Education Manifesto

Education Manifesto

I had been looking in my files for the original I had written and could not find it for the life of me. Then while fixing my visualisation wall today I found a copy of the print out!

A manifesto will change over time but I think they are a great tool to focus on what you believe as a family is important. They help clarify your ideas and your feelings. It feels an uplifting and defiant act somehow.

So here is our family's manifesto.

Our Manifesto

We believe in curiosity based, child-led learning. We believe in messy projects, inspired moments and self discovery. 
We believe in books that are too complicated, in visiting places, eating strange foods from different times in history and parts of the world. 
We believe we can make mistakes and learn from them (jelly sweets inside jelly sounds great but is gross).

We believe that happiness, being interested in the world and learning skills to live within it are more important than job titles or exams.
We believe we might not always be right, good, or perfect but we are better than school not in spite of this but because of it.
We believe our understanding and knowledge of the world changes faster than curriculum's allow for in a system written by people with political motivations not the desire for inspired learning.

We believe children are people who have the capacity to learn almost anything if they find it joyful and understand how they themselves learn.

We believe one-size schooling fits no-one.

We believe everyone needs and deserves an education; yet as it stands there is little consensus in the current model for what education is actually for. Schools have had to simplify to the point of pointlessness, or even to the point of being plain wrong; leading to years of teaching that are wasted and have to be corrected at a higher educational levels.

The responsibility has been placed on the teacher (test culture makes this much worse)  rather than the student.

ie "I have taught you this thing,this way, you must know it."

instead of

"I am learning this thing, please make it clearer."

Our goal as a family is happiness, healthiness and expansion of knowledge for all of us.

We believe there are few careers for life, but many passionate callings.

We believe the world is changing faster and faster and that creative thinking, flexibility and inspiration can not be taught, only allowed to grow.

Home education is far too important to take seriously