Kelly Rigg (00:01.27)
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of The Big Home Ed Conversations. So as usual, this podcast is about trying to make sure that we kind of blow the top off some of the big conversations that kind of go on behind the scenes if you are already home educating or you are someone who is thinking about it. Now, I warn you, this episode is going to be talking about de-schooling and essentially the reasons why school itself
has obviously affected you as an adult and things that it may have affected you obviously in your day-to-day life. So how it's affected us, and I suspect that you will relate to some of it. So do please be mindful, this one could be a little bit triggering and equally it's not going to be particularly school positive. So listen at your peril is basically what I'm saying. So we're gonna get into it. First of all, we kind of wanted to just express kind of like what we mean by de-schooling in this capacity. So obviously de-schooling.
Ashley Vanerio (00:50.754)
Hehehehe
Kelly Rigg (01:00.234)
really is all about kind of understanding how a lot of our beliefs, we call them limiting beliefs really, are that things are facts, that we see things as fact. So the idea that our children must learn to read by x age or our children must be able to like do maths, english and science, they are the most important subjects. Like it's stuff like this that we consider to be schooling mentality or schooling beliefs that
Ashley Vanerio (01:27.841)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Rigg (01:28.566)
have stemmed from somewhere. So we're gonna touch on the history of that a little bit later on. But essentially, when we are looking at de-schooling in this capacity, it's not just about, like if you've had a kid in school that you've pulled out and you need to go through a period of sort of de-schooling where you're allowing them time to relax and to come out of their shell a little bit and to let some of the conditioning go, et cetera, it's also for you. So as a parent who has been through
schooling, so if you yourself were compulsory schooled, sometimes referred to as traditional schooling but actually more traditional is actually home education to be honest, and schooling as we call it traditional which has only really been around for about 160 years. So anyway, so the point is that the ideas and the methods and the ideologies behind schooling in this country, so UK and in the US, is all based on
Ashley Vanerio (02:10.23)
That's true. Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (02:27.378)
really just the ideas of bureaucratic industrial leaders, white men, people who are in Parliament just over a hundred years ago. So we're going to get into all of this and actually understand that it basically helped because I myself was having a really hard time when I first started home educating because I had been schooled. So I fully believed in the system and what it was actually
Ashley Vanerio (02:42.443)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (02:56.842)
and that I only chose to home educate really, there's a lot of different reasons, but I had just started to get an inkling that the way that I had been treated in school and the way that it trained me to be a person, I actually didn't fully agree with. So an element of things like people pleasing, always worrying about what other people thought of me more than myself, that comes from school, that 100%-
Obviously, yes, and wider society, but wider society is also schooled. So we just have to kind of understand that this is kind of the route here. So we get taught as children to care about our grades. We get taught to care about what other people think of us. We get taught to care about comparing yourself to the person sitting next to you. Like you don't want to be scruffy. You don't want to be smelly. You don't want to be whatever because you're going to get picked on. So we end up in all these different kind of beliefs that we've got to be and act.
and behave and achieve certain things in order to be considered successful, lovable, interesting, clever, whatever, right? So essentially for me, starting out in home education, yes, I had an inkling that school had been a big factor in me actually being quite unhappy as an adult, but I wasn't fully aware of how deep I was gonna end up going on this rabbit hole. And actually,
Ashley Vanerio (04:02.12)
it.
Kelly Rigg (04:19.53)
It's only since going deeper and being brave enough to really analyse why school exists, what is school trying to serve, that it's helped me to actually go, oh, okay, I don't have to do it that way. Like truly, these are just ideas, like, or even like an ideology, like a method that someone has come up with once and they thought this will work. And actually that's not fact, it's just another human being's opinions.
Ashley Vanerio (04:38.399)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (04:48.874)
and I have as much right to make a decision for myself and for my children and my future and their future as that person did, much more so in fact. And so this has really helped me. So we're gonna kind of really get into that today. But I realized I forgot to say who I was. So I'm Kelly and I'm here with Ashley as well. So just in case you don't know who I am, we'll get the hang of this eventually. But yeah, so what-
Ashley Vanerio (05:11.626)
Bye!
Kelly Rigg (05:16.426)
What are you finding yourself thinking, Ashley? What was it like for you? How did you kind of come to the idea that de-schooling was so important?
Ashley Vanerio (05:23.846)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think, I mean, we do have different approaches. I honestly think every family has a different approach to home education. And that's kind of the nice part about it, right? It lets you individualize it for yourself, for your kids, for your future goals, for what's important to you, whether that's religion or other components that might play in there. And so I think if I look back at
why we started home educating, we kind of had two major factors. So the first one was we were living in Italy and I was just extremely hesitant to send my child to school in Italian knowing that they would not have the phonetical and spelling training that I think is so essential for the English language and to be very proficient in it and to have confidence in it when it comes to
reading and writing as a grownup in society, even if that writing is an email and the reading is a grocery list. It's just important to me, I find that important. And I think that English in the world is a primary language today. And that for me, it just meant that I wanted them to have that proficiency so it would give them the freedom to do whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted.
as an adult. And so I know how rigorous and how homework heavy Italian school systems are. And I just knew that me trying to add on to that at home would be impossible, even in the early years, as early as the first grade or year two here in England. So that was one thing. And then the other piece of it was that I taught in an Italian school.
Kelly Rigg (07:01.102)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (07:20.318)
And I think that I got to really experience the culture of their school system. And obviously I was experiencing the culture just day to day life and it is very different from how I was brought up. And sometimes that can be a great thing, but in this instance, it just felt that the, I just, I watched children just be shamed in front of their peers for forgetting an assignment or.
for something that could be largely out of their control, right? Like maybe their mom forgot about it and they're only six. So they, you know, they can't even write, never mind keep an agenda or a diary of, you know, what they have to accomplish for homework that night. So, um, and that just among many other things just led me to believe knowing my daughter at the, at the time how she was, that she would just get crushed in a school system like that. Like her spirit would be
Kelly Rigg (07:58.626)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (08:17.486)
Mm.
Ashley Vanerio (08:20.006)
broken. And so I just, and I felt that all of that would just detract from the actual purpose of her learning. So with those two things in mind, and then my own ability to be at home with her, we decided to home educate when she entered the first grade or year two equivalent here. And that sort of then led to the natural...
you know, kind of curiosity of, okay, well, what does homeschool look like for other people? What are, you know, the quote unquote experts in the field saying about home education and what you should be doing and why it's important? And how do we, you know, have them follow a curriculum? If that's something you want to do and make sure that they're checking all the boxes, how do we still meet the standards required by the state? If that's something that is important as well, which in
we kind of had a lot of balls to juggle. And so you're starting to then almost educate yourself on home educating. And that leads to these little rap trails where you're just suddenly like learning a little bit more. Okay, well, what was the purpose of education? Why did we start prioritizing these things, these subjects? What is truly the age?
that children should be reading. Is there even an age, or is it very largely child dependent and child driven? Is there a point when your child is behind? And what does that mean? And where is that point, right? That if you hit it, you should be worried. And it's so interesting, because the more you look into it, you just kind of see that a lot of these things are quite arbitrary, and don't actually have any future impact on the child's success.
And we're also very lucky now that we did have, no we're near the volume obviously, because homeschooling has just taken off and become like a very accepted mode of education or method of education, but we do have homeschoolers who are very successful adults today. And so we can look at that and really see how they were able to manage the demands of society as a home.
Kelly Rigg (10:37.943)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (10:48.27)
home schooled child entering the world. And so I think that there just is naturally a lot of research out there to draw from. And so I've just sort of found that that's led me into understanding that a lot of the things that I thought were just, you just sort of blindly thought, right? You're like, oh, well, the government says you got to do this, so that's what you got to do. But as you look into it, it's like, well, actually, that's not really something that applies in this case.
for my children or however, I don't have something in mind, but you kind of start to see that there is a value in that term unschooling to really step away from that and reassess what is going to be a priority for you and for your kids. And I say that very mindfully because we do follow curriculum.
Kelly Rigg (11:48.238)
Hmm.
Ashley Vanerio (11:48.466)
Um, in our homeschool, we do strive to stay in line with what's happening, what's expected with their kind of age groups. Um, and at the same time, I'm not saying we do every, every little thing the same, but at the same time, I want to be really sure that we are also valuing outdoor play at the same level and value.
you know, valuing math, like because they are at the same level. You know, it's just as important for my kid to go outside in an unstructured, free play environment and play with other children, spend time picking grass and making a little bird's nest to then, you know, build a fairy castle around or whatever they want to do.
