For most of us, when we hear the word education, it automatically creates a mental image of school and books and papers and we instantly associate the term with school. Similarly, when we hear the word school, we think of books, teachers, desks, chalkboards and a building filled with students, sounds of bells, images of backpacks and busses and the cringing thought of homework and tests. Take it a step further with the term ‘homeschool’ and a vast majority of the population automatically associates that term with ‘strange, weird, bizarre, outcasts, unsocialized, cooped up etc… Some of us know better and hence associate the term homeschool with books and papers and grades etc – but minus the chalk boards and busses and building, and of course minus the ‘homework’. For many home educators, this would be an accurate image for what homeschooling is for them – school at home. However, for a growing number of families, the word school does not at all describe what they have discovered or the lifelong learning they are enjoying. What’s more, these are the families who have come to the conclusion that the word education is not synonymous with the word schooling. As a matter of fact they are two very different ideas.

» Read more: Unplugged Education – It Is Not Homeschooling