To ask what is your instinctive response to hearing a child is Home Educated?

[NickiFury]

I am really interested to hear general opinions from everyone and hoping for some from professionals such as teachers etc. I really want to know what people think because in the main in RL, the response is overwhelmingly negative. I've had people threaten to call SS on me because ds isn't in school, been told it's "weird" and seen this face a lot.

Now to me home education is a totally normal thing but I suspect this is only because we are immersed in this world and know lots of other HE families (you'd be surprised how many are out there).

What has made me think about this was a friend telling me today that people in our community know of me and ds without ever having met us because we are notorious as that woman who doesn't send her kid to school .

Btw I also have a child who does go to school and is doing well but no one seems to gossip about that.

So what would YOU think if you someone told you their child is home educated?

Thanks .

[Delphiniumsblue]

Everyone is different! Peace and love to all.

[Fideliney]

Next post is the last post. Let's have something peaceful and profound

[Delphiniumsblue]

My brother was paying Monopoly at 5yrs- he didn't want to be left out! He understood it- he had to- as elder siblings we were out to cheat him!

[Delphiniumsblue]

In the case of money you would expect the 5yr old to have gone shopping- paid for some things themselves and played shops at home. Even if you send to school you still do a lot at home- it is daily life and practical.

[Delphiniumsblue]

It is all to do with parental involvement. Those who HE have the parental involvement- those who go to school still need it. Schools can't work alone - it is a partnership. Parents who don't support would be hopeless at HE and unlikely to do it anyway.

[lougle]

I find it fascinating that 40% of Mainstream school leavers fall below the floor standard of 5 A-C GCSEs, yet school is deemed to be a good thing. When a HE individual is not at a level to gain 5 A-C GCSEs, it's deemed to be a problem with HE.

I HE one of my 3 children. She, at the age of 6, already thinks that she is 'rubbish'. Take money as an example. She had over 40 money sums in her work book. A pictorial collection of coins which she was to add up the value of. Each and every one of them was wrong. The comment at the bottom said: 'I' (independent) I will help you with this.' The teacher told me that dd2 'couldn't do money' and I told her it was because it was abstract. Last week I got money out again. DD2 was at a stage where she couldn't even grasp that a 2p coin has a value of 2. She was seeing one coin, so assigned it a value of 1. Why, then, if she hadn't grasped this very basic idea, was she given sums with a string of 11 coins with differing values??? Why was she allowed to do 40 such sums with not a single one correct?

I have to undo that damage before she can start to move on.

[Delphiniumsblue]

I am not even going to find out what the bunfight was about, but the good thing is, Crabby, that polite people will not tell you what they really think in RL.

[CrabbyBlossomBottom]

Fucking hell, I've finally RTFT. It's taken me days and now there seems little point in posting as it's descended into such a bun fight.

Well it's been fascinating to discover what people think of me for home edding DD. Thank goodness everyone is too scared of me polite to express their honest opinion in RL.

[NickiFury]

Wanda there is another thread just started, link further back, here in AIBU. Hopefully a bit more positive than this one

[WandaFuca]

Quick response, before this thread fills up: If only the authorities (government, LEA, whatever), back in the day when EO was getting going (1970s), had been supportive to HEers, and accepted that HE is not only a legal alternative to school, but an appropriate one as well. Instead, there was mistrust on both sides which still exists in some areas to this day.

Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but if the LEAs had offered access to resources, maybe HE families would have been willing to engage in those. (At the very least, those families would have been "visible" to the LEA, which is still an issue for some.) And maybe teachers in the LEA could have learned from HEers about different methods of engaging children's interest in a subject.

[Fideliney]

So evocative

[magicalriff]

Oh, never heard the term before. And I don't manage our employees, DH does, as I may have mentioned. So I haven't delivered any such sandwiches.

