We have talked on many occasions about the option of educating at home, what is known as homeschoolingBut, when a family considers not to use the school or to start, after a time of schooling, to educate as a family, they may find themselves with a lot of loneliness, concerns about the best way to take the step and also, of course, with the need to expand your network of friends to contact other families. Today we will try to offer you all the information about the homeschooling in Spain going to the sources: researchers, associations and families.
I illustrate this article with an interview conducted by Extremadura television with Azucena Caballero, a teacher, a mother who educates three children at home and an expert in homeschooling and that I think reflects very well the reality of home schooling, because of the human quality that They convey the sympathy of children and the importance given to training in all areas. Azucena has been president of the Association for Free Education, is currently vice president of the Epysteme Association and is also one of the members of the Educarpetas team, of which I have spoken on occasion.
Today I am going to make a small review of the best and most useful blogs and Spanish pages about homeschooling, where you can find information, data, methods, solutions and also know better the reality of this growing phenomenon in our country.
Association for Free Education
I start, necessarily, by the ALE blog and its website. ALE (Association for Free Education) is the largest Spanish association of homeschoolers families, in which timely news of their activities, press appearances, legislation, methodologies and where many families write directly telling their experiences are given. Indispensable to understand Spanish homeschooling.
It is remarkable the work of its current president, Daragh McInerney, who this year has developed a fundamental activity of communication with other international and state organizations defending the interests of homeschoolers.
The profile of the families
It is interesting to continue with the research of Professor Carlos Cabo, who conducted a study on the profile these families, analyzing his political ideology, his reasons for educating at home, his religious beliefs and he managed to give a fairly accurate and complete picture.
The Spanish families that educate at home are not religious fanatics or extreme right-wing extremists, they respond perfectly to the different normal democratic ideologies in the Spanish population and the majority fit into the political center. Religion is not an important reason they cite for home schooling, and, although they have feelings of transcendence, they are not mostly active members of any religion, much less sects. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that they have, in a high percentage, some of the parents with higher education and reason education at home for pedagogical and personal reasons, seeking to offer their children a healthy, free and socially active educational and family environment.
In short, families that educate at home do not respond to a unique profile and as normal as the others. They have simply opted for an educational model that responds to the rights of the child to be educated and the right of parents to choose the method of education, in accordance with international treaties and completely standardized in the vast majority of Western countries.
The best information about homeschooling on the net
Given the profile of families, I recommend you read the page called Homeschooling Spain, which runs our well-known and very active Meninheira. This page collects news on the cases in which the families have a problem, the successes of the sentences in favor of the families, the approximations to the educational fact, the norms and the possible ways to offer a good education in the home.
It is very interesting, especially from the point of view of the legislation, the page of the law professor Madelen Goiria, The option to educate at home. Madelen Goiria has been working on a thesis on homeschooling for years and has been compiling all the documentation about home education. Not only worth the page, but also, many times, the comments of the participants.
Other pages of associations and groups of home education are Family Education and Grow in Freedom and Grow without school. It is also important to highlight the strength of local groups, especially the website of the Catalan Coordinator for the recognition and regulation of Family Education and the recent Homeschooling in Madrid.
Another new resource is the great Radioschooling, which publishes interviews in mp3 format to scholars, students and parents who educate at home. An excellent and very accessible initiative.
The blogs of families and children
The homeschoolers families They are very active on the internet, we can read them in parenting forums and also know them directly in their blogs. They are so many that I regret already forgetting some. I will highlight some of them, the most active lately: Orca-Moose, Dálle un coliño, For the oak, ash and hawthorn, Imagine smiles, Multicolored Butterflies, Homeschool sweet homeschool, Paideia en familia, A desert home, Joquines al menjador , Under the dandelion, Macedonia of sweet fruit and crabs and hermits.
Homeschoolers children also have blogs, where they show their work and the resources they use to learn. Some are these: Hectorsaurius Park, 36 Violet Tulips, Mana el Cor 2002, Pau and Interesting Things.
In addition, we can find the young Spanish homeschoolers in the In Project Magazine, who edit and write children who are educated at home between 6 and 16 years and of which we have already spoken to you in Babies and more.
More resources on home schooling
I finish with both educational offices that facilitate the possibility of children studying at a distance in schools in the United States, from where they are offered access to a degree in addition to tutorials and educational support with a concept of quality and flexibility: the association Epysteme and Clonlara.
Recently, the II National Homeschooling Congress was organized in Pamplona, organized by the University of Navarra on which we offered you the conclusions and which implies the recognition of the experts of a reality that offers a high educational quality.
I hope that all this information that I have collected will help you, if you are interested in the subject, to deepen the homeschooling in Spain, a growing educational phenomenon that needs recognition that allows education at home to be, just as in the countries around us, one more option that families can freely access to offer children an education for the 21st century.
