Why does home schooling appeal ?

[SeptemberFlowers]

I myself would be far to scared to do it with my dc's as I'd be needing to reach for the most weekends of having to teach them curricular that I was shit at at school.

Why does it appeal to so many people ? There are a few children in the next village (live in a rural location) who are HE but only because their mother doesn't trust other adults with her children. I know this an extreme case but the only one I know personally.

How would you know your child is learning all the correct syllabus for different subjects ?

ma- I'm probably in the 'education is a process of acquiring the basic skills (validated through qualifications) to enable you to undertake the journey of discovery throughout the rest of your life with a full set of 'entry tickets' to whatever you want to do' camp!

morethanpotatoprints

I honestly do understand that school =/= rosey all the time. As I said before, sometimes home education is the only option in individual circumstances, such as bullying

I just cannot stand the point of view that home education always works. It's as dishonest as the point of view of some LEA EWO, who think school always works

maparole

That is pretty much how it is for us.

It is allowing free thinking, not having to do certain subjects and topics and having the freedom to explore what you like when you like to whatever degree you want to.
I don't think its necessary to get a job that pays as much as possible. I think this path can make for unhappiness for those who aren't that way inclined.
I am from the camp of being good at what you enjoy and finding a job doing this. Whatever the subject, whatever the level of qualification is irrelevant if it makes you happy.

Jessie

I am glad you told us of your experience and I can't imagine ever doing this to my dd.
I for one have listened to what you have said, and I understand and believe there are some parents out there making the same mistakes as your mum made.
I think however we support our children's education be it school or at home we need to listen to them, to give them the option of deciding for themselves what they want to do, not forcing certain subjects or professions on to them.
We don't have any grammar schools in our town, but there are a couple in towns near us. I asked both ds when they were y5 if they wanted to do 11+ and try for grammar school, explained what a grammar school was. They laughed at me and asked why on earth I thought they would want to do it. None of their peers knew about the schools and nobody local ever went etc.
I gave them the choice, even though I needn't have bothered.

TamerB - I live in an educational black spot - a city in England - where less than half of young people going to the nonselective state schools will get 5 a*-c GCSEs. Most of the schools are around 30-40% getting just that standard, the only school over 50% is a selective academy. Honestly, I'm not sure how I could give my children less of a chance the schools around here already do, especially with them being at the bottom statistically to succeed, by socio-economic and other barriers - the system is practically designed to fail them at this point.

And that's ignoring the upcoming England/Wales national curriculum that is narrowing practically all humanities, especially literature and history, and how far behind we are is obtaining best practice in science subjects (made obvious by how many science-based jobs are on the UK's shortage list), because politicians use education as a ideological kicking ground for while ignoring how damaging their continuous changes and narrow representations are and ignore evidence-based education practices that are currently available and are ignored.

Commander - your blurb about bullying enrages me. You want to know what happened to a local child who tried to ignore his bullies? His gotten beaten up so badly that he required surgery - his testicles had been burst - and this was an 8 year old at one of the best primaries in the area who will now have lifelong repercussions because society thinks ignoring bullies is the answer and that kids just become socialized by being in a group.

My daughter was bullied at a local club, the adults there encouraged her isolation and the bullying because she wasn't a member of the local church, she spent a year playing nice and not reacting and hiding it, and still 6 months after being pulled out cries because she can't understand what she did wrong, because so many adults kept telling her ignore it, that the problem was her responsibility to improve by doing so. It's so hard to get her to understand that they were wrong, they were the problem, because those were the popular ones, the ones the leader liked, and everyone - even her support worker - tell her that she should just keep smiling and push through regardless. If she was 26 rather than 6, and the people around her were isolating her, hurting her, leaving her out of things purposefully, would anyone tell her just to smile, ignore, and push through or would they tell her to LTBs?

My son, at 3, had an adult at playgroup tell other children to isolate him and an autistic child because "they don't know the rules of the game" rather than bother including them, and I only found out because the teacher only knew his father and I'd gone in to a sit-in class to investigate why he hated it so much and had stopped talking. Would you keep a three year old in that environment and tell him to ignore ignore ignore enforced isolation for no reason other than he's new and can't remember the rules very well?

