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 .

Kim Beat you!

To answer the OP, I wouldn't think anything either way unless I knew more about the situation. The only home educated child I know of personally was a friend whose mother HDed him for a few years because of his school's failure to deal with horrendous bullying.

This thread is hilarious,people know so little but think they know so much!

I dont know why home educators bother coming on mumsnet,its so mainstream,its like reading the comments section of the daily mail!

I was at Legoland recently, on a day when there were about 60 HE kids there, and several school groups. I was told twice how much nicer, better behaved, and more interested the HE children were. And that's from people who see a lot of school groups. Just as a counter-anecdote :)

Electroplating at home doesn't look that difficult - m.instructables.com/id/Clean-and-Simple-Electroplating/ - actually I think my dad did it at home with us when I was a child. I haven't done it here with any of mine, but I've got a reasonable stash of chemicals, test tubes, etc, mostly bought from eBay, and we've had a great time with them :)

To answer the Op, my thought would be 'are they Christians' because I have known lots of home educators and they have almost always been Christians, wanting to avoid the negative influences of the world.

Haven't read the whole thread, so OP are you a Christian?

No I am not

Lol, it is funny toothurty - I just don't recognise my life (or those of HE friends) from these descriptions. And yes, most HEors I know/have known respond to varying circumstances, their children growing up, etc, and do different things as Nicki says above. No one sits down with a 5 year old and plans out the next 13 years, there's constant reassessment and reacting to a child's changing needs.

I'm an atheist, Wombat.

For the record - I absolutely do not harbour a desire to teach - couldn't think of anything I would like to do less.

Three years ago I didn't realise that HE existed (very traditional educational route for both me and my husband).

Then, my very happy child became very unhappy, change of head and other staff in a very small school. Standards of behaviour and teaching fell like a stone very quickly. New teacher just couldn't deal with the age range in her class. My child was picked on, some would say bullied, "held back" in the teacher's words in some things and yet not supported where additional help had previously been given. All this was confidence destroying.

So, I resigned from my job ('professional' post with post grad requirements that I absolutely loved) and we home ed. We didn't choose the private school route because there are not many to choose from locally and I didn't want a 'hot house' I wanted a happy child more than anything and to inspire a love of learning.

We now have a really really happy child who spends at least three days a week with other children, two are shared tuition days and one is just playing with friends. Combined with normal clubs and evening activities I do not for one minute feel that my HE child (or any others I have come across for that matter) is socially deprived. I do think that my child, who cried morning and evening, was somewhat deprived of social opportunities in a small school without any friends.

We are not teachers but we buy in expertise in either shared or private lessons where we need to. We 'manage' to facilitate primary learning without a teaching qualification.

Academic progress has been astonishing and everyone who knows us thinks the difference in my child is amazing.

So, don't knock it, it could one day be you, I would never have imagined doing it and here I am two and a bit years on with the happy thriving child I wanted.

Sadly toothurty and atia, as a grown-up, ex-home-educated-child, I do recognise the descriptions.

Sometimes home-ed turns out great, and people go to Oxbridge. Sometimes it doesn't go so well.

How would you like to spend five days a week with a random selection of 30 people of your specific age, from your local area; be forced to wear a particular collar, tie and loud blazer or sweat-shirt (women too); be taught RE, Chemistry, Geography, Hisstory, PSE etc. by people who had never worked in those fields, in short sessions throughout the day (no talking to your friends in class!); be forced to play football or hockey and do PE (communal showers)? Little interaction with older or younger adults at break times … Would you learn much?

Tilly I'm sorry you didn't have a good experience - I'm not trawling back through the thread for more details if you've given them, but do you think HE was the only thing wrong with your childhood?

I also don't quite see the logic (though I certainly understand the feeling) of arguing that if it didn't work for you, then no one can do it well.

A bit like school then Tilly :-)

I have no axe to grind, I did HE for less than a year and found it was not right for our family - but the RESEARCH I did before and during that period convinced me that for many kids HE is a better option than school. The HE kids I have known since then have reinforced that view.

If HE is chosen to fit a parents ideology then it is in danger of being as damaging as being in a school with a curriculum chosen to fit Mr Gove's ideology. If HE is chosen to fit the needs of a child then it has as good chance of succeeding as a child in the school that is right for them.

Atia No, being brought up by a anti-authoritarian, hippie fruitbat impacted many areas of my life, not just educationally. The education issue is the only one that has continued to have a knock-on impact on my adult life though.

I am not arguing that because it didn't work for me, it can't possibly work for anyone. I am pointing out that I know full bloody well that home-education isn't guaranteed to work well, that actually the fruit-bats do exist (and I found as a child that the sane parents would back up the insane ones, to the point of assisting in fights against the LEA), even when people on threads like this swear blind they don't.

Fortunately, the LEA finally managed to get their way, after a lot of court action. Otherwise I would have turned out like some of my friends...

'I dont know why home educators bother coming on mumsnet,its so mainstream,its like reading the comments section of the daily mail!'

