story and swinging on rusty old swings in the paddock out the back. I remember playing card games with my siblings and the bright red carpet in our lounge room. I remember learning how to light the open fire and visitors coming by often.
When we moved again to the larger nearby town and enrolled in school, I remember going into grade four intellectually ahead of my peers and the teacher being surprised. I also remember feeling normal. A normal school and a normal teacher and normal friends. Now I think, "What is normal anyway?" All I know is I was glad to go to that school.
Homeschooling wasn't common back then, and maybe Mum was ahead of her time in that regard, too. I look back now and am grateful for my home school experience. When I chat to Mum about it now, I realise there was so much more to the story, and I know that time wasn't easy for her.
It was hard, but she did it anyway. I admire that and think to myself, thank goodness for women who are "Too much a woman of the world". Thank goodness to the ones who lead the way and break the ground for the next ones to come.
Note: I have no pictures from this time at all. Not one. So this post is purely for reading.
