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An Idea to Literally 'Build' Your Own Homeschooling Community and Cooperative! by Beverley Paine One of the members from Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions Yahoo Group posted an ad for the rental property over the road, keen to entice some homeschoolers into the neighbourhood to keep her company. This reminded me of an idea that lingers wistfully at the back of my mind and won't seem to go away, even though I'm very happy setting up our own intentional community with family members on our property here in Yankalilla. But the idea is worth putting out and sharing with others in the hope that maybe it will inspire and encourage families to give it some consideration - because I think it's brilliant! In our early years of home education I often mused about a group of homeschooling families deciding to buy building blocks backing onto each other, building their homes but not putting up fences between them. Imagine a whole suburb of homeschooling families growing this way! From little things (and ideas) big things grow!! Back then my parents were friends with an extended family from Laos who bought several adjoining properties in Canberra. They pulled down the fences and built a small Buddhist temple in the middle and grew their own food. That's when I started thinking about the idea for like-minded homeschooling families. It could form the basis for a housing cooperative too, especially if a couple of the families had enough money to invest in the other properties and rent them to homeschooling families who couldn't afford a sizable mortgage. I think we're beginning to reach the kind of numbers to be able to consider options like this now that there are a lot more families home educating their children. So many of us yearn for community living but visualize wide-open spaces and acres: intentional communities in Australia have tended to be on rural allotments, but overseas there are many examples of suburban intentional communities. And we live half an hour away from an arts-focused eco-village - so why not one designed around home education as the focus? I think a lot of these kinds of dreams falter in the planning stage because we aim for our ideal instead of something more realistic and achievable both in the short and long term. The problem with families collectively owning and managing a large property with individual title to smaller acreages is that unless you have primary producing in your blood and are passionate about life on the land, it is a lot of work, most of which takes considerable brawn as well as excellent planning skills. And often, as our children move through their teenage years we find that we need the services and resources located in more populated areas, with the potential for our children to need to move to the city for tertiary education as That's why I like the suburban option... Plus, it allows for several families to buy adjoining properties with individually owned titles. This would probably also avoid local planning restrictions and issues and complicated agreements. You only need to come up with an agreement to collectively use a shared strip of ground with a couple of driveways and paths for common use. This agreement can include a contract to pay a maintenance fee similar to what people do in retirement villages: so much per week that pays for infrastructure such as common garaging, chook and pet pens, pool, playground, games room and gardening costs. Houses can look inward instead of towards the street and the outer gardens can be bush gardens that screen the development from the road and offer incredibly privacy as well as a sense of being in the bush! Most people are happy to consider a mortgage for a house - pick a street on the outside of an outer suburb (cheaper blocks) and you get that country feeling. I grew up on such a street - it was the best of both worlds - access to town and country life. If you like this idea, nurture it. Discuss it with your family and friends. Share it. Chances are there are plenty of other like-minded home educating families ready to upgrade to the community / cooperative housing lifestyle too.
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education in Australia. State and Territory governments are responsible for regulating home education and have different requirements, however home educating families are able to develop curriculum and learning programs to suit the individual needs of their children.
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Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia, Beverley and Robin Paine are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families. They began homeschooling their children in 1986 and three years later started the South Australian Home Based Learners network.
Beverley wrote Getting Started with Homeschooling in 1995-97 and since then continues to write books and booklets on home education. She balances spending time helping home educators with working in her garden and renovating her home, as well as continuing to build her collection of writing on a variety of homeschooling subjects. Beverley maintains an extensive collection of websites as well as several Yahoo groups supporting families teaching their children at home.
In 2007 Beverley joined the HEA and was a committee member for three years during which time she edited and produced the HEA Newsletter, Stepping Stones for Home Educators magazine, annual Resource Directory and other HEA publications.
If you'd like to keep in touch with what Beverley is up to her in her life, sign up for the Homeschool Australia Newsletter or visit her Homeschool Australia Facebook page.nor do they endorse or recommend products (other than their own) listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements.