Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Senator Warfield touched a little bit on the point of what education is going on outside school. I have a frustration. I am a former chair of the Home Education Network and I home educated my kids for much of their lives. I have a different perspective on education and I am a proponent of unschooling. We tend to segregate. People are experts in education within a system that exists but an awful lot of the education, education that we also receive as adults, is happening outside of the classroom. There is a fear attached to that because people are getting their information from sources that are uncontrolled. It is also important that we look at our place as a society and a State in how we inform the education and learning environments outside of school.

Maybe this is too broad a question, but do they have anything that they could add to these recommendations that would be about education outside of school and how that could support young people and support us as adults in terms of getting to that same place around culture, consent and how we respect each other? I suppose that is my main question. It is broad but I wanted it to be on the record of any recommendations that we look at education outside of the school system as well.