"musicofhtenight I believe it is completely inappropriate for an 11 year old, or a 13 year old to take GCSEs. Regardless of their ability.You sound exactly like the HE parents I had to deal with. Frantically flaunting the fact their 11/12/13 year old child had got a couple of GCSEs so early, as proof that being HE was a success. Any child that's bright can be sufficiently coached & hothoused to pass a GCSE at 12 or 13. Let's face it, they're not exactly hard. My husband was breezing through O Level Maths papers for fun before he left junior school. My DD2 is going to be the same, and although she's only 6 has just read The Hobbit. I'm sure if I took her out of school and HE her she could pass a stack of GCSEs before she was 13. But for what purpose exactly?"
So, I can't win. Parents are either accused of not educating their HE children at all or of hothousing them? Where did you read they were hothoused? I wasn't flaunting it to boast - but people were saying that home educated children were badly educated and came out of it with no skills.
I've already said the GCSEs were self taught, from their own interests. They did them because they enjoyed it nad we had loads of fun along the way. If you have an idea of pushing a child through hours and hours of study, you couldn't be further from the truth. And the purpose? Well, I've taught many 16 year olds who are so pressured because they have to study for 10 GCSEs. My DDs will have to take no more than 2 in that final year.
"And, the fact you yourself have been HE is not surprising at all. HE is a self fulfilling prophecy. Children struggle at school because they haven't developed the appropriate social skills...so there parents decide to HE them...in time the child has children of their own, but isn't able to model good social skills to their child, so their child struggles at school...and so it goes on."
This is one of the most hurtful and insulting things I have ever read. Where did I say I was HE'd because of poor social skills, or because of problems at school? I was HEd for a while because of an awful, awful family tradgedy and because the school thought that time out for a year was the best way of helping us. I already said I went on to secondary school and loved it. From where did you deduce I had poor social skills?
And from where did you deduce my DDs had or have poor social skills? DD1 came out of school because she thought DD2 was having an amazing time - it was a positive choice, not a negative one. She still sees all the friends she had in school, and loads of new ones beside. DD2 came out of school because at the age of 8 they put her into a class of 11 year olds to try and come with her academically - and wouldn't recind on it, despite hours of talks. She is so social I get weeks I hardly see her for sleepovers and trips out with friends.
Posts like this make me wonder why I ever go on mumsnet. It is so cruel sometimes. You make huge assumptions without knowing anything about the situation.
I've never said I don't agree with school, or don't think school is a great place for loads of kids. I'm a schoolteacher, for goodness sake. I'm just trying to balance out the narrow views on here.
What Riven and Pisces say both make huge sense. It shouldn't be school is awful, home ed is great, I never said that. But to imply that home ed is some self fulfilling prophecy of social failure is deeply insulting, especially to someone like me who had almost a year out of school because of going though the most awful time imaginable, and nothing to do with social skills or problems at school at all.