THE most important educational influence in my son’s life was the computer. When he was born I was using a typewriter for my writing, and he grew up during the development from manual to electric, then to computer keyboards.

I started using the original pre-Windows DOS computer with black screen and green letters at about the time he learned to read. This meant that the combination of my lap as his favourite seat, and his eagerness to show that he could read, enabled him to perform simple tasks on the computer like open file, print, save, etc.

Even though I soon acquired a computer with the first Windows 3.0 programme, he has never forgotten the basic DOS operations that are the foundation of computer use, and this knowledge/education formed his development as a technology ‘whiz kid’.

When he was four years old, I moved to Kingston and began a PR job with SPECS-SHANG Records manager Babsy Grange, who allowed me to bring my child to the office. Taking advantage of this enlightened opportunity, he made himself useful.

He was not bored by learning and helping to do such office tasks as printing documents from the computer, sending faxes and even answering the phone. His ability to read facilitated all these activities, and even though he sometimes was a handful as children can be, he soon learned how to behave by imitating the adults around him.

His education was further enhanced and assisted by the Ramocan family, who operated an educational book distribution office next door and gave him many of the excellent Merrill school books which he read quietly in the corner that became his ‘office’.

Seeing his great interest in the computer, I read about and sent to the USA for a fascinating ‘toy’ named Socrates, a device that plugged into the TV and connected by infra-red rays to a computer-like keyboard in the user’s lap.

Socrates had game-like lessons in English grammar, spelling, maths, general knowledge and even a place to make music. Socrates was as wise as its namesake, and taught my son not only knowledge, but fulfilled his eagerness to use computers for learning and fun.

Free to explore wherever he chose, he soon made Socrates, then later my computer, his personal assistant and tutor. You know the rest of the story, how he was appointed Youth Technology Consultant to the Minister of Commerce & Technology in 1998 at the age of 13. It all started with homeschool – giving him the freedom to learn what he was most interested in knowing.

But “homeschooling” is not the correct term to describe the methods I used to educate my son. The large majority of homeschooling parents run a minature version of ‘school’ in their homes, acquiring books and lesson plans of the regular curriculum, purchasing curriculum packages or using the Internet to access teaching websites.

There is a fixed daily schedule of ‘lessons’, and the ultimate goal is to create a child that is ‘brighter’ at a younger age and passes high school or university exams at a scholarship-winning level. Often this path leads to home-school ‘burnout’, where both parents and children buckle under this pressure and go back to traditional ‘school.’

Rather, “un-schooling” is the term more commonly used for the way I did it. Un-schooling means allowing the child to learn what he wants, when he wants, in the way he wants, where he wants, for his own reasons. The method is learned-directed, and instead of a ‘teacher’, the parent acts as a facilitator and resource person for the student.

“Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? The idea that children – even quite young children – should be in charge of their own education, choose what they learn and how they learn it, and even choose whether they should learn anything at all sounds ludicrous,” writes Mary Griffith in her excellent book, The Un-schooling Handbook – How To Use The Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom.

Griffith reminds us that the advent of what we know as ‘school’ only developed in the 1850s, and that formal education often lasted only three to five years, the time it took to learn the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic and a smattering of history and literature. The rest of the knowledge needed to become competent adults was acquired by working alongside adults, either family or as apprentices.

By the 20th century, schools developed into the formal institutions we know and became regarded as a necessary instrument to teach children a curriculum and discipline for future employment in the modern mechanised world.

Few children acquired their education outside schools, but there were notable exceptions. Margaret Mead, the famous American anthropologist and heroine who was unschooled, said: “My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”

In the 1970s, parents began to question the value of ‘school’ as an instrument of educational development. Led by the counter-culture movement of that era, many parents opted to give their children an alternative upbringing and an education that fitted their concept of the global village. Homeschooling also found favour with parents who felt their religious values were not being transmitted to their children within the school system.

Some families come upon un-schooling while their children are still infants and deliberately set out to create circumstances under which un-schooling can thrive.

Others, like myself, develop similar ideas and practices accidentally while searching for a form of education that they feel will give their child maximum intellectual possibilities. No two un-schooling families are alike. However, they all have characteristics in common.

What is crucial in un-schooling philosophy, says Griffith, is to know that the child has the desire to learn.

The above article is excerpted from Mrs Blake Hannah’s book Home – The First School, soon to be published by Jamaica Media Productions. Send comments and questions to: jamediapro@hotmail.com.