The fact that victim blaming and telling children to ignore the pain is the best we have - rather than say actively teaching emotional and social skills, making it the victim's problem rather than actively teaching how wrong it is. We spend so much trying to get people out of abusive situations, maybe if we tried harder when they were younger rather than expecting them to just get on with it and get it, there wouldn't be as many problems. With so many having been brought along, passively or actively by the adults in their lives, how can they actually ignore it?

I home educate because my local system for education sucks - both in results and in pastoral care (schools really shouldn't be known for their self-harm and suicide rates). I am a structured home educator who uses evidence based systems for subjects and ensure my children have both active academic emotional and social education and all the opportunities I can to ensure against situations like BigJessie had to endure. I personally don't see it as "hard" because most of the time I enjoy it. But I just can not comprehend anyone who would blame a child for being hurt by bullying and making it their responsibility to make better by ignoring it - to ignore their feelings, that would involve actively ignoring all the evidence of harm that these things cause. I'm not going tell my children to ignore their feelings and play nice in system that doesn't care or give them the message that things get better if they're just ignored and smile, because that's unrealistic anywhere and that's putting the system before the people and I cannot get that.

maparole I actually regard childhood education as a chance to be receive a broad base of education, and to find out where one's niche could be, before the demands of adult life interfere. The state system doesn't always meet my ideals, but that is a separate issue.

For example, I probably have absolutely no potential to be a concert pianist, whatever my educational opportunities had been, but if I had, I would have needed music lessons as a child. You can't start learning the piano in an hourly lesson each week at 30, around a full time job and family, and have a significant chance of becoming good enough to sell tickets and CDs.

I love learning things. If my personality was simplified to that of a Sims 2 little person, I would have always had knowledge aspiration. I love knowing how things work, from rabbit anatomy to Pitman's shorthand, to Latin. I would have loved to learn some of this younger.

I would also like job satisfaction and security, and not to have ever had to live on £10 a week, and to be able to buy books from Waterstones every week to be able to afford music lessons for my children now and live in a flat that isn't mouldy. Education doesn't guarantee you those things in the way that being born the child of a baronet does, but it does help.

You may consider that a shallow view of education. I don't.

The secondary schools in our area are similar to the above but a bit better.
The pastoral care in the primary where dd went was second to none.
As has been stated many times on many threads you choose the best education for your children. This might not be the best education for other peoples children.
I can't understand why some people insist on putting down the choices other people make, not only this but suggesting that in making such a choice you are harming your child, it is very narrow minded and adds nothing to the discussion at all.

Jessie I hope it works out for you, please let us know what you decide to do. So sorry for how it turned out for you.

I am by no means against HE. I can think of several scenarios where I would do it.

My take is similar to teacherwith2kids:

However, I am definitely of the camp that says HE works for some children, some of the time, not all children, and not all of the time. When it fails, it can fail badly - and the fact that a proportion of children are failed by schools is a completely separate point.

I don't think it an easy option and I really can't imagine why 2 parents with an elementary education themselves (my parents in law) should prefer their son to educate himself in science subjects, when they were unable to help or pay for tutors, when he had an excellent school place with top teachers and all the equipment. I wouldn't even tell him that he could have got where his is today by 'writing a paper as an uneducated teenager' or 'inventing something'-he would think me utterly mad!

I don't think that parents should be led to believe that it is an easy option. The general trend is that your child can suit themselves, it really doesn't matter if they don't do much because when they decide they can educate themselves to university standard at the normal time. It is possible. I actually know a Cambridge graduate who did nothing, couldn't read until he was about 12yrs, only stirred himself aged 15yrs and then got the Cambridge place but he is exceptional -most children are average and they simply haven't the ability to do it. Parents need to be realistic-computer games all day is not 'an education', it is something you do in your spare time-unless you make a career in it, and from personal experience I can tell you that it isn't easy to do that!

On here you will never get a HE to admit that they come across poor ones. They exist.

Commander6 An 11 year old boy at my very well regarded, high in the league tables school threw himself off a bridge onto the A52 due to bullying. That was the year after I left. I myself cried every single night whilst there (the worst 2.5 years of my life) because I was bullied for being clever and posh. School said to ignore the bullies - they were just jealous. Ignoring didn't help. How exactly do you ignore bullying? How exactly do you not react to pain, either physical or emotional? How do you not cry, thus giving them the satisfaction?

