LIVING

Anna Ferrer is mother to 15 children, all of them educated at home. She is also one of the founders of Educar en Familia, the first Catalan homeschooling organisation. “Homeschooling is an alternative to school, a different option. It’s a response to a dissatisfaction with the school system as it is. I’m not against school, I recognise it has helped millions of children around the world. But I feel that school mashes everything up, it’s a machine that tries to make everything the same—parents, teachers and children.”

Esther Pérez, also a member of Educar en Familia and a mother of three, explained why some families opt not to send their children to school: “The reasons are as different as families are different. It’s not just those with problems at school, but families who want to teach things that aren’t in the curriculum (such as specific moral or religious values), children who have been bullied, children from other cultures, adopted children who need special teaching or even kids who are too advanced for what school is teaching them. There are also many ‘normal’ kids whose parents simply want to take care of their education.”

Homeschooling is currently a grey area under Spanish law; it is not recognised as an option and therefore not regulated. Since 2002, the official line has been that each region must regulate homeschooling in its own way. For Catalunya, this means that families who are part of the association Educar En Familia are allowed to educate at home. In other parts of Spain this is not so, and many families have been taken to court.

Fear of prosecution was even more of a problem 30 years ago, when Anna Ferrer started to educate her children at home. “We were isolated, in fear of being taken to court. I couldn’t leave the house with the kids in school hours—we were always asked what school they went to by people in the street. We couldn’t even do extra-curricular activities as they always asked for proof of what school the children were at.”

Even taking great care to keep her secret, after 20 years of homeschooling Ferrer’s family was reported to social services, and after a court hearing the children were sent to school. “It was really hard for the kids,” she said. “They had been educated in a completely different way, without aggression. They were good mediators and also advanced for the class, so they got pretty bored. After six years I couldn’t stand it anymore, I saw how my younger children were different from my older ones, and as a mother that really hurt. For that reason I took them out of school again.”