Kelly Rigg (12:44.747)
Yeah, yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (12:45.678)
That is so valuable for them in this stage of development. And so I think that getting back to kind of the original piece of like unschooling, there are components of that you will find and that are very important and that I sort of came to after doing my own research and really understanding not only what the school system looks like today, but also the, the developmental needs of children at the ages that my children are and how we sometimes skip that. When they're in that.
Kelly Rigg (13:13.356)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Vanerio (13:15.944)
school system.
Kelly Rigg (13:17.45)
Yeah, absolutely they do. And I think, unfortunately, I know as you said earlier as well, before we got on, we know for a fact and like we really want to preface everything we're saying here with a big dollop of understanding that there are a lot of people out there who are sending their children to school because they absolutely have no other choice. When they really desperately wish they weren't and really wish they could pull them out. And equally, some people genuinely will.
whether it's due to the fact that we are kind of obviously led to believe that obviously school, passing exams, going to university, getting a good job, being financially stable, successful, etc. is considered to be in our Western culture. That's what people look at it and think that is what we're trying to achieve. That's what we want. Like what do you mean that you want your kids to grow up and be adults and not be successful or whatever, right? Like...
It's a very difficult conversation. So I understand that obviously if some people may find, stumble across this and be thinking to themselves that this is, that it's all very easy to sit there as two people who have obviously done pretty well in school, have gone on to actually have careers, have actually managed to do pretty well for themselves. Like I recognise our privilege in thinking that, that truly we've been able to make a choice for our children to deviate from a school system and to make that decision.
Ashley Vanerio (14:26.018)
Right.
Kelly Rigg (14:42.914)
from a place of financial stability and ability that absolutely I learned how to read in school for sure. I did. And I went on and I passed exams and I went on and did other things. But what we're kind of referring to here is not so much about the actual education, like the actual offering of subjects and matter to study and to talk about and to get into, although there is definitely some issues in the way that is done.
in terms of the restrictions and the fact that obviously you learn what you're told to learn and all those sorts of things, which I definitely believe that we need to be giving children far greater scope to explore texts and methods of learning things that match them better. But ultimately, we're not saying that going and receiving an education within an institution is a bad thing. But ultimately.
we have got to consider the ideologies that were put behind it and really what they were trying to actually achieve and whether or not that actually serves us. And so we understand that some parents will genuinely believe in it, will genuinely believe it is the best thing for their kids and we'll see them have a much better life than maybe they've managed to have and whatever. And so at the end of the day, we all have differing opinions on this. And I want to stress that it is
It does often come down to opinion, but I do genuinely believe that when it comes to questioning the school system as it is right now, if you went and spoke to parents in a school playground at the end of a day and asked which one of them is truly satisfied with the education their child is getting, I challenge you to find one. You see them going on to private education, booking their kids into institutions they're paying for, and I ask you again to ask them, are they satisfied?
with the education that they are receiving for their children or the environment or the experience that they're experiencing, that ultimately the methods, the whole kind of ethos, the values behind education in an institutionalised basis is very different to what home education allows you to create. And I think that is truly was actually part of the reason that school was created.
Ashley Vanerio (17:09.219)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (17:09.586)
It leads us reasonably tidily onto the idea of like the history, right? Because this is something which I went on a massive wormhole with this recently. And I found myself really finding fascinating. So the books that I've been reading, if you want to go and read them yourself, John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction and Sir Ken Robinson's Out of Our Minds. So those two books. If you want to fast track your de-schooling, you are like you desperately need to shake off.
Ashley Vanerio (17:16.944)
Hehehe
Kelly Rigg (17:39.358)
some of the fondness or the love that you've got for it or the confusion around like okay this is like but I enjoyed my time at school yes but it taught you how to be a massive people pleaser like if you're still stuck in that and you really need someone to give you a good old slap grab those books and just bury your head um you'll feel better when they're done.
Ashley Vanerio (17:53.389)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (18:01.538)
Yeah, add in Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto too, because that's another great one that he did. Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (18:05.002)
Yes, that's his original one. Yeah, I haven't read that one. I must actually get hold of it. But I get the impression that Weapons of Mass Instruction is kind of that. And then some more of his late 2000s, like 2012 onwards, I think is roughly when it was published. So I think it's a bit of both. I really love it. So yeah, definitely grab both and have a really good read. Because basically he is an ex-school teacher. He's literally taught for many, many years. And he is literally...
Ashley Vanerio (18:17.833)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so more of the newer stuff, yeah.