My younger brother would be considered a siuccess for the school and the state education system. He passed his GCSEs (though without any real understanding of the subjects, but he had been taught how to pass exams exceptionally well) and is currently earning a fortune in advertising. What you don't see is the pain he went through too. He learnt to be the class clown, to lie about the amount of work he did, to sleep with girls he didn't like because his peers laughed at virgins (I don't think that was great for the girls, either), to hide his emotions. He is an emotional wreck, convinced he has to fit in to be accepted.

DH got bullied in other schools due to being Jewish and having a moderately funny surname, along with being clever and shy.

My mum got caned as a small child because she didn't understand idioms and took everything literally, and the teacher was short tempered (a known "caner"). She pulled her socks up and the teacher screamed that she was being naughty. Granted caning no longer happens, but the attitudes do still exist.

My daughter will not go through what any of us went through. I will NOT have her afraid to learn, to be herself. I will teach her manners and social lying ("Your new hairdo is lovely" etc) but not hiding herself to be accepted.

She will start at school, but if things go wrong I will HE her, and know that is better than what any of her family endured. And she can do GCSEs at college at 14. The law allows it now.

Oh, I've come across them TamerB. I avoid most HE groups for that reason, our area's group core of them tends to be very granola, never tell the kids off, child led to the point of danger, and have no plans ahead. Discuss any type of system, even arts, and they go on about doing it naturally while their child is chucking toys at a barely walking toddler (real experience that made me run away from HE groups). They drive away a lot of people and ruin a lot of what could be quite good connections to local resources (as has been mentioned in this thread, many places don't like them). Oddly, I've found the higher socio-economic originally, the more likely to be like that (those more fighting against the private overkill system by trying to be the opposite) whereas those of us closer to the bottom tend to be as freaked out by them as anyone else. May be why we're a bit defensive, trying to prove we're not all like that.

However, in my area, I'm not sure even those will get worse results and experiences and I don't think any kind of register would do them any good as they're the type to fight things the most - more public information on how to report those missing education even in the name home education or anything else would do far more good I think (because that would give LA's actual grounds to do anything) just as they is information for reporting abuse and neglect. Also, making GCSEs more accessible for home educated young people (right now they're quite difficult and often costly to get - the reason so many rely on FE for GCSEs and A levels and are behind is because we often get told that's the only way to do so without spending ridiculous amounts or travelling hundreds of miles).

TheSpork and Viking. I am sorry for your exoeriences.

I can only go by my and other people around me's experiences.
I was told to ignore what a bully was trying to do if they did it. It worked for me and countless others that I know.

But if it did ever carry on, to someone else, then yes absolutely teachers or someone should be told. And absolutely, no way, should a school ignore it.

I think I was taught to be strong emotionally from a very early age. I was totally able to ignore a bully from 5. If I remember correctly, my parents sent me to school as late as they could get away with back then[mum being a softie], so I didnt go to school until I had turned 5.

I suppose, thinking about it, if a child has not been given such skills, then they may run into problems.

maparole[your name sounds like you are not going to prison!]. "childhood education as a journey of discovery". I can see where you are coming from for that, but I think holidays and heck, even school, helps with that!
I remember being bored witless even in summer holidays. More than enough time for extra discovery. I ran out of discovery.
As did some of my children.

So you think it is down to the victims parents not giving them the ability to ignore it? Or is it just faintly possible that you didn't experience particularly determined bullies? Again though, I would ask how you ignore physical pain.

But I don't remember ever running out of things to do in the holidays, possibly because I loved the library! And there were always things to make in the house, baking (mum had loads of old recipe books and we tried some of Mrs Beeton), dolls houses and robots to make out of shoe boxes, experiments with pickled beetroot and soluble aspirin (outside!), poking things with sticks in the garden (I still remember the post-mitten summer where we dissected everything dead we found in the garden)..... Loads of stuff!

They may not have been particularly determined. Hard to evaluate if you are a 5 year old. Even a 10 year old.

And if they are particularly determined, school is not doing its job properly if they are in the school and able to repeatedly do that.

Then it needs to be reported.
And acted on by the school.
And a fuss made if things are not done.
I would have gone all the way if the school didnt act.Taken it to other parents. Kicked up a fuss in the playground. And the Governors. And the LEA.Taken it to the media etc.

Part of the reason I became a school Governor for several years was to keep an eye on things for mine and other kids' benefit.

You live in a very black and white world commander.

