Episode 170: Homeschooling on the rise? Parents are taking matters into their own hands!

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is the School of School Podcast. Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Welcome back to another super exciting episode of the School of School podcast. I know you've all been waiting to hear this next episode, so let's just dig right in. We're all fired up here. It's election time in England. It's election time in the United States. It's like, there's lots of talk. Let's find out what's going on, what's really important and what do parents think? So look, we got Adam here. We got Robin. We're going to dig right in right away.

So here's what I'm going to say. I think, I've been looking around, I've been talking to people, I've been reading stuff in the press. You can't really believe what you read anymore. But anyway, what's really, really clear to me is there is a movement where parents are now getting to a stage where they just don't believe that institutionalised learning like that the school boards or the government are doing it right and they're taking matters into their own hands and they're saying, "I'm taking my kid out of school and I'm going to teach them at home." This is a trend. What's going on? What do you guys think is going on here? I know we talked about it before, but after we talked about it, I did some more research and I'm actually blown away at how big of a trend, how much of this is actually happening and what can these politicians learn from this and what should they be doing?

Adam Gifford

To me, there's three elements. So there's this statistical one that we've already talked about, which is in the UK, that right at the top of the heap is that is mental health or just to put it more broadly, meeting the needs of children. And those needs seem to be changing quite dramatically post pandemic. So that's the sort of first part to it.

I think the second part is that where education isn't working and I think that as a parent, it's not working when my child day after day after day doesn't have a teacher at the front of the room. That reinforces the fact that that is not what school looks like. I don't know, I'm not an educationist, but I know there should be a teacher at the front of the classroom. I also think that what we're seeing more and more, maybe it's social media, maybe it's something else, is that there are lots of instances now where the path of education that's led to someone's success has been incredibly varied and it's not, if you like, uniform.

And I may have talked about this before where I was talking about a guy called Marvin Minsky, a pioneer with AI, and he was talking about the model of education that he thinks is the most effective, is the same one that you take when you learn a hobby. So it's like you self govern, you practise, you find something you like, you dip in and out of it. So it's a very different model. Now, I think that there's a lot of people that have been very successful who have shared their stories of education, which look very different to just turning up nine till three at a school.

And I think when these things start to converge, you start to ask yourself, "Well, so is the school the best place to go? If I want to give my child the best chance of success, do I tailor it and go, you know what? I'm going to pursue their interests and they're going to get really good at what they do. And if I send them to school and there's not a teacher in front of them, then I've got just as good a job. I could do just as good a job. Tell me different." So I think it's these things and, "If my child doesn't feel that safe at school and they feel they're better pursuing it at home," as a parent, why would you not consider it? I don't know.

Andy Psarianos

Because the idea of teaching my kids at home horrifies me. That's why discussing. That's a bit selfish, right? Yeah, that's a really good point, Adam, and I do think, okay, we developed the school, look, playing devil's advocate or whatever point of view, I could argue either side of this argument. I'm sure all of you could. But the thing that's important here I think is what you're saying is the way schools have been engineered, designed, or how they've evolved, whatever you want to put it on, maybe it needs a rethink. So why were schools invented in the first place? Well, there was a drive to kind of modernise, I guess, and create good factory workers and all this kind of compliant people who had a baseline knowledge that could be applied across a broad... That was kind of the thinking behind it. Does that apply anymore? Is this even a valid thing anymore? I don't know. So maybe we need to go back and really rethink this a lot. It's a big question. The idea of trying to change though the entire system is kind of like, wow, that's pretty daunting.

Robin Potter

Okay, I'm going to throw a curveball to you because I was just thinking about Adam because we have discussed this before and those three factors that you highlighted are, I would say that those are the reasons for the most part. But then I was thinking another thing is, and Andy, if you look back historically, I mean kids, there were kids that never went to school because they were put to work at a certain age, or maybe they went to school and then they had to leave school at a very young age because they need to help their family on the farm or whatever it is. And then you get this whole push towards children going to school and being educated and so that they have other skills, business skills or other types of skills that they can use out in the world. And now we've got all these homeschoolers where they're taking a step back, they believe they can educate their children more so, or maybe perhaps in a better way or focused way that schools are not.