Lovely.
Kelly Rigg (18:35.882)
witnessed his own waking up as he's doing that and recognising that actually he's just like, oh, what are we doing? Like this needs to be different, so different. And I think loving.
Ashley Vanerio (18:44.686)
Yeah. And it should be said that he was like, so sorry to ask you, but he was an award-winning teacher. So it's not like he was just a passive teacher in a school system. Like he was a celebrated, accredited, looked to instructor. So I think it just adds more to that feedback, right, that he's providing us. Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (18:52.471)
Yes.
Kelly Rigg (18:56.354)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (19:07.178)
Yeah, it definitely does and it's a very well-known book so you'll come across it in any kind of list that people offer you and like ways to kind of get heads around home edding, but he's yeah, I've really loved it and it's actually really helped me to understand an awful lot so essentially kind of getting into it's really quite interesting. So compulsory schooling, as you would imagine, was something that has been enacted by reasonably wealthy
Ashley Vanerio (19:14.464)
Meh.
Kelly Rigg (19:36.53)
either industrialist or parliamentarian, so noble, men and women, or men, men primarily obviously, women, wives probably sitting whispering in their ears to some degree of course as well, but primarily white men. So as we know, the school systems are absolutely whitewashed 100%, the decision to teach what we teach and to
Ashley Vanerio (19:46.582)
and some.
Kelly Rigg (20:02.382)
the methods and the values and the ethics and everything else that a white male 160 years ago would have cared about was the primary feelings behind what should be taught in schools. Now to add to that though they had some fears. They were very concerned that educating the masses would cause them to revolt, would cause them to kick back. Why do we think that is?
Why would they be fearing this? Like, so they're literally thinking to themselves, like, we can only teach them so much because if we teach them too much, then they'll be able to take over, right? They'll be able to run their own businesses. They'll be able to compete with us. They'll be able to argue back about our policies and the things that they wanted to have in law. So really paying attention to the fact that obviously they are then deciding what the curriculum is gonna be.
Ashley Vanerio (20:42.1)
Thanks.
Kelly Rigg (20:59.074)
They are ensuring that families, so obviously there is an element of them trying to get away from things like child labour. So there were concerns that young children obviously were being sent into mines, into factories, et cetera, the age of five, six, seven years old. So they were trying to get them out of those environments into a school so they'd actually get some education. So it wasn't just about that. So obviously when you look at these things, you can look at them with as much of a conspiracy eye as you like, but there will have been some elements of trying to support children.
Ashley Vanerio (21:12.174)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Rigg (21:28.99)
and to get away from abuse that was obviously being experienced by children, which is wonderful, really, really wonderful that they were hoping to obviously get them out of those scenarios. But equally, they were very, very concerned about making sure that the education that people were receiving was not affected by the church. They wanted to get it away from a religious basis, so that in its own right removes some of the moral ethical code that we experience in our modern day.
So they didn't really want people sending their kids to the church schools that were already receiving kind of funding from local communities and stuff like that. They'd all kind of chip in and support it locally. And essentially they were, what they were aiming for was an education that would allow more people to build the physical skills and the ability to follow a regiment.
Ashley Vanerio (21:59.298)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (22:26.294)
that meant that they could actually, like a schedule and a day-to-day life, like responding to a bell, sitting and being at a desk for X amount of time per day, like doing as you're told, following direction. I can't speak today. All these things are trying to teach discipline into young people from quite a young age to ensure that they would go out into the world and be good workers. Now.
Ashley Vanerio (22:41.026)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (22:52.554)
they were hoping for just that little bit more academic skill for some more of the administrative jobs that were coming along. So they wanted young people to be coming out of school with improved literacy or improved sort of skills, physical skills as well, so they could take on industrial jobs and a lot of more rural communities just weren't interested, they didn't want their kids going to schools.
Ashley Vanerio (23:17.233)
Mm.
Kelly Rigg (23:17.462)
not formal compulsory education anyway. And a lot of the things that they kicked back on back then and said no, and so they didn't want compulsory education are the same reasons we actually have today around fears around kind of government indoctrination. So instead of having religious indoctrination, you've got government indoctrination instead. So they get to call the shots, they get to teach you what they teach you. And so many other things. So like, that is really interesting that people back then
Ashley Vanerio (23:34.85)
Great.
Kelly Rigg (23:45.77)
were very aware of the same things that we are today, that they just didn't want their kids to be stuck at a desk all the time. They didn't want them stuck on one set curriculum. They wanted them to be able to prioritize skills that were relevant to them in their own communities, with their own families. And obviously, yes, some families back then relied on the income. Like they were literally, like they needed their young children to be working, to be able to physically survive. And that in itself is a failing of the government, let alone...
Ashley Vanerio (24:01.364)
Right.
Ashley Vanerio (24:06.796)
Of course.
Kelly Rigg (24:17.198)
Obviously getting kids into school is one thing but making it so the families don't need their kids to work is another, right? Like we've got at the end of the day it's not the parents' fault that children were being sent to work, like that's not the way it works. So yes it's just really fascinating to me that ultimately this was all kind of started, a lot of it is really kind of boomed during the industrial revolution.
Ashley Vanerio (24:22.646)
Right.
Kelly Rigg (24:42.378)
So things like Rockefeller, Carnegie and Sons, like a lot of these big, big industrial leaders were involved in the initial conversations around schools bills. So in our country in the UK, it was William Forster. It was literally called the Forster's Bill. Forster's School Act, I think it was called, Education Act. So literally the whole idea of it.
Ashley Vanerio (24:45.377)
Yep.
Kelly Rigg (25:08.062)
in 1870 in the UK. So it's roughly 1852 in Massachusetts. Compulsory schooling to some kind of like some idea was kind of started around kind of Denmark Prussia back in the late 1700s. But modern era kind of compulsory schooling really started to kick off around about kind of the 1850s to 1900. So that kind of 50 year transition basically saw most
Ashley Vanerio (25:22.414)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Rigg (25:37.342)
of the world, like Western cultured world, so Europe, New Zealand, UK, US, etc. all adopt forms of compulsory education for typically ages 5 to 12. It only actually increased to 16 I think in the 1970s and then it only increased to 18 very recently, about 10 years ago or so. So literally...
School in itself, as an experiment really, like there's an idea of kind of providing compulsory education for the masses that's supposedly free, which we know at the end of the day isn't free, we pay our taxes, we all contribute to it. Parents who send their kids to school will know the countless ways that they have to contribute to the cost of their child attending an institution. That, yeah, the whole idea of it is literally based on
of a bunch of industrial leaders and William Forster himself was an industrialist himself. He was a wool merchant, he manufactured wool, so they all had their ideals and their ideas as white men who would have referred to themselves as our betters, quite literally would have referred to themselves as our betters, feeling that their education put them above us.
put into place a form of schooling that provided just enough education to ensure that people were able, because they literally just allowed some more men to vote as well. So if you think this is around the same sort of time that more men were now allowed to vote so that uneducated men could now make a decision about government policies. So they had to make sure that they were given enough education to be able to do that because they were worried that their ignorance.
I was going to mean that they'd vote badly. So they had to make sure they understood the government's opinions and ideals, because yeah, they didn't want people to keep revolting and pushing back against it. But yeah, I just find all this stuff really, really fascinating. And ultimately, it kind of just helps to take some of the edge off, right? So I mean, I mean, there's so much more to it than this.
Ashley Vanerio (27:55.807)
It is fascinating.
Kelly Rigg (28:03.694)
and say hence why we recommend the books, because you can't possibly cover it all in 30 minutes. Like, there's just so many kind of really like eye-opening moments that make you think, oh my goodness, like this is why we, we've all been taught in schools. So clearly we've all been told that school is great and school is important and school was a gift from the government and we should definitely appreciate it and utilize it for everything it's worth. But actually we have to remember.
that it has its limitations. And whether that's intentional, whether it's because they just can't possibly facilitate a high level education that would really truly ensure that everybody is like absolutely incredible and can access all of their gifts, which let's face it is truth, right? There's not enough money for that. There's not enough time. There's not enough teachers willing to do the job. Like it's, you can't create that. And equally like...
Ashley Vanerio (28:51.564)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (28:55.551)
No.
Kelly Rigg (29:03.422)
schools when they first came into place were very heavily focused on skills. They were like learning how to do mechanic work or to fix things, to make things, to make kind of clothing, to cook, to you know all these things as well. They were all very important and part of the curriculum, whereas nowadays they're more and more diminished with every passing year, like people consider them to be less important.