Emotionally strong aged 5? Victims won't be bullied if given the right skills by their parents?

Utter clap trap.

I let my son Home Educate from 12-16. And by 'let him' I mean he was in charge of what he learnt. As soon as he was in control his reading and writing improved, he taught himself a language and earned qualifications in two specialist subjects. If he'd stayed at school he probably would have left with very mediocre exam passes, if he even passed. As it is, he has capitalized on his strengths and is currently doing exactly what he hoped to be doing. Taking him out of school was the best thing I ever did for him.

Commander you sound utterly ignorant about bullying.

Ds2 was bullied at primary school after a new boys joined the class. Ds2 is a bit dramatic and cares too much about others opinions (IMO) but he's emotionally strong. He does things much older children and adults wouldn't do. The main reason I think he was bullied by this boy was because he was much smaller than him (ds2 is the smallest boy in his class - he came up to the shoulders of the boy bullying him). At the time he was being bullied I saw him stand up to a seriously scary boy - I asked him why he couldn't do that with the bully (who wasn't that scary) and he said the scary boy was the same size as him so he wasn't worried. His primary school took a very softly softly approach and looked a lot at ds2's reactions - I had to point out to them that an adult might find a person twice their size calling them a cunt intimidating

Anyway at secondary he's had one nasty incident - where he was surrounded by an older boy from his old primary and a group of said boys friends, had his food taken off him and crumbled in front of him onto the floor. I reported it to the school at 9pm, had a reply ten minutes later saying it would be dealt with, by registration the next morning the older boy had been sent to see head of house and reprimanded, ds2 was told to say immediately if anything happened again and I was emailed by lunchtime to say what had happened and asked to encourage ds2 to speak out if anything happened again.

What a difference in approach, no problems since. The softly softly victim blaming that goes on in some schools is not helpful. Ds2 went from loving school to frequent tears, tummy aches & refusing to go in. He was miserable - for the sake of one boy. They did eventually get on (ie the bigger boy stopped swearing at ds2 & pushing himself into him) but it went on for far too long. Over a year. I was close to taking him out tbh. Adults often miss how physically intimidating it can be in school (something ds2's secondary school does seem to recognise) and will tell small children to stand up to kids much physically larger than them. I wouldn't rush to take on someone 6 foot 6 - why would we expect our children to?

At primary the approach seemed to be 'what can we do to all get along nicely together' at his secondary it seems to be 'stop it this behaviour is unacceptable'. I know which approach I prefer. And I know which system ds2 feels safe in.

commander I've copied this from your previous post :
I remember being bored witless even in summer holidays. More than enough time for extra discovery. I ran out of discovery.
As did some of my children.
I would suggest its a good thing that you don't HE if you can't even find the imagination to fill a school holiday ,you are obviously way too dull .

I used to HE mine. I taught them all to read fluently by age five, and I'm very proud of that as an achievement. But... and this is a big but, because I know it only applies to a fraction of HEers... we should have been monitored. We were isolationists to a large degree, and the only children and people my children mixed with were other HEers who saw the world in the very narrow way we did.

We, as it happens, weren't complete idiots, but I never saw anyone from education the entire 10 years, and I now believe we were potentially abusive - and no one would have been any the wiser.

I believe HE suits some children beautifully, and don't believe HE should be forced to accomodate the national curriculum or anything, but I do believe a simple register would be a wise precaution.

Commander - bullying can be very complex and subtle, as adults know who have been bullied at work.

Ask adults who've been bullied at work how easy it was to 'fix' the situation, and many will tell you that they ended up leaving their jobs because of the impossibility of finding institutional solutions to complicated and dysfunctional work relationship problems.

It's the same in school. Overt bullying can usually be dealt with. What's often extremely hard to deal with is the sort of bullying which destroys children's self-esteem for life - bullying which centres on excluding and marginalising another child.

My ds has Aspergers and he simply can't function well in a large group. He probably will never learn to do this, and this one fact will hold him back his whole school career. He is ok for now, but I will take him out of school and HE if it becomes a big issue in secondary. I will not tolerate him experiencing prolonged exposure to the sort of emotional torture and abuse some children in school have to deal with every day.

Luckily very few of us have to actually work in groups of 30 as adults, no matter how big the institution we work for. School is a completely artificial social construction that doesn't in any way mirror the way we work as adults, or in fact the way we study once we go on into higher education.

