Brett (00:01)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I am Brett Campbell, CEO and Chairman of Euka Future Learning and I’m joined by the wonderful Ellen Brown, our founder and also Head of Education here at Euka. How are you doing, Ellen? How are you doing?
Ellen (00:16)
Yes, very well, very eager to get into it today.
Brett (00:21)
Excellent. So to lay some context, we wanted to follow up our previous episode with this specific episode. And if you haven’t listened to the previous one, make sure you go and do that. You don’t have to listen to that one first to get benefit from this. So continue on right now. And then go back and listen to the previous episode where we talked about reasons why families are homeschooling.
And as we do here at Euka, it’s very important that we understand and we know why our families come in homeschooling, where are they coming from, and as much information as we can sort of gather to really set the tone and set the scene for what homeschooling really is and what’s required and what we need to provide for our families. And so we had that conversation. Every time a student comes in, we obviously get that data and we shared that data.
with a couple of, let’s call it mainstream news publications. And last week we went on bit of a media blitz and you were on the Today Show. was on channel nine, Brisbane. We’re featured in the Courier mail a couple of times actually on the front page. There’s a WA Today and also in the Daily Telegraph. So the conversation around homeschooling is rising up. what I will say is the…
The piece I did last week as it related to bullying specifically, this was what the piece I went on for was related to bullying. Generally when I post about homeschooling and other features that we have in all the press, I get a lot of private messages from parents, but this one specifically, I got a lot of private messages from parents talking about bullying and how their child is being bullied and just how it’s so different to what it used to be when they were at school.
And it’s really hard for them to grasp and understand. And whilst we’re not gonna dig into the topic of bullying, in this episode, we did touch upon that in the previous one. So you can go and get that fixed from there. But today I wanted to focus on the third, let’s say the third biggest reason as to why families are turning to homeschooling. And that is the concept of philosophy of education and parents who are looking for a better approach to schooling. Now there’s lots of fits within that.
and I wanted to be able to just focus this episode, specifically on that topic because there’s lots of things happening in society. The world’s in a very interesting place. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t take much to look at what’s happening outside of Australia, even, you know, especially in America right now, every time there’s an election year in America, the world seems to turn upside down and lots of crazy things start occurring. But what it really is, is just a pressure cooker of everything that has happened pre that.
turning into an expose, let’s call it. And the topic around philosophy of education is, in Australia here, there’s been a number of pieces in the press, in the mainstream press over the past couple of months that have really started raising alarm bells for families. One specifically that caught my attention was a mother, she didn’t actually disclose the school. So the school has been kept under wraps right now. But
what essentially occurred was she found out that her children who would go to school before they do assembly, they had to put their hand on the ground and repeat that always was, always will be Aboriginal land. So now that’s not necessarily on the philosophy of education itself, but it’s encompassing as a child walks through the school gates, they are in the hands of
you know, teachers in the schooling environment. And as you I don’t know about you, but for me, I learned most of my education, I think in the school playground, to be fair, and, you know, being a little bit joking there. But you know, you learn more about life sort of in that environment, so to speak. But that was like quite alarming. And what that did was it shocked a lot of a lot of parents as well. Just that one in particular. I know you’ve got an example that you share as well, which is
for me as a parent of a young child is absolutely horrific and we’ll get into that one in a minute. But the question I have, and this has got nothing to do with, we not respecting ancestors who own the land or who had the land first and all of these situations. My question, because that’s a total different debate within itself. This is about, should we be forcing our children and exposing our children to this at that very early age? And the question then I have that follows up with that is like, where does it stop? Like what…
gets preference over other things and is it the newest phase that’s occurring or is it the what’s happening in the media that’s the loudest right now gets talked about or implemented? It’s a very, for a lot of parents, a very scary situation. And I’m sharing that purely from, you know, a lot of the DMs that I have been receiving as well from parents who don’t want to speak about it publicly because, you know, scared of being ridiculed for their thoughts and feelings, which I think is…
the biggest problem about all of this. And I know you’ve got, again, a pretty strong opinion around this as it relates to philosophy education, but it’s, we’re in a situation where, you know, parents are at crossroads of not really knowing what to do. Cause for decades we’ve trusted the schooling system and we trust that, our children will go to school, they’ll be safe. They will get a good, fair education. Obviously, you know,
The children have to take responsibility for themselves as well in lots of elements. It’s not all on the teachers or the school or the principal per se. So there’s lots in there to unpack. So I’d love to get your initial synopsis of this concept and why you think that, you know, it is our third largest with close to 18 % of families choosing, like it’s quite a high number, 18 % of families choosing homeschooling or to take their child out of the schooling system due to the philosophy of education.
