‘Transformed’ by the discovery of schooling as one educational paradigm among many
by Helen E Lees
Presented at Philosophy of Education Great Britain Conference, Symposium on Women in Philosophy of Education, New College, Oxford, 2011
To think about education as schooling, is a common mistake. There is a sense that this mistake is part of a dominant... more To think about education as schooling, is a common mistake. There is a sense that this mistake is part of a dominant ‘world-view’ where valid education happens in and through schools or educational institutions and also often adheres, to varying degrees, to an established educational modality of teacher-led teaching. Elective home education (EHE) is one form of education that disproves the myth of education as schooling. It does so in intriguing and surprising ways that involve new approaches to learning and becoming (Thomas and Pattison 2007; Sheffer 1995). In its very difference from schooling, EHE offers an alternative world-view of education in a human life that many practioners see as transformative. This paper looks at the discovery of EHE as a product of a Kuhnian ‘gestalt-switch’ (Kuhn 1962) that takes a person from one world and into another, with subsequent ontological implications for lifestyles and communication between ‘world-views’. The argument suggests that schooling needs to move towards being widely self-identified as only one paradigm amongst many in a educational arena of radically different educational worlds and that a conflation of education with schooling needs to cease. This is because transformations in people’s lives experienced when education is understood as not just schooling have implications for education which are intriguing.