But this is a different generation again. And I was thinking about my daughter watching a family of YouTubers who they've basically grown up on YouTube. There are I think four kids and the two parents, and these kids are homeschooled and they sure have a lot of time to be on YouTube, and it's a very lucrative business for this family. And I wonder now if in some ways parents see there's other opportunities for children to learn and also already start creating a business for themselves at a young age. And those are opportunities that weren't there when my kids were younger. Or of course when we were growing up. It was the standard, you go to school, then you get a job. But I think this generation's very different in so many ways, which would be why maybe homeschooling would make sense and lead into other avenues that regular school, going to school may not lead to. I don't know. I just thought I'd throw it out there.

Adam Gifford

I think we're watching where it works in real time. So I'm sure we can all think of really inspirational leaders and by lots of definitions, they've been successful who, when you listen to their backstory, it's kind of like, "Left school at 13, I was selling stuff down at the market and then I was doing this and hustling this and I got into computers," or whatever it might be. But you often hear this story at the very end. So you hear it once they've been successful and all those sorts of things, and you just kind of think, "Oh yeah, but that was a different time. Or it was like, you need school and people just don't really end up like these people," but we are seeing it in real time now. So it's not a story from yesteryear. It's not something that you can't relate to because I don't know what London was like in the fifties or those sorts of things that you go, "Great, well, it was fantastic for that person, but times have changed and you need to go to school."

Whereas we are seeing more and more of people who are being successful in... I'll give you an example. The Olympics are going to start in Paris very shortly. And me and my mate were talking about it, we used to do a lot of skateboarding when we were young. There's at least three or four athletes that are under the age of 15 who will be in the Olympics, and they are likely to get medals. And these are people with lucrative sponsorship deals. They're all homeschooled so they can pursue that sport.

So there's the real life. This is not like they're talking as a 50-year-old, their knees are gone and they're saying, "Oh, back in the day my mom and dad took me out of school," and these things. We're watching it happen in real time. And it's starting to say, "Well, that looks quite effective. That looks quite reasonable." And these children are coming across as really well-spoken and they're coming across as really well-rounded, and they're coming across as all these things. Now I know we don't see all the backstory and maybe they've got tutors and maybe they've got, I don't know. I don't know. But I think we're seeing it as a viable... That's a really successful model. How can you argue against it? You can't. The children are happy. I don't know.

Andy Psarianos

What about this idea of people just being, I guess not believing, not trusting the system anymore. It's almost kind of a conspiracy thing. It's like, "You know what? I'm listening to politicians, they all seem kind of crazy. I don't agree with any..." There was a time when you just said, "Well, those people are well informed and they know best." It's kind of like now it's like, "No, no. You know what? These guys are just a bunch of clowns and I don't believe anything that they say and I'm not going to..." I think it's a thing now, right?

Robin Potter

I do too.

Andy Psarianos

And they just say-

Robin Potter

It's a movement.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, there is definitely a movement. And they're saying, "I'm not going to send my kids to school. Listen to these guys. They're all clowns. I'm not going to trust my kids to them." It's happening. And you know what?

Adam Gifford

It's totally happening.

Andy Psarianos

Is this collapsing? Are we watching the beginning of the collapse of-

Robin Potter

Yeah, and that's a great question because the parents are saying that. Some of them. And my guess is there are many students that are saying something similar. Like, "What are we doing here? This is a waste of time."

Andy Psarianos

It is. So it's like, okay, then just remember that a lot of this was developed or engineered or evolved or whatever it was for particular problems that may not even exist anymore. So access to information was a big thing before. It was like, "Hey, if you don't go to school, you're not going to find out stuff because there is no place to find it out if you don't go to..." That's not the case anymore. I mean, everyone's bombarded with information all the time. You can follow your own interests. If you want to learn how to become a wood carver, hey, you know what? There's a lot, you don't need to find a journeyman wood carver so that you can do a five-year apprenticeship with him to learn how to carve wood. All the information is right there for you on the internet. Some of it not good, some of it amazing. Whatever it is you want to do can, how do I make my own sort of chicken tika masala, right?

Robin Potter

Well, and there's videos for that. And the wood carver has probably got his own channel.

