AIBU to ask for your opinions on home education?

[MooMooTheFirst]

For background-

I am a primary school teacher that currently teaches nursery and have felt increasingly uneasy about the school system in the UK over the past few years. I've got a 13 month old DS. I am confident I can deliver education at primary level up to year six.

The idea of home education has always seemed 'other' to me but I am slowly starting to feel like it would be right for us.

This isn't a goady post, genuinely looking for a variety of opinions.

yes but with a group of children carefully chosen by their parents!!!

I kind of admire and am horrified, all at the same time, by people who decide to HE.

I can totally understand it if you have a child who is really struggling in the school environment, who has SEN and/or cannot cope. In that scenario HE must be an entirely sensible (and probably unavoidable) option. I have a child with SEN and I am so so grateful that he sees school as a positive experience and enjoys attending, because I'm acutely aware that's not always the case.

I cannot understand anyone who just assumes they can do a better job than a school and who maintain that school has to be a negative experience... simply because they'd rather HE and spend every waking hour with their DC. I don't think I'll ever understand that point of view, or feel that those children are anything other than disadvantaged.

yes but with a group of children carefully chosen by their parents!!!

Why do you think this?

DS goes to activities all over London with children from all over London. You sometimes see the same faces and sometimes we arrange meet ups. I know the parents to chat to and that's it, I drop him off at sports activities and be on my way. He goes to social groups with over 100 children there at times, hoe can I have chosen these children?

I'm sorry but you are wrong and know very little about how HE plays out, certainly in big cities.

I have never chosen a group of children for any of my dc whether they be schooled or H.ed.
She has gone to groups or activities and made friends there out of the group that were there, she had no choice who attended and neither did I.
Played out with kids in the street, who go to lots of different schools.
Travelled with her love of music to all areas of the UK, again working alongside people she'd never met before, and making friends.

I really am not trying to be difficult, but this wasn't our experience at all.
I suppose I could say that she couldn't play with school friends when they were at school, but she wouldn't be doing this if she was at school either. They don't really play much/ mix at school and it's all organised for a specific time with forced groups.

yes but with a group of children carefully chosen by their parents!!!

Really? Sometimes, yes, parents make arrangements to go to the park with other families they know (I'm pretty sure non-HE-families do this as well. But, just as likely, someone will put an open invitation onto a social media group. Or DC will ask to have a playdate with someone they are friends with or have met at another activity.

if a home ed group in London is as diverse as a school in London I would be astonished.

If you have driven your child to a group/sports club by definition you have chosen where you want your child to be.

you are welcome to disagree with me. but I am right.

if it makes you feel better I also try and influence who my kids socialise with too. We all do it. xxx

We home schooled ours - absolutely no routine which was part of the appeal as we were traveling a lot. Socialisation - the kids are not kept in a cupboard ! Most homeschooled kids have more "socialisation" than school kids as they are out and about in the community daily interacting with all ages. Sure there are homeschooling weirdos and people love to give examples of kids that had zero interaction with anyone except their religious family etc etc. That is the extreme.

In our experience we had the best fun and met the most amazing families. Our kids loved the freedom - they are now at school - full time since age 14 - their choice - both doing the IB and have found it easy to slot in / make friends / study in a formal setting.

It has been one of the highlights of my life raising my children in an unhurried, creative and intellectually stimulating way. I'd say give it a go !

you are welcome to disagree with me. but I am right.

You sound utterly clueless about HE actually. It's fine, most people are

I'm not clueless at all. I really wanted to home educate my own children. but when I looked into it realised that there were major negatives. (and positives too of course).

I am just trying, not very articulatley, to explain them to help the op make up her mind.

I am not trying to accuse anyone of keeping their child in a cupboard, merely pointing out that it is incredibly difficult to get the same socialization opportunities that a school gives.

I think the diversity issue is quite interesting. Primary schools generally cover quite a small area and a small community and I wonder what proportion of them really are diverse. Looking at the nearest primary schools to me: one is very much white working class on a council estate; one is white middle class in a naice area; one is white, middle class and Christian in a naice area; only the fourth one has a really diverse catchment which is predominantly working and lower middle class with a mix of white, Asian and Eastern European families.

I see. I live in inner London which may be clouding my view. at my closest school there are 40 languages spoken!

I'm sorry, you just don't know what you're talking about. You may have looked into it but you didn't actually do it did you? Yet you speak with such conviction . It's a bit pointless to continue discussing this because you've stated your uninformed opinions as fact numerous times so far on this thread and no matter what information you're offered you just keep reiterating them. I don't really do heads against brick walls, hence taking my son out of school on the first place.

if only people who had home educated and liked it were allowed to reply it would be a very one sided thread 😉.

dietcokeandwine - we didn't see school
negatively. People homeschool for all sorts of reasons. We chose it as it fitted in with our lifestyle and work which was one of a lot of travel. There are loads of people on the road homeschooling, sailing families etc etc.