"but I do believe a simple register would be a wise precaution."

Why?

Abusive parents with children in school regularly manage to hide the fact that their children are being horribly neglected and abused. How would a register for HE kids get round this, except in the odd very rare case?

Commander 6 has the same view of school bullying I shared until my son was threatened with a knife in the playground aged 8. School bullying can cover a far more serious range of offences than many of us realise, until our own naice families are impacted by events.

Bullying in schools nowadays can and does lead to incidents such as stabbings, rape, serious sexual assault, serious injuries suicides etc. It's not just a bit of name calling any longer. Sadly gang culture in some areas does enter the classroom, or the public transport journey to school.

It's a tiny proportion of families affected on this level, but homeschooling offers these child victims a SAFE way of continuing their education and recovering. I for one do not blame teachers for this type of incident as it's over a decade now since a head teacher was murdered outside the entrance of his school trying to protect his pupils. Every year pupils & teachers are injured in incidents that do not make the papers, and culturally schools/LA's try to play down incidents for fear of bad publicity.

Projects such as Red Balloon etc www.redballoonlearner.co.uk/ are a good place for people like Commander 6 to research some of the alternative educational delivery methods for modern bullying victims. They offer an online option red balloon of the air for those children unable to attend a very limited number of physical centres.

State education does not deliver good outcomes for all children, neither does home ed. As parents we try and select the best option for our own children, as like Dianne Abbot MP (who went private), no matter our political opinion on state education we try and do the best with the resources available for our own kids.

Home education comes in as many different flavours as school does. Some models are better than others for different children. School models range from Eton & Summerhill to the local comp or PRU. Home ed ranges from highly structured rigorous academic hot housing right through to autonomous education. As a result of not living in a totalitarian state and currently retaining legal responsibility for their children's education different parents make different choices. Considering the huge variety of temperaments and abilities of our children, I regard that as a good thing.

The nice thing about sites like this is that we all get the sum total of other families experiences to help inform our own choices.

Precautions are just that - they can't catch everyone, but they can helpful for some. As I said, we never saw a soul in 10 years. Anything could have been happening.

"School models range from Eton & Summerhill to the local comp or PRU. Home ed ranges from highly structured rigorous academic hot housing right through to autonomous education. As a result of not living in a totalitarian state and currently retaining legal responsibility for their children's education different parents make different choices. Considering the huge variety of temperaments and abilities of our children, I regard that as a good thing.

The nice thing about sites like this is that we all get the sum total of other families experiences to help inform our own choices."

Well put, but based on a false premise: that everyone can choose a school which is right for their child. In reality the only people for whom this is true are the tiny percentage who can afford private schooling, or who live in those rare areas where there is a choice of desirable schools, none of which are oversubscribed.

I live in a poor area, don't have enough money to go private, would struggle to get my very bright child into the local super selective grammars (because of the huge numbers of similarly bright children sitting the test who have had the added advantage of years of learning in private schools with tiny classes, plus 3 or 4 years of private tutoring. I'm not a church-goer. This means, realistically, that there are only about 6 schools out of over 25 in the borough that my children could conceivably get a place at. 5 of these schools languish at the bottom of the local league tables and the last is very oversubscribed.

Minifingers - For my family home ed is not a choice if I want my child to eventually achieve the life and academic skills he'll need to enter the adult world with half a chance of not spending his life on welfare or in prison. A worst case scenario is that he would have joined the teen suicide statistics. (The illiteracy rates for young offenders are sky high compared to the cohort that do get 5 GCSE's A-C). The state school system just doesn't provide an adequate education, (note not gold plated!) for children with my son's disability profile at the current time.

Having been forced to home ed, I've still availed myself of all the knowledge about different methods and approaches to find the best one for my own child. My choices are more limited than those of a billionaire, but I do have some choices. In the end you do the best you can for your child with what you've got, starting with a LOT of research.

Given the opportunity I'd prefer for my child to be in school, and myself to be back in office able to pay 40% tax. I'm having to retrain, an opportunity only afforded to me now I'm homeschooling as school for us meant I had to constantly drop everything at a moment's notice for "meetings". It also meant I had to be up all night, every night with a very distressed child.

Relocating & home ed has been my family's solution. Other families will find totally different answers to their education issues. My point is that there isn't a one size fits all answer that will suit everyone.