Adults who were home schooled talk to me please

[Nigglenaggle]

What did you like and dislike about it? If you later went back to school was that hard? Do you feel you would have done better or worse in life at school? Would you do the same for your children? Trying to decide what to do for ours

[morethanpotatoprints]

Niggle

Sorry can't help with this but bumping so it will be seen.
Maybe put in in education for more traffic.

[dyslexicdespot]

Bumping for you as I would love to find out as well.

[Vatta]

Caitlin Moran was homeschooled and has written about it, maybe try googling?

I was homeschooled for about a year when I was 8 (we moved several times that year and somehow enrolling In school never happened!). I don't think it held me back or anything, and wasn't any harder starting at the next school than any of the other times we moved.

Having said that, it was a pretty short time period plus my mum is a teacher so we had fairly formal lessons at home, very structured like being in a classroom. I get the impression a lot of home ed-ers do things very differently to that.

[julienoshoes]

You could come over to FB HE groups you are more likely to get answers from adults who were formerly HE there.

[moobaloo]

Hello

Don't have a lot of time right now but will pop back later

I was home schooled from the age of 13. Didn't go back to school. Am now in my 20s.

I loved it. Absolutely loved it!

In brief - I would have done worse staying in school from a grades/confidence point of view

I have an excellent work ethic and strong faith in my abilities - both of which came about since leaving school.

I am planning on doing the same for my child (due in may!) and I think that home schooling from the start will be a fantastic experience for both of us, my partner is very supportive of this even. He went through the "normal" education system and didn't find it either bad or good, just "average".

I don't think I disliked anything about it! I did book based work when it was raining or dark, the rest of the time I was outside with my pony I did GCSEs and some GCSE equivalents which you can't do at school. I did activities I couldn't have fitted in around school. I did great coursework for GCSE out and about, researching, experimenting etc.

The best thing was learning more than I did at school in less time and being able to go outside and being free to research an interesting topic as much or as little as I wanted on my terms.

I'll come back later - hope to hear from some others too!

[Nigglenaggle]

I googled Caitlin Moran - she said she would have spent too much time worrying about her knickers at school lol. I will search more thoroughly later. I'm glad you both had positive experiences, I guess I'm worried that we'll go ahead and one day have the kids go 'you've ruined my life! Why didn't you send me to school!' Moo outdoor learning is one of the parts that really appeals to me, hopefully it will to them too.

[curlew]

I was home schooled, and I come from a family where it is not an unusual thing to do.

I would only home school if my child was unhappy at school.

Or I might consider it if my child asked me to and I had loads of money and lived somewhere where there was already a well established home schooling network with people l liked with broadly similar attitudes and values to me.

Oh, and I don't think Caitlin Moran was home schooled exactly. It was more an official name for persistent parent approved truanting, wasn't it?

[Saracen]

If you want to call autonomous education by that name, curlew, then yes, that is what her family did. It's what my family is doing too.

It seems to have been a success for the Moran family, educationally at least. I wish I could find the newspaper article to refresh my memory, but IIRC correctly something like six of the nine children in the family landed in well-respected professional careers and the other few also ended up not on the breadline (I think they were students or SAHPs or in manual work or something like that) - despite fears expressed on various threads here that autonomous education will produce uneducated shirkers. Not that I want to imply that being in a profession is the be-all and end-all, of course, but even if that is your yardstick, the Morans did well.

[Nigglenaggle]

It's happiness I'm primarily concerned with. Curlew it sounds like you would rather have gone to school? What didn't you like about it? Why wouldn't you have home ed as first choice for your child?

[Nigglenaggle]

As for Caitlin Moran, her school did sound pretty horrible. I hope we have better choices than that locally!

[BanjoPlayingTiger]

I wasn't home educated as a child, but have home educated my children. I decided to go down a more structured route for our home education as I spoke to a number of adults who had been home educated and the ones who described it most positively had been those who had been taught more formally at home. The ones who had an autonomous education seem to regret not being able to take exams at the same time as others which made adult life more difficult. Though they had great fun as children they didn't think it had done them any favours as adults.
I am not saying this is the case for all autonomously educated people, but it was the case for the people I chatted with.
My kids are now in school and seem to have settled in well and are enjoying life still. They say they miss the days when it was sunny, and we would skip schoolwork and go to the beach, or have a snow day etc but other than that they are settled in school.

[curlew]

"If you want to call autonomous education by that name, curlew, then yes, that is what her family did. It's what my family is doing too."

No, I don't- I know what autonomous education is! And unless I have got it very wrong, that isn't what was happening in the Moran household.

[Nigglenaggle]

How structured did you go Banjo? And what age did they go back to school? I'm already thinking secondary education would be a lot harder than primary... Our local authority site says universities don't discriminate against home edders as they consider the children self motivated learners... But helping them get good A-level grades in subjects you didn't take yourself would be hard I think.

