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 .

Mammuzza, I got to the stage on this thread where I understood next to nothing so I just let people get on with the daftness of it after trying to turn things around a bit by talking about my son. It didn't work so i thought to hell with it.

Well laid out opinions and debate I can cope with - posts that come across as deranged rantings just for the sake of it are another thing entirely. Im simply not clever enough for them.

"And most HEers on the thread stood back and raised no objection to that."

And I know that some didn't wish to become embroiled in a discourse with her and prompt more long rants, aimed in their direction. Which is understandable.

I can't understand why anyone would want to HE, so my reaction would be bafflement. I love my kids as much as the next person, but I couldn't imagine being their teacher as well as their DM. I would also worry about them socially.

The only reasons I can think of for HE is if you live in a very isolated spot with no schools nearby, or if you have been unable to get a place at any local school because they're all over-subscribed.

I am one of those posters.

I think that Tilly makes some good points.

Just as the ‘one size fits all’ of school doesn’t suit all so does the tailored fit of HE not always work either. The problem I see is the absolutism. It seems that you have to be all in school or all out of school.

Many times on education threads on MN I have seen posters who are struggling with some non-educational aspect of school (eg uniform or lunch box contents) to be rather sniffily told that they can always home-ed if they don’t like those rules. This is of course a ridiculous comment as though all that children learn at school is to wear uniform and eat school meals. It is also a ridiculous assumption that home-ed is all about wearing anything you like and having chocolate for lunch.

I would argue that many parents do in fact home-ed when their children are at school. I know that my DCs received far more education than just what was provided inside the school gates.

What we lack is the opportunity to substitute home-ed for school-ed and vice versa.

Without this opportunity I would instinctively wonder what a wholly home-ed secondary school age student is missing out on. Equally I would instinctively wonder (and in fact have a good idea of) what a wholly school-ed student is missing out on (ie a student who does not benefit from parents who encourage outside of school learning).

There's also the option of flexischooling, Gnomedeplume (I don't think it's had a mention yet). Though I know of very few people who do this.

edyourself.org/articles/flexischooling.php

We did flexi schooling for about 6 months before we pulled him out entirely.

Is flexischooling available to all? I suspect not as reading the FAQs further down:

"You can ask the school to teach your child part-time, but the school doesn’t have to accept your request."

It may be possible for parents to move their DCs to other schools where the arrangement is possible but that wont be an option if as where I live there is a Hobson's choice of one (crap) school.

You don't know anything about me.

I know something about you.

I know I can rely on you to stimulate the gen pub into maintaining a somewhat ambvilent stance towards HE. To keep on casting doubt over what we do and why we do it. To question our Articles of Faith. To carry on finding slogans, set pieces, deliberatly fuzzy anacdotes as evidence of the sucessful nature of HE ....not very convincing.

That much I know about you.

And, what a good job you do of it.

You are far better at it than I, or Tilly, could ever hope to be.

Long may gen pub cast a more critical eye on our choices, beliefs, "evidence", motivations, sucesses and failures. Cos I have damn near given up on HEers ever doing it for themselves.

Personally I believe that the biggest threat to the future of HE (in terms of being a legal choice, in a manner that is not onerously restrictive) is HEers. Specifically the "very pro-HE" HEers.

That might not make sense to all of the HEers posting here, but I don't think it will sound all that obscure to the people who came to the thread as "HE ambivilant" lurkers/posters.

Here is some advice you didn't ask for and I don't expect you to take. If I had years of needing the legal right to HE ahead of me, and a desire to get critical mass of gen pub onside in case I needed their support to help defend my rights one day........I'd worry less about Tilly.

I'd worry more about the people who focus on their upset about how she says things. But are not nearly so interested in what a formerly HEed child has to say about her HE-Fail experience as an adult.

Mainly becuase it looks an awful lot like an attempt to silence and/or deflect, rather than being open to engageing, analyseing and considering examples of HE-Fail.

Like it or lump it, the more HE-ambivilent of readers might see it that way and view it as confirmation of suspitions.

In which case, get used to the negative reactions to your educational choices, cos they won't be going away anytime soon.

Deliberatly [sic] fuzzy anacdotes [sic] as evidence of the sucessful [sic] nature of HE.