What are you gonna say about that,
Ellen Brown (06:19)
look I’d say that that number is going to continue I think that’s probably our fastest growing group a few things have happened so you know
Brett (06:20)
You
Ellen (06:28)
education has changed. So when we, when I went to school many, many, many, many years ago, the school was really basically teaching, you know, English and maths, history, science, those kinds of general subjects. But over the years, what we are seeing is like you’ve said, mainstream media as have gotten on board, the government’s listening to lots of different people, and then slowly things get put into the curriculum. Teachers themselves are overwhelmed by the amount of things that
are needing to be put into the curriculum besides those academic subjects that used to be part of it. think the biggest thing is that all of a sudden part of our PDHPE health, physical education, part of that area, talking about subjects that used to be left to parents to share with their children. So, you know, back in the day, you know, the most controversial thing that was shared at school was sex education. And even then you’d need a letter from the parent to say,
Yes, we’re okay for our child to be part of that. Now discussions on relationships and gender and things that are really controversial are actually being discussed in the classroom. Now, when I was learning to be a teacher long ago, one of the things that we were taught about was the hidden curriculum, which sounds really covert, but it’s actually the fact that we’re all human beings. So we all come at things with our own
you know, our own background and our own way of seeing things. And even when you try really hard and at uni we were being taught to try really hard to make sure that we were aware of the fact that we have biases and when we’re teaching things to remember those biases and try to eliminate them. Now, you know, that’s really nearly impossible because we’re human beings, but now we’ve got, now that we’re heaping some of these really important society issues into the classroom,
we as parents have to trust that the teacher that you’ve got at the front of the room has the same belief system that you do. And that’s really, really tricky because that’s often not the case. that’s where parents, especially since COVID, like during COVID, they started to get a bit of an ear into, what’s my child learning? And, you know, am I happy with that? Am I comfortable with that? Or the kids come home from school, like you said, Brett, you know, in the day.
you learn a lot of things in the playground and you’d come home if you had one of those relationships where you could talk you’d come home and go guess what I heard today and your parents are going actually that’s not how we that’s not right or that’s not what we believe or and you were left to do that I suppose that’s people are moving to home school because they want that kind of opportunity to share with their kids.
Brett (09:08)
Hmm. Yeah. And you hit the nail on the head in relation to, was a core curriculum. There was a core set of subjects that were taught and outside of that very rarely, like I couldn’t. again, maybe it was because my naivety as a child or even, even as a teenager is I couldn’t even go and tell you what my, what my teachers political beliefs were, or even the life beliefs in many cases, to be fair, like
And again, it may be due to my lack of self -awareness at that time period. However, you see it now where we are now living due to once again, social media. sound like I continually bash on social media, which I sort of do in some, some cases, cause it does deserve a bit of an air full in many ways. But what it’s done is it’s almost created divides in communities and in friendships and even families and
and so forth, especially in school with relation to, you know, you use COVID as an example. There wasn’t, it was black and white where either you’re a vaccine denier or you’re all on the vaccine side. And again, that’s a total different subject that we can get into. Then there’s the other side where it’s like, you either pro this or pro that? And you no longer can make decisions based off a singular, well, I don’t believe this, but I do believe that. So I, no, this
this party or this community believes in all of these things or nothing. And it’s very hard to try and, and as we’re trying to expose children to these things in an early age, which is, me rephrase that, we’re not trying to expose, but adults and teachers who are trying to expose things to students at what I would fundamentally disagree with at a too early of an age for their brain to even capitulate it, to understand the depth of what’s really going on.
