Debbie, Brisbane - QLD / Turrbal Country
“That's the beauty of an unschooling lifestyle, it’s just continuing what you’ve always done with your children.”
Having always homeschooled and having been homeschooled herself, Debbie’s story spans across both analog and digital generations. Whilst she never set out to become a radical unschooler, she now confidently embraces the path her family have chosen. Along the way she has created a viable small business that has the potential to revolutionise the way we balance working and homeschooling, a dilemma many modern home educating families face.
This is Episode 28 of the Australian Homeschool Stories Podcast - Debbie’s Story:
Summary:
Debbie grew up in New South Wales and went to school from kindergarten through until Grade 5. She then completed two years of home education in New South Wales before moving to Queensland when she was 12 to complete her schooling via distance education, as there were no other options available at this point in time in Queensland. See recalls being sent books and audiotapes in the mail to assist her learning and having to record and post back her work. She loved all her time homeschooling and wasn’t short of community.
Homeschooling was a very unusual choice 30 years ago. She never thought of herself as weird or strange but looking back she could see how tiny the homeschooling community must have been compared to what it is now.
Whilst it might have been true back then, the perception that people have of homeschooling today, that children aren’t going to be able to socialise and they will be stuck at home, is so inaccurate.
Her first encounter with homeschooling was actually when she was six and her family travelled overseas for an extended period. She remembers keeping a diary of her travels and completing her school assigned book work only to return and realise she was well ahead of where her peers were. Suddenly school seemed like a waste of time. She wondered what on earth they had been doing with their time.
School as it is currently laid out, is not very effective.
When her eldest was one, she was asked by a friend if she was considering homeschooling her own children and her immediate reaction was no. She didn’t think she could teach her own. Her original goals as a parent were to be able to send her daughter to a private school.
Having a transformative VBAC home birth with her second child proved to be a catalyst for reconsidering homeschool.
“I remember after the birth thinking - this is incredible. I feel like I could solve every problem in the world right now. Make me Prime Minister for the next three months, I’ll just fix everything.
I felt like I had not been given my power, but I had stepped into my power in going through that experience and it was after that time that I started to come across a lot of information about homeschooling and unschooling.
When you start out with natural parenting and considering home birthing and breastfeeding and gentle parenting, it does take you down the path of considering things like, maybe five is too young for our kids to be away from us for half the week.”
When your child is two and you are going to the local show that’s got diggers, you are unschooling. You’re following your child’s interests. You just keep doing that as they get older, ignoring that there's an arbitrary age where some people have decided that we should start doing learning only through doing book work and we should start learning only by doing a particular subject in a particular way.
Debbie came across radical unschooling watching a 60 Minutes segment featuring Dayna Martin, and it seemed way out at the time. She now looks back on that video with Dayna and thinks - “I'm completely there now. I'm the full crazy, hippie lady now.”
Debbie shares her interpretation of the differences between unschooling and radical unschooling. She doesn't believe anyone identifies with radical unschooling unless they actually are unschooling all of the time. A lot of the time they are making decisions in a collaborative way and in a way that accepts her children’s wants and desires as equally valid as her own wants and desires.
“I feel like school steals our children's childhood because they don't get to have that time to just be themselves and to follow their own interests for as long as they want because they're made to go and learn things on other people’s schedule that some person in a legislative office somewhere decided what they should learn and when they should learn and when they would be ready to learn it.”
Debbie created The Village Hub as there was no place that existed where you could take your kids and they could have some fun and you could also get some work done. The Village Hub is an unschooling friendly space. It is not structured. It is free play. It is messy play.
With the homeschool community continuing to grow, this could be the way of the future - having hubs in every area of Australia is her next dream because it really does tick so many boxes. She would love to mentor others to open something similar to The Village Hub in other areas of Queensland and Australia.
She believes that it's really important for us mums that we take into consideration our own nervous system when it comes to committing to activities and events and not over-scheduling our weeks.
“I really am here now… on feeling so confident on the path that we've chosen. I'm at a point where other people’s opinions have really no impact on me whatsoever.”
On the 6th of March 2024, legislation changes were proposed that impact homeschooling in Queensland and Debbie is working with the Free 2 Homeschool advocacy team.
She outlines the major changes that are being proposed and how we can all get involved and do our bit to help.
Australian homeschoolers receive no support from governments, no financial, nothing whatsoever. These changes have been brought in to supposedly provide more support for homeschooled children and all they seem to be doing is just piling more work onto the parents and more work onto the children. It's really important that we do everything we can to stop this bill immediately before these changes are brought in.
“Our children are flourishing as homeschoolers without the national curriculum and we don't actually need that kind of onerous paperwork on us.”
Inspiration
Instagram - @free2homeschool
Connect
Instagram - @thevillagehub.qld
Facebook - The Village Hub
Food for thought
Thanks to
and , here are two wonderful places to find more impassioned writers and speakers, sharing their thoughts and stories relating to homeschooling and unschooling:
This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, always will be aboriginal land.
Original Music by Daniel Garrood @garroodcomposer
Listen on Spotify here