Sending your children to school is mainstream. The vast majority of people in this country went to school as children. Nearly all your children's peers go to school. Those schools range from inner city comps to Eton, from very formal schools where the teachers wear gowns to Montessori schools. There are schools where your child could be in a year group of 200 or a class of 12.

If you chose to follow a raw, vegan, freegan diet and never buy anything new due to your personal beliefs I'm sure you could find like minded people to meet up with who agreed with you and become part of a RL and online community that saw that way of life as normal. Surrounding yourself with people who have made the same choices as you affirms your beliefs. You could provide adequate nutrition and your children would grow and thrive. It would still be an experience that alienated them from the rest of the population.

I know full bloody well that home-education isn't guaranteed to work well

But we also know that school education isn't guaranteed to work well. So, you just do the best you can.

I've HE'd for 13 years, my 3 eldest are in school and the 4th is going in September and I'm going to retrain. I have no illusions really about the pros and cons of each. But most of the cons listed in this thread just don't resonate.

But we also know that school education isn't guaranteed to work well. So, you just do the best you can.

This is the issue. Some parents are not doing the best they can. If they were, they would have realised they were incapable of home-educating! Sure, this thread doesn't resonate with you. Either you have avoided the fruitcakes, or you don't notice them. They exist though.

First instinct, religious parents trying to avoid uncensored input.

This is purely down to a couple who gave a speech st one of our marriage classes. (Catholic)

Unfortunately it reminds me of a relative who was terrifyingly overprotective and infantalised their child.

Irrational and unfair as I know of lots of well organised, well socialised home schooled kids. Also home educators of children with SN who do so much.

But the rogue who gives others a bad name happens to be a relation in my case.

What annoys me is that some people say "oh, there are some home ed parents who abuse their children and so therefore home ed is wrong'. There are plenty of stories around of schools failing children but you don't hear me going 'oh, so that means school is wrong'.
There are, unfortunately, plenty of parents who abuse their children but I suspect they would do it whether the child was home ed or schooled.
There will always be extremes and nut jobs, but for certain, they aren't limited to home ed parents.

And, for what it is worth, I personally am perfectly capable of teaching my dd up to gcse level. When we have things that I don't know enough about, we buy in resources and learn together.

And as for 'socialisation', do some of you think we lock them in cupboards all day?? My dd is 12 and, if she were at school, she would have to chose her friends mostly from the 30 other same age children who live locally. With home ed she has been able to develop friendships with people from 6 to 36!

And, for what it is worth, I personally am perfectly capable of teaching my dd up to gcse level. When we have things that I don't know enough about, we buy in resources and learn together.

Precisely. You learn with her. Been there, suffered that, was turned off learning completely until I had the experience of degree-qualified teachers who knew their subject and could answer questions straight off in whatever depth I wanted.

That paragraph right there, epitomises what I hate about the H "E" community. Yes, I know learning together with your child is fun. For you.

If you don't have a minimum of an A at GCSE followed by a minimum of a C at A-level in the subject, you're not up to teaching it at GCSE. You're just self-teaching yourself from a textbook.

The home-education community could be improved at a stroke if they stopped supporting each other in a belief that self-teaching from a text-book was the same as good teaching.

But that would mean acknowledging one's own inadequacies wouldn't it?

I'm v well educated and more than capable of "learning with" my dd, however it's not what I want for her at GCSE. I really appreciated the in depth knowledge each tutor was able to give me at that level - to drink in their enthusiasm for the subject, and all the different perspectives a whole variety of teachers gave.

There's no way I'd want to be teaching my daughter even half of her GCSEs, but I will support her evenings/weekends/ etc.

So much of what HE families do we do anyway - evenings/weekends/holidays - yet they get the enormous benefit of school as well!

I had As at A level but when my son did his highers and advanced higher in a couple of my subjects I couldn't help him because I'd forgotten alot of it and the syllabus was very different. He could appreciate good teaching and bemoaned the fact that the best teachers were often the ones who retired whilst he was there and he felt their knowledge of the subject and teaching ability wasn't matched by the younger teachers. OK you get some old rubbish teachers and young good ones but teaching and motivating pupils and getting the best out of them is a skill than many teachers acquire with practice so learning to teach using your child as a guinea pig doesn't seem great for the child.
I'm surprised some teachers want to home ed, don't you want to teach classes of children if you're good at it?

Ok, first response before reading whole thread. I think it should not be allowed, especially without any reliable system of checks, because the risk of children falling through the cracks through no fault of their own is too high. In some European countries it is illegal to keep your child away from school once they reach a certain age (6/7).
I also think to be able to home educate and actually teach your children something means you have to be quite well off. If I sat at home all day, didn't earn a penny, I would need an income from somewhere to provide text books, trips, tutors etc.
And, final point, to me 'un-schooling' is a load of cobblers and basically child neglect/abuse.
Right, that's me done. Thanks for letting me vent