And I've reported part of your post, Mammuzza. For the bizarre, unfounded personal attack and for other reasons.

"Mainly becuase it looks an awful lot like an attempt to silence and/or deflect, rather than being open to engageing[sic], analyseing[sic] and considering examples of HE-Fail."

That's simply not true. As you well know if you read the thread. I expressed sympathy to Inanotherlife, and to Tilly. I acknowledged that home ed group, and other safeguarding policies might not have been of use to her.

"What a horrible experience for you, Inanotherlife. I am sorry to hear of it"

"The HE groups usually have safeguarding policies but that wouldn't have been of much use to you. Am guessing you weren't known by the LA, though of course visits aren't compulsory, nor is seeing the children (we accept annual visits which doesn't seem to be viewed at all favourably by some who HE)" Magicalriff

"Like it or lump it, the more HE-ambivilent[sic] of readers might see it that way and view it as confirmation of suspitions[sic].

Sorry? How?

Sigyn One thing that should be considered in HE is your own dislike or hatred of a subject

Tilly that is something I would worry about and I think is worth considering.

Mathematics is one example of this. Most active HEers are female, and the HEers of the previous generation often went to schools which were-of-their-time. By that, I mean that girls were expected to do badly at maths. So naturally they did.

DD1 did well at maths till she had a teacher who kept on how hard it was unfortunately her next year teacher kept admitting it was something she found hard – this was primary years. It has affected her confidence and understanding.

Her top group of maths has no girls and the second group only two one of who is her – she apparently knows where the groups are – I have no idea.

Luckily these days there are loads of on-line courses which have helped teach her maths. We were conscious that she was picking up the idea at school that maths was a boy thing and hard and acted – it’s not something she picked up from us her parents as we both did well with maths.

So I don’t think it the preserve of HE but a valid point of concern.

In fact there have been subjects I have been turned off not because I didn’t have aptitude or enjoyment of them but because of poor teaching, boring teaching or just teacher personalities with schools that I attended.

I think if and when we do end up HE - I would hate to trun them of any subject areas and that like socilaisation is something to be aware of and work toward it not being an issue.

Is flexischooling available to all? I suspect not as reading the FAQs further down:

I suspect it is difficult to gain permission, from the little I've read about the subject on HE groups. Perhaps (I hope) there will be some further improvement or clarification regarding the absence code (which seems to deter schools, understandably) , I think the page mentioned review in July.

We investigated the possibility of flexischool some time ago, but in conjunction with an alternative school. We had to investigate how it worked for other similar schools, though most of those were fee paying.

magicalriff

I heartily apologise for not spellchecking my post.

And thank you for the trip down memory lane. I once had an English teacher who "didn't believe" in dislecsia. She used public shaming of my spelling as her re-eduction weapon of choice.

But don't panic, I'm not 10 anymore. As a fully grown woman I've developed a considerable thicker skin, so no harm done.

Report to your heart's content. If I have stepped over a line, I'll happily edit to stay on the right side of the guidelines and repost.

I'd have preferred an apology after providing copy of my post where I discuss how safeguarding measures may not help some children...

And I apologise for employing [sic] so often when quoting your posts. My " is behaving erratically you see ( some quotes are contained within quotation and some not, same on my replying to other posters) and I didn't wish to take the credit for those.

Only Mumsnet can do the editing I believe. And yes, unfounded personal attacks, and 'other' reasons, I have reported for.

Again, I am very sorry for Tilly and can only wish her well. I'm more than happy to discuss failing of HE (as I did earlier, mentioning safeguarding effectiveness, or lack of). In fairness she made some sensible points which I agreed with early on, but that doesn't excuse her behaviour and I won't ignore the sort of behaviour she exhibited, nor did one or two other posters.

Plus, as has already been mentioned. Posters have been afraid to tackle Tilly, and as have admitted, because they don't want to be on the receiving end of one of her rants. I don't blame them and really wouldn't advise it Unless they have the rest of the afternoon, and perhaps evening, free! Which I don't now.

Um, your discussion of safeguarding was with InAnotherLife not me, magical

I love Samuel Johnson's definitions of words, but I think he was wrong to say patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. It's generally sneering about spelling.

