AFTER my own first day at school, I came home and told my parents, “I’m going to be a teacher when I grow up”.

My ambition never wavered, and I ended up teaching both mainstream and remedial classes.

What I experienced made me believe the education system serves many children poorly, so I quit and my own five sons were unschooled at our home in Shelbourne, Victoria – and I mean unschooled.

There was no sitting around the kitchen table with a blackboard.

I rarely sat down to read, count or organise them in any way.

Instead, they chose how to spend their days, whether that be rabbiting in the creek, building electrical devices or playing music.

I simply trusted my instinct that children love to learn, and gave them the materials, direction and wherewithal to follow their interests.

We didn’t even have a computer.

My eldest, Joel, now 33, didn’t touch one until he was 14 – yet he now has a PhD in information technology.

He got his first university degree at 18 and works for Google.

In fact, all my children are happy, healthy, successful men.

My second son, Dion, 31, works with foster children and has a diploma in community services.

Tali, 25, has a degree in contemporary music. Liam, 20, is a farrier, and is so skilled he can look at a horse’s hoof for 10 seconds then make the perfect shoe.

Erik, 18, is also considering a degree in music.

What were my dreams for them? I wanted them to be thrilled with their lives.

My disillusionment with teaching began at work. In my Year 1 class, I had a little girl who, despite my support and care, wept every morning for six months.

Two years later, when I moved to the school’s remedial centre, there she was, so traumatised she was unable to read, write or function academically.

Because of my position, I used to travel with the district school inspector.

“I think a lot of kids aren’t ready for school at five or six,” I told him.

“What would happen if I didn’t send my children to school?”

“Nothing,” he replied.

“You’re a teacher. Who’s going to say you can teach 30 of someone else’s children, but not your own?”

Initially my intention was to keep my sons at home until I felt they were ready for a classroom.

I intended sticking to the formal teaching model and that seemed to work well with my eldest, Joel, who was academic – he liked being asked to collect five rocks or six sticks.

But as my family grew and my other sons came along, they weren’t interested in those things at all.

Dion’s passion was building cubby houses.

type_quote_start “Gradually I discarded everything I’d learned at college and my role developed into watching them, observing what they were passionate about and providing what I thought would direct and support them along that path, whether that be music lessons or electrical kits.” type_quote_end

Tali sang before he spoke, couldn’t sit still for a minute and spent all day playing music.

I’d been taught that children learn in 20-minute blocks, but when mine were interested in something, it was six months before they wanted to give it up.

Gradually I discarded everything I’d learned at college and my role developed into watching them, observing what they were passionate about and providing what I thought would direct and support them along that path, whether that be music lessons or electrical kits.

As they got older, they did courses at TAFE or by distance learning if and when they needed or wanted to.

We received regular, approving visits from a school inspector and psychologist, and I was supported by my then-husband, Alan, also a teacher.

Although we belonged to sporting and church groups, and the boys had lots of friends, when he was eight, Joel decided he was missing out on the social elements of going to school and asked to be enrolled.

Academically, he was two years ahead of his classmates and was a gentle boy.

After a year of being bullied, he quit. He still says it was the worst year of his life.

The rest of my boys never wanted to try school.

Lecturers at TAFE and university have been intrigued by how my children learn, and I confess it’s been a revelation to me at times.

At 14, for instance, Joel studied discrete maths, a technical course, at TAFE.

I would look at the work he brought home and ask, “How are you learning all this?”

He replied that if he didn’t understand anything, he scanned the class for someone who looked as if they did and asked them to explain it.

He went on to top his university maths classes.

The education system is very much geared towards reading, but none of my children learned early.

Joel was seven – although within six months he could read anything.

Tali was 12, while Dion was an adult and studying for a diploma before he really came to grips with spelling.

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Trying to teach them before they were ready felt like bashing my head against a brick wall.

Liam was found to be dyslexic but learns so brilliantly visually, he almost feels he has an advantage against others.

Like Erik, he’s a gifted horseman and learned to train his own brumby so well, he can stand on her back, crack two whips and she doesn’t move.

Of course I’ve been criticised for the way I’ve raised my boys.

People believe if you’re unschooled, you’ll end up ‘unjobbed’, because in the real world you can’t choose what to work at, you have to do what the boss tells you.

But the real world also allows you to become an employer or self-employed.

Critics ask why I didn’t introduce more academic subjects to their learning, but I figured they may never need to use a foreign language or trigonometry, whereas they’d definitely need to be able to clean, cook, sew and shop; those skills they learned very early.

Unschooling wouldn’t work for every family.

A parent needs to like being with their children, to have an inquiring mind and to lead an interesting life themselves.

My sons have learned from my passions.

I’m sure all five of them would have ended up in remedial classes if they’d gone to school, which could have sapped their confidence and future success.

There are many books on how children learn, but I don’t believe anyone really knows.

What I do believe is that we can’t put 30 children with different interests and needs in the same classroom and expect them all to learn in the same way.

* As told to Beverley Hadgraft. Follow Beverley on Twitter @thebeveridge