Home education: a class apart, 12 April 2008, Telegraph.co.uk, London, England
Chung Chung and Hua Hua are what is known as “home-eds”, raised entirely outside the school system. Their parents did consider local primary schools, but were unimpressed: the children emerging from the schools seemed alarmingly regimented, drilled to act and behave in a certain way rather than try to discover themselves as individuals.
Home-eds are in such a small minority that most people, myself included, have only the sketchiest notion of what it entails. Does mum have to mug up on algebra? Does dad give PE lessons? Do snoops from the local council come knocking on the door?
The answer, in a nutshell, is none of the above. The education Chung Chung and Hua Hua are receiving is gloriously eclectic. Latin and Greek, sewing and weaving, cycling and swimming, singing, visits to museums, galleries, theatres … It is a free-range, middle-class, bohemian upbringing, although Annabel Stockman, who superintends it, is adamant that it is no soft option, either for her or the children.
Although they are bubbly, friendly and well-behaved, it is their individuality that is most striking, an independence of outlook that throws down the gauntlet to classloads of battery-reared schoolchildren.