Homeschoolers - Entrepreneurs by any other name?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) March 15, 2011 --

Entrepreneurship is very much in vogue today, with the most successful exponents of the brand such as Sir Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and the ‘Dragons Den’ stars including Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden, all achieving considerable celebrity status in recent times. As well as their perhaps conspicuous wealth, however, these people have personal characteristics that we increasingly admire, such as creativity, risk taking and leadership. Together with thousands of others like themselves, they are also vital contributors to the wealth and prosperity of the nation. These entrepreneurs also often possess another vital trait that has, in no small part, contributed to their success - they do not always follow convention.

For many years now another small but determined group have also been ploughing their own unconventional furrow. Maligned by many and previously very much a minority activity, homeschooling has become increasingly mainstream in the UK and especially in the USA. Is it a coincidence that the characteristics of entrepreneurs when set alongside those that drive the homeschooling community have much in common? In the US, a country where 25% of the working population are thought to have been self employed for 6 or more years, perhaps it can help explain why homeschooling is now undertaken by as many as 2 Million children.

Entrepreneurs have been shown through research to be less likely to sacrifice their personal values than employed managers. So too, homeschoolers will often point to strongly held values and personal conviction to back their decision. Entrepreneurs, like homeschoolers also desire independence, they often want to challenge themselves and, occasionally, entrepreneurship, like homeschooling, is borne of circumstances where there is little other choice.

Homeschooling unquestionably involves risk, with obvious questions arising such as:- Will the children lack socialisation? Will they achieve as much as their peers? Research again suggests they suffer no ill effects on either count, with some compelling evidence pointing to much more positive outcomes. Similarly the provision of an effective and varied curriculum requires great creativity and imagination, there is plenty of material available, but it still needs to be shaped into something that is right for the individual child. In the 2010 film ‘The Social network’, when the President of Harvard University said “invent your job, don’t look for one!” he probably did not have education in mind, but like the entrepreneur, homeschoolers have taken the message to heart.

As countries across the globe examine and attempt to reform their hopelessly outdated, cumbersome and sometimes failing state education systems, the internet is bringing the promise of personalised education outside the school system on a scale never seen before. It is worth considering the words of renowned economist Joseph Schumpeter, who spoke of entrepreneurship as the ‘gale of creative destruction’ where inferior products and industries are replaced by new products and new business models. Perhaps the time has come in education for the breeze that has been sustained by the homeschoolers for decades to now develop into a full blown gale of its own.

By John Edwards, Ignaty Dyakov

John Edwards is an education professional with nearly 30 years experience of teaching in schools in the UK, 12 of these in senior leadership, the last 5 years of which were as a Head Teacher of an 11-18 mixed secondary school in the South East of England.
Ignaty Dyakov is an educationalist with more than 9 years experience of teaching in schools and Universities in the UK and abroad, 5 of these in education management working with secondary and university students.

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