Alberta Dad, Homeschooled Since Kindergarten, Inspires Parents to Teach Their Own Children
Alberta resident Simon Noster’s total seclusion from public schooling began with the not-so-private boredom of one girl in elementary school. She announced to her parents one day that she’d quit school and was going to drop out of third grade.
That girl was Noster’s big sister, TobyLauren.
It’s not that she was a poor student, Noster tells The Epoch Times, but she was an early-budding reader who was bored to tears with having to wait for her peers who weren’t at her level. So, Noster’s dad, Kenneth, not only pulled her out of school, convinced he could take charge of his child’s learning, but saw to it that her brother would never see kindergarten when his time came.
Nor did Noster see elementary school, or junior or senior high school.
“I was thrilled,” Noster said, adding that he’d felt lonely when TobyLauren first left him at home for the classroom, but then things changed. “It was a very positive experience to get to do school with my sister in that one-room schoolhouse-type environment.”
(Left) Simon Noster’s parents and siblings on their rural homestead in east central Alberta in 1994; (Right) Simon Noster hits the books at home as a child in 1992. Courtesy of Simon Noster
There were no gymnasium assemblies, no smoking in the boys’ locker room, no chasing girls at recess.
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The Noster kids hammered out their schoolwork in the mornings and afterward played music or helped out on the family’s farm in east central Alberta. Though secluded, Noster had no shortage of friends. Some attended public schools. “I never actually had a moment where I thought I was missing out on something,” he said.
“They’re having to hop on a bus and ride for an hour in Alberta, so they weren’t getting home till 4:30 when it’s dark in wintertime,” he said. In the tiny town of Dewent, you drove tens of kilometres to get anywhere.
The rock upon which Noster’s father built his homeschool was classical. They engaged in the greats—Homer, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis—and Socratic dialogue instead of dictation. The goal was to spark love of learning and foster young minds to be critical thinkers rather than factory workers. And after several years, this homeschool expanded beyond the Nosters to include students in the area.
Except for his sister TobyLauren, who reached third grade and then was homeschooled thereafter, all of Simon Noster’s other siblings and Noster himself never attended public school but were educated in their rural home in east central Alberta. Courtesy of Simon Noster
Noster’s seclusion from public schooling wasn’t permanent…
