Introduction

As previous chapters have attempted to outline, discovering EHE sits within a maelstrom of issues and whilst it can occur simply – in a moment – it also drags some complicated factors into the lives of those involved. These factors are linked to social, political, educational, familial and parenting matters.

What I offer in this chapter is a way through the discovery thicket: a framework for discovery so that those who have a genuine desire to home educate can be left to educate according to the wonderful journey, philosophies, practices and developments possible in this alternative modality. A framework is offered because not all discovery is genuine and professionals seem to be in need of conceptual boundaries marking what is to the non-practitioner, unfamiliar and seemingly worrying territory.

The ethics of the framework rests very much with the above quotation: parents ought to be trusted to get on with the job. Whilst that may sound counterintuitive for those who are aware of the unfortunately too many seriously abusive parents (one being too many) in society, I suggest that when it comes to home education, trust of parents is a key site of democratic social expression. All parents – independent of means, education, socio-economic category – have a right to home educate. They also have a right to discover home education; come upon its difference, growing slowly into its educational offering which is being given as a positive to both child and parent.

To go against this freedom is to succumb to a disgust of the dignity of parenting, evolution in the family and to deny elements of heutagogical growth through the freedoms of the practices inherent in autonomous EHE that enable the child to live well. It is to forget the parent is important. A wish to control these intuitive and emergent relationships takes away value for the role that parents have in relation to their children.