Andy Psarianos

Well, that's what I mean. And it's not just one, there's hundreds of them. If you want to learn how to play guitar, your problem isn't finding someone who can teach you. Your problem is deciphering through massive amounts of stuff to find the one that resonates with you. It's not like, "Who knows how to do this in my village?" It's like out of these tens of thousands of people who claim to be experts, which one should I listen to? It's a whole other world now.

Well before, if you wanted to learn a skill or a craft or calculus, your only option was to go to university. You want to learn calculus, go to university, right? Now if you want to learn calculus, it's all there. You don't need a teacher. I mean, it's all there.

Okay. I'm not going to say that watching a video and being mentored by someone who's an actual expert is equivalent. All I'm saying is the world has changed and people are now saying, "I don't believe any of you clowns and I can find all this stuff out on my own. So why should I even bother coming to school anymore? Why should I send my child to school? I can do a better job. They can excel under my care much better than if I send them to you guys." That's a real, real kind of belief in a lot of people's minds now. And who's to say they're wrong or right?

Robin Potter

They may be both.

Andy Psarianos

It seems to work really well for some people.

Robin Potter

Yeah, it does. So how is that changing then the face of education in the classroom?

Andy Psarianos

I'd like to change that question. I'd like to go back to what I asked right at the beginning. I said, what do politicians need to take from this? So they're the policy centres. Are you going to put legislation in that forces everyone to send their kids to school?

Adam Gifford

Here's a real high level here coming in at this, right? So the schools of thought that filter into this is reaction to things like PISA. So if you've got high performing jurisdictions, and then the trickle down effect is that we teach everyone the same skillsets and we do it in the same way, and then there's success. And the opposing argument is that actually some greatness comes from personalised learning so it's not the same skillset. And so there's that globalisation, the movement, and there's a professor, his last name, I don't know about the pronunciation, but it's Z-H-A-O. It's really interesting because there's two, the head of PISA and him will often debate things. And he talks about growing up, and I could be doing this a disservice, but I'm pretty sure I'm right in this, he grew up in China and he was saying that if he just remained in the status quo, he would be a farmer in China because that's what everyone in the village did. So that's the path. That's what you do. And you have children and they become farmers.

But he showed an aptitude towards something, or he didn't show an aptitude towards farming, but he could read. And so they said, "All right, but he can read. He's a hopeless farmer. He's a professor in American now. And what he was saying is that's a perfect example of individualised learning that has led him to be something different than if it was more sort of homogenised path or the standard that was the norm for him, he would be a farmer. And I think that's a really interesting sort of story because again, it feeds into that we can produce the same, but is that what we want ultimately? If globalisation says that we produce that, what happens then? Do we all just become farmers and what does the world look like? Or do we need people who show an aptitude towards something and then pursue their interests? And then if we pursue that with vigour, then we come up with something that's quite special.

Andy Psarianos

So effectively the school system is the new farming school.

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

And don't-

Andy Psarianos

Learn to be a farmer.

Adam Gifford

Do schools pursue students' passions enough? That's sort of one of the premises of his arguments. Is that the case? Because if we are not, what are we producing?

Andy Psarianos

So as you were telling that story, it reminded me of a story of my grandfather, which is quite interesting. I was just back in the homeland recently, in Greece, and my grandfather was somewhat of an intellectual in a farming community. And I heard my dad say this story because my grandfather went to university at the University of Alexandria. This is in late 1800s, this is a long time ago. And he is a villager from a small island in Greece. Villagers in small islands in Greece don't go to university in Alexandria in the 1800s.

And I said to my dad, I said, "How did your father end up in the university in Alexandria?" Because my grandfather knew nine languages or something. And he was quite a notable "intellectual" at the time who during the Balkan war and during the First World War translated a lot of the treaties and documents and things like that. So that was quite an esteemed job in those days. My father said, "Yeah, my father was rubbish in the fields. So they sent him to school," which is exactly, "He's kind of lazy, not very strong." So they said, "Well, send him off to school."

Robin Potter

We need to get rid of him. Do something with his time. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Which is interesting, right? So is that, the working in the fields, is the equivalent of working in the fields, going to school? Just put all the people over there and just make them do... I don't know. It's an interesting thing to think about.