Its not a competition for us - I'm not saying I can do a "better job" than a school. I am however making a thoughtful choice for our family and the way I want to educate and raise them. We all have that choice in life.

I would also say in my experience I haven't met the type of homeschooling parent you describe that wants their child beside them "every waking hour". Ours isn't a fear based decision and I clearly haven't met the homeschoolers you have - our kids are incredibly independent and worldly and so are their friends.

Not at all. You're just wrong . Nothing to do with agreeing with it or not but if the reasons for disagreeing are factually incorrect you must expect to be challenged.

I too live in inner city London and have one child home educated, who was in mainstream school for three years before I had to remove him. I also have a second child attending mainstream school and doing well. I am probably better placed to compare the two I would say and your views are just not accurate.

38 languages in my youngest child's school. Not sure how many in our home ed community but quite a few of the children are dipping in and out because their parents are from all over the place and work on short term contracts all round the world - so pretty diverse.

Umm

Maybe for you it would have been difficult, I don't deny that.
Not all parents are able to manage this for their children and don't like the idea of them being free to choose their own friends.
I've seen parents of schooled children with the narrow choice that school enables try to point their children in their own direction of friends. Don't play with him, play with him instead. Not inviting certain children to parties etc. There are a lot of schooled children who are very lonely, bullied and with no friends. I don't call this socialising.

their parents WORK all over the world. sound pretty posh and undiverse to me. where are the benefit claiments, refugees and children of prisoners?

a group carefully selected by parents. bot saying it's not wonderful and educational, but a self selecting group nonetheless.

gilly I wasn't saying that school parents don't do it too! just pointing out that for 6 hours a day school parents are unable to manage who their children play with. and there are positives to that.

I think there are a few swings and roundabouts in terms of diversity. Of the home educators I know, there is a really wide range in terms of class and income, from very well off families to working class single mums.

There are a lot of children with ASD and similar, and more who would probably be undergoing testing if they were in school.

There is a bit of ethnic / cultural diversity but I don't live in a hugely diverse area so it is difficult to say how representative of the area it is. Of the children whose background is not white British, they are often from mixed heritage families.

There are certainly a few hippies about but home ed has got a lot more mainstream in recent years and it isn't all kaftan-wearing vegans.

Limited types of socialisation?

Because playing with the same children who are the same age as you every day for years isn't limited socialisation at all is it?

And my sons experience of school with this apparently wide range of socialisation was the same children picking on him day in day out. And the school doing nothing. So the adults who he should have trusted to take care of him in loco parentis did fuck all and left him to be bullied.

And now he's HE'd and has far more friends than he ever did at school, who all accept him for who he is.

I didn't choose them - he did. I just went along to groups, groups full of strangers to both of us and he found friends there. I knew one person when we started out - we've both made lots of friends!

He quite happily goes to groups where I'm not there, and he's happy to talk to anyone, adults or children of all ages, not just those born between September and August the same school year as him.

Ummmgogo, isn't the point that it doesn't have to be self selecting? At least not in a large city where older children can choose their own activities and take themselves there and make their own friends. And that equally a school can be pretty self-selecting if it does not happen to be very diverse. That different families have different circumstances.

umm

My dd primary spoke one language
The parents were all public/private sector workers at the same level doing the same jobs.
We met such a range of people from all walks of life when she left school.
Now the school she attends has children from all over the world.

I think the best thing she gained from H.ed was the idea that you can learn what you like, when you like.
She has me looking for a tutor so that she can take 3 GCSE languages instead of the two that school offer.
One she is studying completely by herself, in the very little time she has available. But it's what she wants to do, she has always been determined, driven and ambitious, and H.ed allowed her to achieve the things that were important to her.

I think we all have a tendency to seek out people who are like us. it's human nature. as long as you are self-aware enough to see that you are doing it, and teach your children how to get along with people outside of your bubble, your child will turn out just fine.

this could apply equally to both school and home ed. but you child will have far more opportunities to practise this in a school.

Having said that, I find it equally narrow of the HE'ding parents to try to suggest that a schooled child would only make friends with other children from the same school and even the same class. Why on earth would they do that? Don't schooled children go to the park and to extra-curricular activities? Don't they join clubs and talk to their neighbours? Surely schooled children don't spend their entire life at school? At least I know mine didn't.

their parents WORK all over the world. sound pretty posh and undiverse to me. where are the benefit claiments, refugees and children of prisoners?

Well personally I know care leavers who HE, ex Army, loads of Muslim families, single parents, more children with additional needs than I could ever have imagined, no children of prisoners granted but then why would I know this? It wouldn't come up generally in conversation just as I wouldn't know if one of my daughters classmates had that background. I do know very well two women in shelters at present who are home educating.

Again you simply have no clue what you're talking about. Why not be gracious and admit it?