it’s extremely alarming, right? Something that I, and I’ll share this stat with you. I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you, but I was doing some research last week. and again, I went down some certain rabbit holes as it relates to this type of topic. And it’s not just a. Apparent philosophy of education means, we don’t like that you’re teaching science this way, or we don’t like that you’re teaching this specific subject. It’s, it’s the totality of its effects. Here’s, here’s, here’s some, a piece of data that I think.
shock you. And this is as it relates to gender dysphoria. Now, gender dysphoria, I’ll do a disclaimer. This is not my opinion on is gender dysphoria good, bad, should it happen, shouldn’t it happen, et cetera. I’m holding judgment on any of that. I’m sharing statistics and we can make our own assumptions as we choose fit. I also want to preface this entire conversation with that we
And I speak for myself here and I know Alan is on the same page here. And we speak from a UKA perspective is we believe everyone should be entitled to live the life in the way which they want to live it. And that is entirely your choice. Okay. That is what this is about. This isn’t about trying to throw our opinions onto someone and you have to do this or you’re crazy or you’re out of this world, et cetera. That is not how we look at this world. We look at this world through the lens of, you know, we believe that as an adult, and this is where the
This is where the line sort of starts to get crossed because it’s like, whilst we are, and whilst I am personally saying there’s certain things that I’m shocked at, and why it’s being taught and why it’s being focused on for children. That’s because I don’t believe children, even up until the age of 21, their brain hasn’t developed properly yet to make those real big life decisions, right? So I’ll frame that by saying as adults, you should be able to make whatever decision you want.
based off how you want to live your life. Okay, I totally get that. But the statistics here is it relates to gender dysphoria. And as you know, we’ve shared statistics before on the rises of anxiety and depression and childhood suicide attempts and hospitalizations, cetera. And the data we had there was from 2010 to 20. This data is from 2017. This is from Reuters. So this is United States data. They’re generally far more…
you know, open and sharing these specific data points as well. And this is diagnosis of youths with gender dysphoria. children age six to 17 in 2017, there were 15 ,172 reported, okay. Diagnoses of gender dysphoria. 2018, there was 18 ,000. 2019, there was 21 ,000. In 2020,
there was 24 ,847. Okay, so natural, there’s growth, right? It was sort of moving. And then we jumped from 2020 to 2021. And we went from 24 ,847 to 2021 being 42 ,167. It’s almost 100 % increase in that one year. Now, I don’t know about you, but…
I can’t believe that there was a plane that flew over the world and sprinkled this thing on and it’s made everyone there’s something in the water that has made this occur. Right. A lot of this at that childhood age from six to 17, it’s exposure to information that is out there on the internet. And whether this is, and again, I’m not saying this is pure, this is a predicate on what is taught in school. Holy, I must frame that.
But you look at things like that and you look at the statistic, you go, how can that be? Like it’s an almost 100 % increase just in that area. And that’s not looking at all the other situations that occur. So when we look at this philosophy of education and removing someone from that system or that environment we’ll call it is…
It’s the protection of lots of other things. Cause I could have, I would have to imagine again, I don’t know this to be true, but if I’m just looking at the data that is there, and it doesn’t take long to go, well, COVID was through 2020 to 21. So kids are online a lot more as well. And the rise of Tik Tok and you don’t need to be a rocket science to go on Tik Tok and realize what’s being posted on there and what’s being. So, so it’s this exposure to so many.
different elements that can then get amplified. And there’s lots of teachers that have been on TikTok per se. And again, I don’t want this to try and like, I don’t want this to sound like I’m having a go at all teachers here, because it’s certainly not that. There’s amazing teachers. And I fundamentally still believe in the schooling system to a degree. I absolutely do. I certainly do. But there are an increasingly alarming level of teachers who are starting to share.
