Why are so many parents anti-school?

[DrowninginMaryBeardsBeard]

I'm a member of a few homeschool/ unschooling groups as I like their ideas and I want some tips to encourage learning in every day life. My kids go to school. This isn't perfect and both have gone through stages of school refusal. They are genuinely happy now.
But in generally, schools are good right? My kids do so much more at school than I would be able to offer. They have trips, forest school, sports, technology, science labs, art supplies. I could never provide all that.
I get that there are many SEN kids who can't attend school and I have so much sympathy and empathy for those parents and kids. But parents who call school 'twelve years of prison'? Where's the justification for that?
Is it due to the parent's bad experiences? Wanting to be in control?
Term time holidays?
Plus there's the problems with socialising, monitoring screen time, getting them into university with non standard education? It seems like it's quite an extreme choice and I'm not sure I understand it? Most of these parents went to school, so how can they know that not going to school is best for their children? Where are those children's points of reference when they see children go to school?

@Ponderingwindow I think I said in my OP that those with SEN who's children couldn't cope with school or when school couldn't meet their needs were absolutely not the sort of people I mean

Many DC get badly let down and many DC just aren't suited to school.

I home educated my DS and my DD goes to school. So I've seen both sides. I would say you have a lot of misconceptions. Socialising is really not an issue, a wide range of activities can be done much more than at school. Trips, forest school, technology, science, art all can happen much more than at Primary. My DS is now doing T levels in digital technology and his 2 closest friends are doing a level 3 animal care course and an apprenticeship. They've not been held back atall.

School is obviously so much easier for me and my DD has had some experiences my DS hasn't - taking part in a play as an example. I was really happy with my DD's primary and she had some great opportunities there like instrument lessons and taking part in Young Voices. She has now just started at secondary and is enjoying doing a wider range of subjects. But there are many experiences that she just won't have like her brother. Overall there are pros and cons of both.

I think this sums it up.

It’s apparent even reading threads on here that people can’t just internally eye roll and then do their own thing.
I also think lockdown/covid hasn’t helped, I think it’s created a lot of mistrust in the “system”.

@BertieBotts Practically every home ed person in our group is in the middle. None of us hate schools. We literally just see our children having a brilliant childhood and having lots of different learning experiences. Yes, we do say things like "I'm so glad they aren't in school!" That's because we think we are doing the best thing. Of course we do, otherwise we wouldn't do it. Just as most school parents think the same thing.
The numbers of home educating families have grown massively in recent years and its not just because of unmet SEN needs. There are great numbers who got a taste of it in lockdown and liked it. Lots are seeing the problems in schools and dont want any part of it. So I think a lot of the stereotypes are out of date.

AllProperTeaIsTheft
Nailed it. I completely agree with you.

I think this post more or less sums up the way some parents have lost touch with reality. School is not an unnatural environment to learn - in fact it's the only environment children consistently learn academic subjects. HE children are learning because they are being taught by people who attended school. Children who do not attend school in general do not learn much if anything, outside of these particular HE circles where facilitating the education of one child is basically someone's full time job as well as costing significant amounts of money.
Friendships are nice but not what school is for.
School is primarily for learning not for childcare or socialising, there's no reason children need to be drinking and peeing constantly either.
Seriously look around the world and see the sacrifices parents in poverty make to get their kids into school. Yet in our over privileged country where it's free to all people don't value it.

There do seem to be so many schools like this now. Luckily, my Dd's secondary school is not like this atall. It has a reputation for being strict but it's actually much more laid back than most of the other schools in the area. They wear a blouse and jumper - no tie and blazer and they look so much smarter than all the time and blazer schools! They can take their jumper off when they want, can turn around in class (!), they can go to the toilet. They don't isolate them for every tiny offense. They are one of the highest achieving schools in the area.

Interesting thread!

My child is not a charming, smiley, chilled kid - never has a teacher said to me 'he is a pleasure to teach!', We hardly get any certificates home. I can tell if a teacher believes in him, sees his potential- and most of them didn't/don't
Yep, my child is my pfb. I want more for him. I don't want him in a classroom all day where he's seen so mediocre.

He is smart and capable and I tutor him at home as much as I can, because he thrives on the extra one-2-one.

Schools are brilliant for children with certain personalities but many are left behind.

Again more misconceptions. I know very few home ed parents who didn't work and many were working class. The DC have genuine friendships other than friends kids!!

Yes, my DS's best friend's mum did it.

Many HE parents are ND. ND people often have poor experiences of school and want something different for their children. I decided at 17 I would HE my future children. Plus many of their kids are themselves ND. I’d say in the average HE group 60% of families have more than one ND member.

I’d laugh at HE being white middle class, due to the high rates of ND, it’s often poor and living on benefits and low paid work or alternatively it’s religious. In my city the only regular HE group is the Christian HE group. Our big HE meet in the next city has a large number of Muslim Home educators, over 25% of the group.

Middle class families find HE most difficult, mostly you need two incomes for a middle class lifestyle and that’s tough to juggle with HE and white middle class families are who schools are built for, they fit. Without additional issues like ND they’re quite unlikely to opt out.

Families who choose HE are those for whom school is a poor fit due to their religion, race, inherent disabilities, lifestyle choices (if you’re wanting to travel continuously then school doesn’t work). It’s not the picture of yummy mummies keeping little Indigo out because she wants her to frolic in the forest or she can’t bear to part with her. I’m sure the odd one exists and they’re over represented among HE influencers but you don’t meet them often in the wild.

I work in a school and can see why parents are anti school I would be too if I could afford to home school schools are different to what they were when I was in school 20 odd years ago and I feel like they were nicer back then to what we see now.

