Barry Durdant-Hollamby

I'll never forget the night in the Spring of 2001, that my wife Winnie and I sat down to talk about home education for the first time. There I was, father of two girls Anna and Sophie (now 14 and 11 respectively), already beginning to wonder how to find the time to balance my growing business in personal development with my desire to be an active and involved father and partner. With a new book about men nearing publication and a growing list of clients and talks, I started off that conversation feeling sure that there was no way I could give even more time to my girls. After all, I worked from home, they were attending a Steiner school which was just five minutes walk, we spent hours together every day - why risk creating greater pressure?

The truth was that cracks were beginning to appear in the walls of their 'education'. Whilst it all looked superficially lovely, and there was certainly much more of a 'holistic' approach to their education than we had experienced in conventional schools, warning bells were sounding. For five years the girls had been very happy. We had adopted a policy of giving them freedom of choice as to whether they went to school or not. Interestingly they were unusual among their peers in hardly ever missing a day. However, when we started to hear comments such as 'I hate...various subjects' and even more worryingly 'I'm no good at...' or worst of all 'It was so boring because the teacher spent most of the lesson trying to control the class...' we both knew that it was time to listen more closely to what our girls were really saying.

Quite simply, our eldest (then 11) was asking if we could try home education - which was how we came to be having that conversation that night. As we talked, we started to realise that core values such as honesty, integrity, happiness, self-respect, trust and self-worth, were becoming of prime importance to us in our lives but were seemingly of decreasing importance in the school environment in comparison to the learning of more abstract and academically oriented subjects. Working as someone who helps adults to create greater present-moment awareness and 'uncreate' the negative conditioning of childhood, I now understand these core values to be a necessary part of any education. A happy, balanced individual is by definition 'rich' in life, regardless of wealth, status or 'education'. It is not what someone does that is important. It is who someone is - their sense of self. And Anna and Sophie's sense of self was beginning to be weakened in their school environment by the expectations and projections of teachers and by pressure from their peers to conform in ways that did not reflect their true selves.

Throughout this discussion, it became clearer to both of us that if we were really going to 'walk our talk' we needed to offer the girls the freedom to home-school (whatever that meant). I needed to trust that the development of my 'business' would fit in around my helping to meet the family's needs as opposed to the family's needs fitting in around my business. For me this meant a quantum shift in my life. I'm sure that many men and women in our work/money oriented society would understand that this is a scary step to take.

But I couldn't stop myself from becoming increasingly excited about what home-educating might mean to us as a family and at 1.30 am, by which time we had of course both become experts on the subject, we were all ready to go and wake the children and tell them they couldn't go back to school even if they wanted to! (Fortunately we slept on that one and decided just to 'sit' with the whole idea for a few days while the implications sank in.)

Our enthusiasm didn't wane, in spite of my uncertainty as to how this would fit in with life. We discussed the option with the girls and received two very different responses. Anna, our eldest, was very excited; Sophie however was initially horrified at the thought of being at home and leaving her friends but at the same time didn't like the idea of remaining at school without her older sister. We told her that no decision needed to be made immediately and that she would not be made to do anything she didn't want to. This reassured her. She returned to school and saw it with new eyes - observing more things that she was not happy about (with no influence from us - we truly wanted them to make whatever decision felt best to both of them and have tried to act unconditionally throughout).

By the end of the summer term Sophie had moved her position entirely and was now happy to give home-schooling 'a go'. We took them out of school provisionally for a year and held our breath...

Two and a half years later they're still out of school. Two and a half years later and I find myself scratching my head because somehow I seem to have just as much time as I ever had - in fact I possibly have more time now. Perhaps one of the main reasons for this is the relaxed routine we now enjoy as a family in our new-found freedom from the limiting strictures of the school day.

As importantly as being able to 'have a life', my feelings of self-worth as a man, father, husband, playfellow to my children etc have increased beyond all measure. How much is that worth? Priceless I believe. In fact the more this 'one year' experiment continues, the clearer I am that home education is every bit as much for the parent(s). It is probably one of the best therapy courses in existence. And of course, the happier and more fulfilled mum and dad feel, the more likely it is that the family environment will become the safe, nurturing, uplifting space in which children can fulfil their highest potential.

Where will it go? I haven't got a clue. This is a classic case of a 'work in progress'. And for once I'm okay with that, which is no small thing considering my conditioning to achieve 'results'. At last I'm not needing to see an end result because I'm beginning to understand what many philosophers have written of - that life is all about the journey. And by challenging my ego to put up with the daily 'trivia' of playing with and learning alongside children, I am finally becoming a conscious participant on that journey.

A few points to end on:-

1. I received a public school education - Winnie went to a high-achieving grammar school. We both feel that Anna and Sophie have already experienced as many things relevant to 'real life' in their two and a half years of home-ed as we did in our whole school careers.
2. Our families, almost without exception, believed us to be mad. Taking the decision was in many ways frightening, going against convention as it did. But somehow listening to our children and letting them guide us has given us the confidence to experiment. Doubters may well remain doubting for the rest of their lives (after all even if our girls become 'captains of industry' the argument can still be thrown at us of 'well yes, but imagine how much better they would have done if they had gone to school') - we have to learn to accept their judgements even if we don't agree with them.
3. People often think you need money for home-schooling - 'it's a middle class thing'. Well yes, we both had middle class upbringings. But no, we do not have pots of money. Since 1996 we have been personal change consultants, until very recently on a donations-only basis. We have no savings, we don't own a house and we live literally from month to month. We try to trust that if we're following our hearts, if we are 'listening' to our truth, we'll get provided with what we need. We have not really wanted for anything as a family and home education has been anything but a drain on the family's resources.
4. I had heard it said that you can't stop a child learning and you can't stop a child being sociable. Now I'm one of the people saying it; the thing is, now I'm not quoting it from a book or a story, I'm simply speaking my truth based on my experience.
5. I feel that I am a more complete man as a result of entering even more fully into the world of children. I experience frustration, anger, tears, hurting, joy, elation and impatience at levels I had never been to before.
6. Home-schooling can involve a timetable, but it doesn't have to; it can involve a curriculum, but it doesn't have to; it can involve tutors, 'play dates', organised activities and meetings, but it doesn't have to. Put simply - there are no rules and the only wrong way of doing it seems to be when we stop listening to our children and start to impose upon them the things that we think they need. They're the teachers, we're the pupils.