Pity this is page 37. The thread doesn't have enough time to start developing a sudden rash of copy and pasted classical Greek, and I always love those.

Could we return to the issue of me being "chippy"? The definition was helpful, but upon reflection, i realised you'd dodged the question. Other than not pulling anyone up on self-aggrandising jokes, how could I improve my behaviour? Improve my clearly lacking social skills. For example, how could this post at 16:50 have been improved?

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.

Is this post itself another example of my terrifying typing at people? By the way, while we're here, I have managed not to say anything like that old PA MN favourite, 'I feel sorry for your children'. Not only have you not done the same, you've doubted their existence.

Only Mumsnet can do the editing I believe

No. They can delete if they see fit, I can edit the portion they consider in breech of the talk guidlines, and then repost. I have a copy. It's not like I have to do a complete rewrite. I'll even spell check it for you.

I am still not sure how it is a personal attack to draw your attention to the fact that the style of defence of HE you are employing does more to entrench anti-HE sentiments than anything Tilly or I could hope to achieve.

It's more of a heads up.

If people would put down their HE filter for a minute, and read back what they have written through the lens of a HE skeptic, they might be able to see that more clearly.

When you engage non combatively, non defensively with HE skeptics, they aren't backwards at explaining what colours their views. The tone, mode, style and content of "very pro" HEers posts can often do more to firm up their original HE perspective than anything nay-sayers' posts can.

It's not a state secret, but ... buggered if I have ever come accross a very pro-HEer to take it on board and consider that perhaps if your defence is acting as an own goal, it's time to take stock ...and maybe try something different.

Actually, on reflection, I was pretty vocal about the "learning-with" mode of HE, so maybe that's a draw.

Um, your discussion of safeguarding was with InAnotherLife not me, magical

Um, yes. That's right, but I didn't say it was to you, and a brief look at my posts will show that I said it to anotherlife. I've expressed genuine (I promise) sympathy to you and your situation, Tilly, at least twice, however.

"I love Samuel Johnson's definitions of words, but I think he was wrong to say patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. wink It's generally sneering about spelling."

I've already apologised for, and explained, my use of [sic] But as you like...

"Is this post itself another example of my terrifying typing at people?"

Well, I could see why people would be wary of becoming embroiled in this nonsense. One poster at least has said so, take their word for it (and for goodness sake leave them alone). One comment and they receive a long rambling rant in return from you, or Mamuzza (who won't read your previous posts and accuse you of wanting to silence home ed failings). I'm not so sensible it would seem. It's a shame because you made some sensible points earlier.

LemonSquares

I am afraid that primary maths teaching is one of my biggest bugbears, as I probably mentioned earlier on. Suffice it to say, I don't doubt you. Non-subject specialists often rely on the instrumental method for maths teaching, as opposed to relational understanding.

It wreaks havoc with the confidence of children who can't just memorise masses of seemingly-contradictory, random rules, and it hinders the later progression of the children who can.

I've already apologised for, and explained, my use of [sic] But as you like...

Bloody hell Magic, you are going to need a new spade soon.

That was the best non apology with extra added dig that I've seen for a long time.

But don't panic. The HEing parents of dislesic kids won't hold it against you. Not when it's aimed at people like me. It's OK to spell shame in "special cases".

"I am still not sure how it is a personal attack to draw your attention to the fact that the style of defence of HE you are employing does more to entrench anti-HE sentiments than anything Tilly or I could hope to achieve."

What style of home education defence have I employed?
I've been very open in the potential failings of safeguarding of HE children, have said that I am not against assessment (and the compulsory registration that would require and so on

Or will this remain unanswered also? You pick and choose what you reply to and don't apologise for being mistaken (where I have quoted where I discussed LA failings after you had accused me of not wanting to do just that).

An awful lot of HE children now enrol at 'virtual' high schools, at least for the two years it takes to study a clutch of IGCSEs. I'm not sure the stats have caught up yet as it is a very recent development.

It wasn't a non apology. I explained the " key was being erratic (as evident from my posts). I had quotes of my posts and quotes of your own on the same post, so wanted to make clear I was not the author.
I shan't explain again.