I HE my kids and I can guarantee they do more of the really fun stuff, like Forest school, drama lessons where they actually get to be in the main production and properly equipped and resourced science lessons, than they did in school. They didn’t get a sniff of this at school, because of lack of funding and lack of time in an overstretched curriculum and being part of a large school with big classes. Forest school was always funded through payments for disadvantaged pupils and the slots rightly went to those disadvantaged pupils. Mine were not disadvantaged, so they didn’t get to do it.

I see very few school bashing posts on the HE groups I’m part of. Many families are in and out of school, have other children who attend or have friends and family who have good experiences in schools. I’ve seen more negative school posts here on Mumsnet.

Its a bit strange and intrusive to be part of groups when you are not the intended audience (ie you don’t home Ed or unschool). It’s made worse by the fact that you are clearly reading stuff posted in good faith to those boards, looking down on it and now hashing over it on here, to make yourself feel justified in your opinions. I’m a bit of a Facebook novice though, so maybe everyone is part of irrelevant groups. I would say though that I’m pretty sure there must be groups for parents like you who wish to extend their school educated child’s learning.

Yes my DS mixed with a much more diverse group than my DD at her mainly white middle class school where she spent everyday with the same 30 children.

I think it depends on your experience, luckily I have a variety of experiences (horrible schools & incredible ones) and if I had only been to horrible ones then I would probably be suspicious too. Instead I shopped around ALOT and moved to ensure my kids can go to a school I believe in. That’s a privileged position to be in. I’m a primary teacher and every year I have 3ish kids in my class who really struggle with basic structure of school (sitting down, listening etc.) and are miserable. I don’t feel mainstream school is for everyone. If my kids were of this ilk I’d probably take them out rather than them being miserable for many years.

@LongLostTeacher Exactly. Most home ed groups are strictly for people who are home educating or at least still considering it.
There are probably 100 times as many groups out there to get educational ideas. No need for the OP to even be on HE groups!

I agree that some home edders come across as over the top with their hatred of schools, but I think your sweeping statements about how great school is are really naive and kinda offensive to the less fortunate. Some state schools are great. The majority are not. All the state options in our area are crap so after letting my child have a pretty traumatic couple of years in the state system, we scraped together the money for private school and now she is thriving. But if we had less money we’d be home edding and very angry about our experience of schools.

Example from the news on Tuesday…

“One teacher, called Lisa, told KentOnline staff face daily abuse including racial slurs and threats of violence, whereby a student threatened to cut her throat.
“We’ve had enough,” she said. “We are collectively striking because there have been too many incidents of violence against staff and threats of violence against staff and the school has had about 18 months to sort this out.
“Members of staff are off with stress because they’ve been physically assaulted. We have the n-word used on a regular basis by our black teachers. We have chairs thrown. I myself have been threatened with death on numerous occasions”
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sheerness/news/amp/teachers-to-continue-strike-over-safety-fears-and-pupil-beha-297652/

I home educate one child. It can be quite a lot of money to find if it includes no free school meals, no subsidised school trips, private exam entry fees, tutors etc. She didn't settle well at two primary schools. I take her to a youth club for home educated children in a nearby city. The parents are a wide variety of backgrounds. Some are complete left wing hate the State types who try to stay away from all forms of Government intervention like vaccination, immunisation etc. They tend to be deschoolers or unschoolers in my experience, although not always. They have some radical views on child development and politics that I do not share. There are other parents who are working class, and tutor their children (or pay someone to do that, or sometimes get a local authority for unmet need). They often removed their children from school due to bullying, unmet need or emotional distress reasons. They are often juggling evening/ weekend shifts with teaching their children, or paying a tutor centre to plug the gaps. There are another group of parents who teach children formally, or employ someone to do that. These tend to be professionals on high income, or self employed, who can juggle education, life and work to some degree. They home educate due to perceived failures of schools to provide what their children need, or because it is a preference (some were home educated themselves). Some believe that their children perform better in a more relaxed home environment. I am one of those as I know my daughter would not cope with the structured demands of school for various reasons. She does well at home and I hope she completes GCSE exams in a few years from now. School is not for everyone.

Most Home Ed groups specify you must be home educating to be part of the group. It's about safe guarding if nothing else.

I also think that parents often have a very warped view of teachers' and schools' attitude to students. Even in the less good schools I've worked in, a truly immense amount of effort goes into trying to support and help students, to enable them to learn and to make school a safe place for them, even if parents don't always agree with every aspect of how schools try to achieve this. The stringent rules are designed to prevent poor behaviour and distractions which disrupt your children's education. If most parents could be a fly on the wall for the day, it would be an absolute revelation to them, both about how kids behave and what teachers do.

You can't really be surprised that you joined an unschooling group and found many parents are anti school?
If nothing else then they didn't think school was right for their child.

@Fionaville I think you've misread me, I'm not anti Home ed, I actually think HE is great and am a bit envious of those who get to do it (not an option for me for too many reasons to explain). I was half a toe in my old local home ed community due to having so many friends there.

I can genuinely see how many people in home ed circles would literally think it's the best thing ever and wonder why anyone would ever choose school. I still think that contributes to the echo chamber idea that schools are automatically awful. And it's a very loud echo chamber the smaller the group is.

It's not really exclusive to home ed though - most people who have no experience of home ed exist in a massive echo chamber of the idea that home educated children are all bored, lonely, controlled and understimulated! These are ideas that are totally false but bounce around the general public's perception of home schooling, just like misconceptions about school abound in the home ed groups. Just human nature I suppose.

What percentage of school children don't get the qualifications to go to university?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

This may be of interest to some points about schooling methods,

Why do so many in a home school group hate school? It’s like asking why so many in an anti vax group hate vaccines.

They’re there for a reason they home school. There’s a reason many others don’t.