Hi all!

We are a homeschooling family also. I do not wish to enter the discussion per sae as I feel that most everything I would have said has been covered off by others on here.

I did notice however that there are a lot of people curious about home education and thought that if people are genuinely interested in find out more that they might want some links! So here are a few:

The first is the Home Education Association. It is worth giving them a call and asking about both being put in touch with a local homeschooling group, so you can meet them for yourself and cast your own judgment, as well as information on their Introduction to Home Educations sessions and ask to be contacted when one is run in your area. I have been asked recently to organise regular sessions in SA for example. The HEA web site is:

Home Education Association Inc. (Australia) - supporting homeschooling parents in Australia

The second is the web site of Beverley Paine, she is a veteran home schooling parent who has put hundreds of articles online. Her web site is:

Homeschool Australia

(I have emailed the mods to ask for those to be added to the links sticky).

For those who want a compare and contrast then an example is John Taylor Gatto. He has previously won the New York State Teachers Prize and was very pro experiential learning as a teacher and now that he has resigned (immediately after his acceptance speech which outlined the faults with the education system) he is a great proponent for home education. He is particularly interested in the support of intrinsically motivated learning derived from life experience. There are two video clips worth seeing of him. One is from before he resined which is here:

John Taylor Gatto - Classrooms of the Heart | Organic Learning

And, the other is afterwards which is here:

John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness | Organic Learning

I hope that feeds the curiosity of some out there!