Ashley Vanerio (29:22.231)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (29:30.986)
and we're now focusing more and more and more on academics. And that actually this doesn't serve every child and leaves them feeling really frustrated and not able to kind of progress and to go on and do other things that might mean more to them. So yeah, I mean, I just, it just, it really mind boggles. It really does. And I think that you can get, you can get tied up in these things being a bit of a conspiracy.
Ashley Vanerio (29:34.306)
Yep.
Ashley Vanerio (29:48.717)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (29:56.886)
And I don't know how you're feeling about it actually. Like how do you feel about kind of the origins of the school system?
Ashley Vanerio (30:03.154)
Yeah, I mean, it's very similar when you look at the US too, because it's like it sort of started, you know, let's call it in the colonial times and similarly the school, let me back up. So it was varied across the states and how close you were to a large city or not. And if you were male or female, if you were black or white, all these things mattered. And
Kelly Rigg (30:30.154)
Yeah, they did. Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (30:32.382)
And if you were in, you know, one of the few that went to school, then you were taught, you know, some academic, but also, yes, life skills, things that you needed to live in the colonial times, right? And there was religious influences. I mean, I'm not gonna go through the whole history, right? Everyone can go onto Wikipedia and find that out for themselves, but. The idea of it,
I think was really interesting to understand because it was nothing that I had ever questioned. And I think that's because everybody alive right now went through a school system. So there's not like the older generation to say like, well, that's not what we did, you know? And so as you get away from that, you really lose that perspective.
of a different option or a different way that it was done. And so I think that finding that out and sort of understanding more about how this became the norm definitely helps me understand sort of where some of my, I don't want to call them grievances, but like...
Some of the things that bothered me about this little system, like the puzzle pieces start to come together, right? Cause you sort of felt this disconnect when you were in school. And like, it didn't feel like you, for me, it did not feel like I was there to learn. It did not feel that I had always the opportunity to ask the questions I wanted to because the teacher was teaching and I'm not taking questions at this moment, right? Write down your question and hold it till the end. And that's not necessarily the...
environment to kind of foster the creativity and the exploration and the curiosity that we know is crucial to learning. And then it was, yeah, it just felt like you're getting kind of shut down a lot. And I get that because I've been a teacher. And I know it is very hard on that side to bring 30 children on a journey with you in the allotted time and check all the boxes that are required to make sure that you've taught them all the right things.
Ashley Vanerio (32:55.15)
so that they can pass the state examinations, that the school stays accredited and the school has, you know, good reviews. All of this is so stressful for a teacher. So it's just really not the right environment to do that. And you felt, I felt anyway, that I was learning for the sake of passing a test. I knew, and I knew how to do that very well. I did very well in school. So
Kelly Rigg (33:05.387)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (33:23.302)
I can only imagine how frustrating it could have been for people who didn't. You know, I speak from, I can't, I can't speak to that, but I'm sure it's really frustrating. And I think that it, to your point of not allowing children to maybe explore. Some of the more creative aspects, you know, art was an extracurricular. It was, you know, a fluffy class. It was not taken seriously. And.
Uh, just kind of check that box for a well-rounded education. But there are some fantastic artists that probably missed an opportunity to follow their dream, their, their natural talent, uh, because they were told not to focus on that. You've got to go, you know, work on wall street or whatever, whatever was important at the time that their parents were guiding them to. And I certainly understand. You know, the parents want for a child to be financially independent and.
that definitely can be a concern, especially if the parent didn't have that themselves and they want a better opportunity for their children. So it is this cycle that we're trying to understand and or break out of. But yeah, I think that all of these pieces can be really frustrating as a parent. And the more you find out about it.
the more you question it and then it kind of keeps going. And so I'm definitely at the point now where obviously I feel that there is never gonna be, at least right now, a time when there's not a public education system. Nor should there be. I think that there will always be children and families who need that. I totally understand that.
Kelly Rigg (34:55.415)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (35:20.354)
And I think that where we even as home educators can really work is to support that and try to influence it in a way that allows it to become more of what we would envision a learning environment, a successful learning environment to look like. So how can we help?
And I think that's largely based on just being involved and voting where we can and making sure voices are heard and coming at it from an academic perspective. Like we, we can look at the studies, we can look at the research, we can look at the behavioral side of it, the academic side of it. And, you know, presenting that in a way that hopefully helps to guide the public education system to make better decisions to allow for.