[BanjoPlayingTiger]

We had textbooks and did lessons in the mornings, we concentrated on maths and english at first and other things were more talked about and experienced. As they got older we did more written work including history, RE, geography, etc. we did languages using rosetta stone computer software and by taking part in the junior language challenge.
They went back into school in year 9 and year 7 respectively.
With my eldest we did a distance learning course for English at secondary level as I knew I would be unable to take her through to GSCE level.
To be honest though the jump from year 6 to year 7 is less scary than just thinking straight away about secondary education.
If you want to chat about it feel free to send me a message with any questions.

[Spychic]

I was home educated until I was 12 and really disliked it. I was lonely and isolated and there was no homeschooling community, so my few friends went to school and I felt like a freak.

My mother was angry a lot, I don't remember having fun.

I longed to go to school but when I finally did, I didn't know how to fit in and was a social outcast.

Sorry! Don't think my experience is common though, I've heard fabulous stories from other home educated adults.

[Bibi2103]

I was homeschooled from the age of 13,spent the days on my own mostly because my mum had to return to work, luckily all my good friends lived near me and wernt at school.i had hated school from the word go and hardly ever went.i think if u have a good social life like i did away from school its great but otherwise would be lonely unless you get group home schooled.i dont regret it :)

[sedgieloo]

Hi I was home ed and also u went to school. I enjoyed both. My home ed was very formal. At one point I had a tutor 3 hours a day four mornings a wk. there is a rather special opportunity in home ed for the child to discover their talents and follow that and develop it in a way that can be much more difficult than in school. It's what I've seen in my friends who were HE also, all excelled in widely different areas. Incidentally all very structured in their HE. But the autonomy of bring able to follow dreams, develop ability at their own pace and in a way that suited their learning style. All of us educated in FE/HE institutions in due course. Baby is trying to grab my phone I will try and come back...

[AngelaDaviesHair]

1 Year HE.
It was harder (both my parents are in education, they didn't mess about), much more intensive, and stricter. But also more enjoyable than school. We were stretched, and did more varied things.

I missed the social side of school a bit. Going back was fine, except that it felt like idling along whereas we'd been racing at top speed before.

I think it was better for the parent/child relationship to go back. I wanted my parents just to be my parents and not also my teachers.

[morethanpotatoprints]

Angela

I hope you don't mind me asking.

Is there anything you think your parents could have done differently, so you could have had your parents as parents and not teachers?

I am concerned about this with dd. She does have time away from us, quite a lot actually and we do do things that aren't always educational, but I'm not sure if this is enough.
It seems a difficult task to separate parent from teacher in these circumstances.

[curlew]

I think you need to do loads of research in your area. Spend some time with the HE groups round where you live. Looks at them- and consider whether they are the sort of people you would actively enjoy spending a lot of time with, and where your child will find friends. Also find out what sports clubs there are - team sports are sometimes a problem for HE children. Imagine your child wants to try out hockey- or indeed any team sport except rugby, football or cricket. Is there a youth orchestra, or choir? Is there somewhere your kids can meet other kids to form a rock group?

In my experience, both my own long ago and my nephews and nieces and friends recently, the actual academic school bit of school is easy peasy. It's everything else where there are potential pitfalls, and where you need to do your research.

[AngelaDaviesHair]

No, I don't mind you asking at all.

Erm, no, not really in our particular circumstances. I suppose if it were practically possible, having some time with outside tutors would help dilute the intensity of it.

[morethanpotatoprints]

Thank you Angela that makes me feel a bit better, she does have a tutor for Italian and some music tutors. Its lovely hearing these stories and thank you for sharing.

curlew

I'm not suggesting this is the same for all authorities but dd was able to continue all her activities that were run by the county and was welcome to join any group, even those held on school grounds.
I think the only problem would have been if she wanted to join say the drama group at her old school as obviously she would be no longer on roll.
You are right though, these things need consideration. As they were so important to dd she would have refused H.ed if this hadn't been the case.

[moobaloo]

I never felt my parents were my teachers, however I was very independent of them as I was home schooled from 13 onwards, mostly by myself structuring my own work etc. and I went to them if I was stuck or wanted to discuss something.

I had distance learning courses with tutors you could email as opposed to actual visiting tutors and I found this really handy as they understood some subjects to a higher level than my parents. So kids doing GCSE/A levels from home could get that knowledgeable support this way or in the form of a visiting tutor, which I think would be more helpful when the parents are out of their depth at higher levels of subjects. Actually my mum did a lot of my GCSE maths with me and learned a lot herself - it was fun to work things out together, so even if you don't know all the answers you can still assist your child's learning.

Personally I prefer the ideals of parents and kids working, discovering and learning together rather than parent becoming "teacher". You can still have routine and structure without taking the teachers place.

[AngelaDaviesHair]

I think the problem was, my parents actually are teachers, so they switched into professional mode, and I just wanted them to be my mother and father.

[curlew]

I don't think I had any difficulty with the parent/teacher split- but I suppose I had never been to school, so I didn't know what a pupil/teacher relationship was like.