For those who don't know what it is (don't Google search 'shit sandwich' as I did )

"The shit sandwich, or the praise sandwich, as some ironically call it, is a technique for giving feedback that involves sandwiching critical, truthful feedback (the shit) in between two slices of praise.
The idea behind the shit sandwich is that it’s a way to ease people into harsh feedback by starting off the conversation with complimentary praise. This surprisingly results in the exact opposite of what’s intended."

[losingmybelt]

Me too. Its way too long. Of course people are going to repeat themselves. I haven't got time to sift all the way through it just to check that my question hasn't already been asked.

[Delphiniumsblue]

I have lost track of the entire thread! I expect it will be full before I manage to find out what all the fuss has been about!

[Fideliney]

Well fine but don't say you'd like to hear a teacher's view *losing. I've lost count of how many have already posted an opinion.

[losingmybelt]

Fideliney, its too long and I don't have the time to read the whole thread, as much as I'd like to.
I saw a question and answered it. Simple.

[NickiFury]

I think one has said it was great.

[Fideliney]

Far easier for Home edders to meet up

Who remembers the EO contact directories?

Seems so faffy now.

[magicalriff]

"I'm not your employee, so I don't have to pretend to be fooled by the "shit sandwich" approach!"

Sorry, have checked the thread and am guessing that wasn't actually intended for me

[TillyTellTale]

Hadn't finished typing. Sorry. Do most of my posts on a phone, and sometimes I press the wrong button.

"Shit sandwich" is a management technique, in which you give a piece of negative feedback, but sugar coat it with positive feedback.

I thought emoticons would make my posts seem less aggressive.

GrouchyKiwi I just want to assure you that finding maths difficult due to instrumental teaching is entirely normal. If you know anyone who is known as 'good' at maths, I'll bet a £5 they had some contact with a teacher, a set of books, or a youtube series that did relational understanding. Instrumental gets results early on, but by A-level, if not before, you have an exercise book of notes like this:

'If problem looks like A, use method X on page 49
If problem looks like B, use method Y on page 110
If problem looks like both of them put together, say fuck it and walk out of the exam, unless there's an xy term in it, in which case use half of method X, step 3 of method Y, and then put brackets around the result, and write it as the answer.'

[merrymouse]

I've lost track as the thread is so long but am I right in thinking that so far three people have come along and said they were homeschooled and it was awful, compared to none who have said it was great?

Possibly and they might or might not be representative.

However, I think home ed has changed radically in the past 10 years or so. Far easier for Home edders to meet up (whether that is organising a local meet up or talking to somebody the other side of the world),
and share ideas; and on-line education has exploded.

It really isn't the radical hippy choice that it might have been 20 years ago.

I think in the end it comes down to how much you trust parents to look after their child's own education. Generally the biggest indicator of a child's success is their parents. How much school can close that gap is open to debate.

[Fideliney]

bleeping thread^

[Fideliney]

losing read the bleeping, for salami's sake

Nicki, Granny, *Grouchy please step this way to share your constructive ideas and experiences on the shiny new thread here

[teacherwith2kids]

Losing, I am an ex HEer AND a teacher (I trained post HE) ....don't know if there are others like me lurking around.

Temporary HE was a total success for DS. He left school A stressed, selectively mute, not making great progress, socially isolated, many ASD traits. He returned to school H, post HE, relaxed, happy, much chattier [it took another 6 years for the effects of school A to be truly undetectable ion his speecgh, though], having made good progress and ready to make much more, quickly made friends and with ASD traits much less to the fore.

I do beleve that HE can range from the great - better than school - to dreadful - far, far worse than school, despite the fact that the intentions of almost all HEers are for the best almost all of the time. I would say i am a supporter of tempoerary primary HE in many circumstances, long-term primary HE in some circumstances, and all-through HE to school leaving age in a rather smaller number of circumstances.

[losingmybelt]

It would be great to get a couple of Teachers' comments on Home Schooling (I believe a lot of Mumsnetters are teachers?)