So what are the governments, so go back to the question of the governments. What are the governments, what can they take away from this? What do they need to do? Do we just let it happen or-

Adam Gifford

I don't know, because it's so hard, because it's a capacity thing, isn't it? Because, like we've all said, but I think it's probably indicative of the schools that our children have been to, is that whilst I'm sure all of us at some point would've had some level of dissatisfaction with the school, or we think they could do a bit better here or there, or we've gone and talked to them, by and large, all of us have not really considered, I think I'm like this and know Robin, we go, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, more around circumstance, but none of us were actively thinking, "Right, we're definitely going to homeschool. I'm going to stop my career. I'm going to homeschool my children." And I think largely we've probably been satisfied with the schooling that our children have had. So we haven't had that massive, "Right, there's no one that can do it better. I'm going to do it for myself."

And I think the problem is, is that whilst I think if someone said to me, "Would you want for your child someone that absolutely took their passions, made sure they understood the skillset and could personalise it to what your children want to do?" I'd kind of say yes. But this is for another podcast. I've actually worked in a group across, what's the word I'm looking for? It was across a whole different group of practitioners in different areas with a group of children who have been basically kicked out of schools. So this was in New Zealand as a pilot thing where there was all sorts of us. The difficulty was is that at 15 years old, the children didn't know what their passion was. And so it was very difficult to pursue it in such a way that individualised learning became a little more difficult.

But rewinding that, because a whole other sort of something else, it's the capacity to manage that pursuit of passions that I would argue or recognise the individual child and pursue what makes them them and makes them feel better and all those sorts of things. That must be a driving force for parents is that you want to meet your child's needs, whatever that looks like. That's got to be, I would argue the number one driver. But can we do that across billions of people? Not at the moment. You'd have to remove the workforce, right? You'd have to, I don't know what would happen. I don't know how you'd even manage that. And is it possible to have a bit of an essence of that across systems like national systems and potentially even global systems? Because we know things like PISA have a massive influence on global education trends.

Andy Psarianos

Well, I would like to imagine that there's a best of both worlds scenario here where you could just, and it goes back to some of the stuff we were talking about like, let's take out a lot of the mandatory stuff in the curriculum and whether it be mandatory because it's like regulated, everyone needs to study this course every year until they graduate, or mandatory in the sense that it's implied and just gave children a lot more freedom to spend time doing valuable things, whatever that means in a lot of time. So say half the day is dedicated to doing reading, writing, arithmetic, not arithmetic. But anyway, you get the point. And then half a day is more kind of towards chasing your own interests. I do think there's certain things that everybody should learn, but I think we go too far with many of those things.

I think mathematics is a prime example. And in B.C. in your last year of high school, you don't have to take calculus. But if you don't take calculus, then you close off a lot of opportunities in university because they want you to have calculus. Why are we even teaching 16-year-olds calculus? You know what I mean? So a child will say, "Well, I can't take this course that I'm actually interested in because I need to take calculus because I might do this later." So it's not even a mandatory course, but it ends up being a mandatory course because the pressures don't close the doors. Maybe we should stop doing a lot of that kind of stuff and free it up a bit.

Robin Potter

Have a little bit more-

Andy Psarianos

Flexibility.

Robin Potter

Flexibility. Yeah.

Adam Gifford

It's incredibly interesting though. It's incredibly interesting. And that movement, I don't think it's going anywhere other than I think it'll gain more momentum. Now, the numbers are still small at the moment, but it'll be really, really interesting to see how it goes and how society continues to change, which I feel like it's done. It feels like particularly post pandemic, quite rapidly.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, I think there's a model, there's a model for a more hybrid kind of school system where you can drop in and just like instead of your yoga class, you just drop into a school and you do an hour session on something that you're interested in, and then you're back home and then you follow your own... And that kind of more flexible kind of thing could be something that maybe it's worth investigating when you have this hybrid, half the time's homeschooling, but a couple of core subjects, just drop in. Every Tuesday at three o'clock you come and learn your history, world history or whatever.

Robin Potter

Okay. Well we'll follow up in 10 years on this one.

Andy Psarianos

All right. The school of Andy, Adam, and Robin, let's kick it off.

Adam Gifford

Let's do it.

Andy Psarianos

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.