Kelly Rigg (35:54.35)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (36:14.75)
you know, teachers to be successful and for students to be successful. And that is really hard. It's, it's, it's sort of created, um, a perfect sort where someone's gonna, someone's gonna suffer, right? Teachers, the students. Yeah. No. Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (36:28.322)
This is the problem. It's not a one size fits all education and the ability to learn what we need to learn to be successful in our own right with our authentic self intact is never going to be facilitated by a public system. At the end of the day, I was reading something recently that said, it's not that the government don't care about providing a well rounded education system. Far from it. Like they can see how vital it is.
to ensure that the education system that we experience leads to workers who are experienced, capable, creative, innovative, able to go into the workplace and be confident, crack on with their good skills and all the rest of it. They don't want a bunch of people coming out of it disillusioned, uninterested in furthering themselves, basically just bored out of their minds, resentful, depressed, anxious. Like that's not what they're going for.
But when you've got a massive group of people all really caring about their opinion and their ideas behind what the school system should look like, and when you're talking about a ship that is so massive that 48,000 teachers can leave in a year, just astonishing numbers that literally just absolutely bonkers that this is a massive ship and turning it around, making changes.
Ashley Vanerio (37:25.486)
That's not it.
Ashley Vanerio (37:46.471)
Yeah, it's terrifying.
Kelly Rigg (37:55.07)
Like you've got to get 50 MPs to agree to it. Like it's a blooming nightmare. And at the end of the day, a lot of what ends up being put into place comes in the form of increased fines. Like we've seen in the news about like the massive fines that they're putting on parents if they take them out of school unauthorized during the year. And like...
Ashley Vanerio (37:59.362)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (38:16.918)
they put fines in place, they put truancy wardens in place, they have someone coming and knocking on your door every time a kid gets sick to check that your kid is actually sick. Like just, the oversight and the control that then gets put into place to try and make sure that school time isn't being wasted, that money that's being put into a school isn't being like just frittered into nothing. And like this idea that if your kid misses a week in school, they've missed that lesson, they're never gonna get it back so they have to get back into school. It's just like, this is bonkers.
Ashley Vanerio (38:30.291)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (38:47.923)
And the truth of the matter is that parents shouldn't be... like we're losing so much power, like we're losing so much control over our lives, like our days and our weeks and our months and our years are completely dictated by the school system for our entire childhoods and then our children's entire childhoods and so you come out the other end of it and you spend a best part of 40 odd years of your life.
Ashley Vanerio (38:48.725)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (39:12.546)
having it be controlled by a school system. You're telling me that doesn't have an effect on how we live and breathe and function in our relationships and our work and our happiness. That's nonsense. It's got to be nonsense.
Ashley Vanerio (39:12.615)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Vanerio (39:26.334)
Yeah, well, and even like, aside from the fact that I think we're, and I think you were saying this well, is that you're focusing the money on the wrong thing, right? Stop wasting money on that. I think the teachers can identify who are the students that might need that direct follow-up, or you can establish a pattern and maybe take a different approach. And the principal and the rest of the people in charge of the institution can have a solution for that.
Kelly Rigg (39:38.082)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (39:55.662)
parents for making the decision that their children or child was too ill to attend school, I think that's really questioning being like, we're allowed to be a parent. Like, we're allowed to make that decision for our children. We live with them. You don't. And like to just to just put a staple like this is how it is across it without any nuance for the child. And what they might be going through is I think it's very
Kelly Rigg (40:09.602)
Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (40:14.347)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (40:24.974)
very unrespectful and just unnecessary. We don't need to spend money on that. Get more books for the school. Pay your teachers better. Let's improve where it needs to be improved. Then I think the other piece of it is you are forcing families to make the decision. I have had this conversation with parents that have their children in the school system that they said, well, basically what we do when we want to go on vacation, we look at the price during school sessions.
Kelly Rigg (40:26.652)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Rigg (40:32.855)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (40:54.538)
And then we decide, is it still cheaper, even with the fines, to go? Or do we wait for the break because everything gets more expensive over term breaks? And so they're like, the school system actually forces us to spend more money on our vacation because we can only do it during these times. And
Kelly Rigg (40:58.402)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Rigg (41:05.558)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (41:15.098)
Then it also, because of the way that the term breaks are, and this is just different here than in the States, we do it all at once over the summer, and here it gets kind of spread out throughout the year with a smaller summer break. But there was a private school in the area that over Easter, instead of having two weeks off, like I think most of the schools here do, they had three weeks off. And the mom was like, can you believe what I'm spending on these programs to put my kids somewhere? Because I have to work. I can't take three weeks off work.
