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Passionate About Unschooling in New Jersey
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 “This picture of John Holt and I was taken in the late ‘70s I believe, at the Good Life Get Together. This was an annual gathering for folks into self sufficiency and they had workshops on wind power, growing and storing your own food, building your own dwelling, etc. Even for this rugged bunch, John’s workshop on homeschooling was quite a new and startling idea. First homeschool workshop I ever remember hearing about.” ~Nancy Plent |
Nancy Plent founded The Unschoolers Network 30 years ago as an inclusive homeschooling support group based in Farmingdale, New Jersey. This energetic and dedicated homeschooling pioneer was interviewed about how she advocated for homeschooling freedoms and guided a new generation of homeschooling families along the path to life learning. She passed away on November 24, 2011.
I’ve known for some time that I would homeschool my children, but only admitted it to myself about three years ago, and only dared confess my “crazy notion” to others within the past two years. My introduction to homeschooling was through La Leche League, and I admired the families around me who learned together. For me, their parenting philosophy could be summed up in three words – these parents were loving, kind and respectful in their interactions with their children.
However, I was a slow and cautious convert and went through a number of stages. Initially I thought that it was wacky and impractical; then I thought that maybe it was a good idea for others but not for me; and finally I had to accept that I was hooked! At that point, I felt a need to connect with other homeschoolers, for two main reasons. Firstly, I needed to find a new circle of friends for my two daughters as all their existing friends had started going to school. And secondly, on a more personal note, I was hoping to garner some moral support for myself as I embarked on this whole new phase of parenting.
I surfed the net, sent numerous emails and made countless telephone calls, looking for a local homeschool support group, but instead of finding my tribe, I felt increasingly frustrated and isolated. In fact, I became angry because many of the groups I contacted were disingenuous and less than honest in admitting that they were Christian-based.
I didn’t really know, at the time, what I was looking for in terms of a homeschool group – I just knew that I didn’t want a group dominated by a version of Christianity far removed from my relatively liberal Irish Catholic upbringing. I wanted to homeschool my children, not to shield them from the world, but to open the world up to them....
Pauline Mary Curley is an Irish unschooling mom, lucky enough to divide her time between the West of Ireland and New Jersey. In a previous life (pre-children) and in other countries, she worked as a structural engineer, trade union representative and adult literacy teacher. Though still new to homeschooling when this article was published in 2007, she is enjoying the fun, flexibility and challenges of unschooling her two daughters, Grace aged seven and Eleanor aged five. One of her dreams is to encourage American homeschool families to visit and explore Ireland.