their philosophies on life outside of teaching English and maths and science and physics and the subjects that we listed. And as a kid, you’re very susceptible to what your teacher says because you believe you. thought my teacher knew everything. I thought doctors knew everything until I started to study medicine and looked at, actually, my doctor probably doesn’t know as much as I thought he did. Right. And that’s, again, the naivety as a child and as a young person growing up is
you believe and you rely on what is, and it’s not just what’s being taught, it’s how it’s being taught as well. Right. But I want to just like, that’s one example of some, of some data that is very alarming as it relates to, because there is a direct link back to teachers. And one, one particular case that sort of got me really, like, I was just baffled by it. was like, this can’t be right. This has to be a parody where a teacher literally
In class, they had a kitty litter box at the front of the class. And they had that for children who wanted to identify as a cat and they can go and sit in that kitty litter box like that. That was one example of we could bring up dozens of these that are that were occurring. This isn’t an America. This isn’t an Australian school, but it’s very alarming. Right. It’s no longer that, Hey, here’s, you know, I used to throw shade on my,
my university teacher, because I went to university and I quickly found out that our university teacher, all he did was read the entire slides that were presented in the room. And then we realized that the slides are actually on the online portal, so we didn’t have to go to class, right? And I was like, wow, that’s pretty poor way of teaching. But in the same token, I look at it I go, not once did he share his view on…
politics or on how you should live your life personally as a human. I think what has happened is, I’ll speak for myself here, is I feel that, and this is more of a props to teach, I feel that we put too much emphasis on what teachers should be doing for our children. And it’s not a teacher’s job to teach your child the ways of life and…
how to live every element of your life, right? They’re there to teach the curriculum and help them work through the curriculum. And then that’s basically where their job should technically stop. Now, in saying that, there’s teachers who can be absolutely transformable in your life. And I had a couple of those that were very transforming to me that I didn’t really learn much about the subject, but they took me under their wing sort of thing and helped me guide as I was a mischievous young boy. But I wanna ask you, Alan, like,
Again, you’ve been in the schooling system at the forefront of it for a number of years. What are you most alarmed about when it comes to this concept of philosophy of education?
Ellen (19:19)
What I’m alarmed about is some of the things that are being brought into the curriculum itself. So it’s not even whether the teacher has the same worldview as you do or the same context as you would put something in. It’s actually curriculum changes. So there are topics that I as a parent would prefer to be able to share with my child at a time that I feel my child is ready to take that information on. know, I think
I think most people who are coming to homeschooling for the philosophy of education, it’s this opportunity to actually allow kids to be kids for longer, not having to throw ideas about consent into the curriculum for a young child. See, when you’re homeschooling, and actually I’ve got something that we’d mentioned before about the Australian curriculum, how important it is to be able to cover the Australian curriculum. The proviso to that is you as a homeschooling parent have choice over
Brett (19:55)
Yeah.
Ellen (20:15)
what you know the amount or the descriptors that are in the curriculum you may decide that this one’s actually not right for my child and when you’re homeschooling you’re allowed to do that. So that’s a big change because there’s certain things that are coming into I know New South Wales curriculum next year that when parents have a look at that curriculum they may feel quite uncomfortable about some of the things that are going to be brought into that curriculum and as a homeschooling
Brett (20:40)
Can you share a couple of those, Alan? I think that’s really important to give more context.
Ellen (20:42)
Well, look, I wish I had a lot more in my mind, but I can tell you that consent was something that comes into foundation. And I was really surprised to hear because I don’t think, you know, kids would even understand what consent means. And I haven’t looked at the concept of the context of what that’s being taught in. But it’s part of this, you know, bringing in some of these things that would normally be things that you teach as a parent to your child at a time that your child
would like that to be taught. So it’s not about censorship. So I don’t want people to think, know, homeschoolers, they’re off there and they’re not teaching about politics or they’re not teaching about gender or they’re not teaching about relationships or any of those things. They absolutely are. But at a time that they know their child’s ready and in a way that provides constipation, you know, it’s a privilege as a parent to share those life changing
types of learnings with your child and so to hand that over to the government basically because the teachers are actually following along with the curriculum there’s probably I would say there’s a lot of teachers who are uncomfortable about some of the topics that they have to teach at school that were never taught when they went to school.
