by Jan Hunt, M.Sc.

As homeschooling parents, my husband and I sometimes wonder who is learning more in our family, the parents or the child. The topic we seem to be learning the most about is the nature of learning itself. The term “homeschooling”, however, has proven to be misleading. Homeschooling children do not spend all of their time at home, nor is their learning approached in the same way that it would be in school. In fact, many of the assumptions about learning found in public school teaching are reversed in homeschooling.

The main element in successful homeschooling is trust. We trust the children to know when they are ready to learn and what they are interested in learning. We trust them to know how to go about learning. While this may seem to be an astonishing way of looking at children, parents commonly take this view of learning during the child’s first two years, when he is learning to stand, walk, talk, and to perform many other important and difficult things, with little help from anyone.

No one worries that a baby will be too lazy, uncooperative, or unmotivated to learn these things; it is simply assumed that every baby is born wanting to learn the things he needs to know in order to understand and to participate in the world around him. These one- and two-year-old experts teach us several principles of learning…

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