Written by Alice Khimasia

My teen boys taught me to be bolder in my risk-taking. It was always my children who pushed me to relinquish control, to trust them more. As they grew, they needed and demanded that I up my game, that I provide greater challenge. My eldest, especially, pushed the edges of my comfort zone to allow him wider opportunities for exploration. 

Our culture is risk-averse. It seems nothing now can be embarked upon without thorough risk assessment. I remember thinking this as I struggled up Mount Snowdon one memorable summer’s day, dizzy with the rugged wildness of the place. My 13-year-old strode past me on his way down having summited an hour previously. ‘Easy,’ was his remark as he breezed by, leaving me breathlessly worrying about what he would do whilst he waited for us at the mountain’s foot. But I did not let my anxiety clip his wings. He taught me to facilitate adventure.

Upon hearing we home educate, many people have said to me over the years, “That’s a huge risk you are taking.” And I have always thought, “Yes, but it was a huge risk to leave my children in school.” 

I had seen the lights go out in my son’s eyes, his head drop, his sparkle and curiosity diminish, and knew we had to take action. My sons needed space and support to learn in ways which enabled them to flourish, to pursue the questions and interests which occupied their active minds, to explore the world through conversation and through practical hands-on experimentation, to find and follow their own motivation along unique paths they each forged, to grow into lifelong learners. 

Was it risky? Yes. 

Perhaps more so because there is no marked path, no set curriculum, no clear outcome. Rather, the path emerges as our children grow, and it requires trust, both in ourselves, in our own intuition, and in our children as capable and agentic learners. Like all risk-taking, it is not a path embarked upon without trepidation. 

And yet, the alternative can be risky, too. Though the school path is clear and socially dominant, it is a system designed to fail a third of our precious young people. A third will not achieve the five ‘passes’ at GCSE which is the system’s own measure of success, and many will be damaged by an increasingly standardised curriculum and learning environments which fail to prioritise wellbeing. 

Parenting is a risky endeavour. We bring children into an uncertain world and strive to launch them into an unknown future. They are our love letters through time, imprinted with the values of elders, culture and place. 

Whichever path we choose, there will be challenge, uncertainty, anxiety, the risk of broken hearts. It is not easy to raise young people, to nurture and support their growth, to enable and empower. It will always be fraught with risk. To dream and imagine better learning pathways, better childhoods, is the work of creating social change, leaning into the ways we want the world to be. Imagination is key to such bold leadership. 

Yes, it is a risk to divert from the well-known pathways, and it can feel lonely. Venturing out along the road less travelled is an exercise in trust which takes us to new places, new communities, new interests and learning opportunities, new friendships. We discover a thriving network of alternative learning, buzzing with opportunity. And we realise we are not alone. There is strength in community, strength in collective imagination, in bringing a new vision for education into reality.

John Holt, whose work has greatly influenced the unschooling movement, wrote in How Children Learn (1967) 

“Trust children. Nothing could be more simple or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted. And so we go on treating children as we ourselves were treated, calling this ‘reality,’ or saying bitterly, ‘If I could put up with it, they can too.’”  

It feels risky indeed to trust ourselves, to trust children, when it has been embedded in us that neither we nor they are to be trusted, that neither we nor they deserve better. We are led to believe we are not educators, we are ill-equipped, we do not have the knowledge required for this important task. 

We have been taught that the education of children is best left to the professionals. But for generations, parents, in their families and communities, raised children. Long, long before the schools were imagined and opened, children learned in their places of belonging, from the people around them, and grew successfully to adulthood. 

We might argue that schooling children away from elders and place, from locality and lands, is the greatest risk we face as a species, the resultant disconnect and lack of care for the natural world which is their birthright too great a risk to take in the face of climate crisis. It is a risk to stand against the juggernaut of globalisation and consumerism, against conveyor belt systems of learning, but it is a far greater risk not to. 

It is bold, culture-shaping work, and not for the faint-hearted. Our children challenge us to embrace the adventure. Dare we take the risk?