Kelly Rigg (41:43.607)
No. Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (41:46.022)
the forced spend that comes from such regulation around the term times and all of this. I just really wonder how it's being measured and are they seeing that this is directly relating to children's success and how are they measuring that success and is that an accurate way to measure it? It does, it just, yeah, I don't know. Because I'll tell you, they don't do it in the US.
Kelly Rigg (42:06.754)
Yeah.
Ashley Vanerio (42:15.978)
And I'm, I'm wondering if, is there a big disparity? Like, is that the reason? You know? Or is there something else? So I don't know.
Kelly Rigg (42:26.318)
curious isn't it and I think also and this is part of the training so like if we want to get into like the training like there was this referred to like school training us but like literally this idea that you'll be punished if you take time out during the term time like this whole concept is just basically kind of setting you up for understanding that no you take a break when we tell you to like you're not taking a break here but also not
Kelly Rigg (42:55.93)
is hugely valuable in terms of educational understanding. And I mean, this again, is another whole conversation, but it's really kind of recognising that so much of all of this nonsense, and we're gonna get into, over the next couple of episodes, we're gonna kind of get into a bit of a UK versus US school system. We're gonna get into this a lot more because there is a lot to discuss around this. But when it comes to de-schooling and recognising that school has had an impact on how you think and how you behave,
Ashley Vanerio (42:58.338)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Kelly Rigg (43:26.258)
it absolutely is important to be thinking about this stuff, because as much as you might not want to radicalise yourself too much, and you might want to sort of stay in this kind of like, oh, it's fine, like, school's one thing, home is another, like, we don't need to get into the, like, reasons for it and all the rest of it. I think until you can recognise why school has had such a hold over you, the methods used in schools have a hold over you.
why you keep finding yourself freaking out and making your kids sit back down to do a bit more maths because actually you think, oh my goodness, we haven't done enough recently. Or whatever it is that keeps going through your head where you are stressing about this stuff, feeling like they're behind, feeling like you're not doing enough, all the rest of it. It feeds into all of that. And as I said, we've literally touched on it here, to be honest, there's so many more fun little nuggets of information about why the school system over the 160 years that it's been in place in.
Ashley Vanerio (43:58.036)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Rigg (44:20.038)
the US, UK, etc. But truly there is there's so much more to know about this and there's so much more to understand that actually our kids really do deserve better than what they're being offered by our school system. We do need to campaign and push for more but we also need to recognise that we have an ability to take back some power and if you have the ability to home educate it doesn't have to look like school, it can look different.
And if you can give yourself that freedom, you'll actually realise how much less work and responsibility and fear and scare is actually involved in it because you'll stop thinking to yourself, well, I can't provide five hours of lessons a day and make sure that my kids are doing this, and this, and oh my goodness, I don't know how to teach that subject or whatever. And you'll start to recognise how a lot of this stuff comes from their lived experience. They will learn to read and they will learn to do maths and they will learn science because they live it.
And you don't actually need to necessarily provide these things in a lesson format structured in a classroom for them to actually sink in and actually, surprise, it might even sink in better. So just try and trust yourself a little bit. If you are currently on the fence and you're thinking about this and you're desperately trying to get some of the school control out of your system, just remember how much power you can take back by choosing home education for your family, for them and for you. So.
That's my final word on this subject for now. But we're gonna carry on and we're gonna, we're literally gonna go on and record another episode in a minute about the UK versus US school systems as well. So we're gonna kind of get into that next. So that's gonna be kind of exciting. So this conversation will carry on. But as always, I am Kelly and I am at Offroading Motherhood on Instagram and banish home ed burnout on TikTok. There's dots between those words.
Ashley Vanerio (45:48.08)
Thank you.
Kelly Rigg (46:11.41)
And then Ashley is homeschool in progress on Instagram, again, with dots in between the words. So do come and follow us, do come and comment on this episode. If any of it surprised you, we'd love to know if any of it, if you wanna add to any of it with any other fun tidbits that you've found out as you've been doing your research, then please do come and share it as well because it is really fascinating and I'm loving this at the minute. And yeah, we'll carry on as always. So thanks so much for listening and we will see you on the next one. Bye guys.
Ashley Vanerio (46:39.69)
Bye.