Brett (21:56)
Yeah, yeah, it is. And I wholeheartedly agree. And it’s, it’s turning ever so greatly into a pressure cooker where, I hope it doesn’t get to this. really hope it doesn’t for the kids sake, right? is I don’t want it to get to a point where parents find out by
their kid coming home and going, I this at school. Cause as we talked about a lot of parents that I’ve, that I’ve spoken to who went through the COVID classroom teaching at home and they’re listening to zooms and what they’re being taught. They’re like, my God, I didn’t know that. Like it really is. This is a, this is a call to arms for parents. And if you are not a homeschooling parent and your child’s at school, and I know there’s lots of people who listen to this who, who aren’t homeschooling parents as well is it is
your duty and responsibility to actually ask and find out, Hey, what are we being taught here? Where, where are, what is happening in sex ed? How are you actually teaching that? Right? Like you don’t have to look farther to go online and Google, you know, books that were banned in Florida, related to sexual education. Right. You’ve literally it’s, it’s for some families, they don’t want their children to be exposed to that. And that should be their right. and
The responsibility though, as always, it really does come back to us as parents, just to now be aware of that and question that. But the beauty is, if you are fed up with that schooling system and it’s not working for you and you want to have a little bit more or you want to have a lot more involvement potentially, the option’s yours, of course. We are, and I’m very proud that we’re able to offer that solution because…
children need to go somewhere. had one lady in my DMs the other night and she was literally upset. And she actually said that she got new stuff to her school, wouldn’t let her homeschool and she had to stay at school. The child had to stay at school. I was like, and we talked about this a couple of podcasts ago about look, every parent has the right to be on homeschool their child. And if you are stuck and you’re not getting through, you know, reach out to us and we can help you step through what that sort of looks like. Cause it is a
It is a hard decision in many cases for families and, you know, for lots of homeschooling families, it wasn’t on their radar to start homeschooling. It’s sort of something that’s now been, yeah, unfortunately, thrusted upon the family, but it’s also becoming far more mainstream. And you just need to look at the growth numbers here in Queensland, of course. And we talked about that WA today growth in WA, and so forth and, know, all around the country, it’s, it’s not going anywhere, but
You know, it’s a, it’s certainly something that, you know, I’ll certainly keep speaking up about and, and, you know, just bringing to the, to the surface and, helping parents know that, Hey, you’re not alone on this, you know, and you absolutely do have a right to speak up for your truth and, and ask questions. That’s, that’s more important. It’s the ability to ask questions to seek to find out. and then from that, you can make your logical decision on what you believe is going to be best for your family. That’s the, that’s the main thing.
Ellen, anything else to wrap up on, this particular topic and any, any extra words of advice for, for any parents out there who are, who are in that, that boat right now.
Ellen(25:23)
Thanks.
Yeah, I think it’s that feeling that you know you can be empowered that you can take back those opportunities as a parent to be able to shape your child and and give your child the type of environment that you want them to have. so you know, seeing that as an exciting opportunity and you know once you get over the fact that you’re doing it because there’s things that you don’t like about this, start looking at the opportunity that you have to even to shape the curriculum that you’re sharing with your child and the
that you’re doing. yeah, that’s basically one of the greatest joys of homeschooling. We’re certainly seeing a lot of families who want to want to take that kind of opportunity.
Brett (26:05)
Yeah. Excellent. Well, we’ll wrap that one up there, Alan. think we, we, we got what we needed to out there into the ether. And, and if you are a parent listening to this and, and you got value from this episode and you want to share it with friends, please do so share this episode. yeah, to, someone that you think might get value out of listening to this as well. or joining on the conversation, leave us a comment on YouTube. and of course, make sure you give us a five -star review if you’re getting value from these things. and, Alan.
Until the next one, I will talk to you very soon. Thank you very much.
Ellen (26:41)
Thank you.
