To wonder what’s so bad about school?

[graygoose]

This is from a Mollie Mae post that popped up on my feed (not a follower but she pops up) saying they were viewing schools for her daughter and she was concerned about how strict it seemed and she didn’t want school to crush her spirit. And that she’s considering home schooling. Almost all the comments agreed that they are worried school will crush their child’s spirit and are anxious about their kids starting school and advocating in favour of home schooling.

Now, we all know the algorithm creates somewhat of an echo chamber but I was surprised at the sheer number of parents who are so anti-school (not education but anti-bricks and mortar schools if that makes sense). I’m genuinely curious if this is an increasingly prevailing view? If you feel this way, could you elaborate?

My DD is a toddler so obviously not in school yet!

They will have the funds to buy all the services they want and ensure their child has every possible experience going. Home ed doesn't mean a parent teaching their child in isolation or even at all (I make coffee for the team who teach dd I don't teach her at all)

You’ve got to have a certain amount about you to even put yourself into those positions like Love Island in the first place. I certainly wouldn’t have the confidence to go on it.
But then you look at for example the footballer of what was he called Micheal Owen, the guy that played for Liverpool. His daughter Gemma went on there and She’s done and achieved nothing with her exposure.
She may not be traditionally intelligent, but she’s not daft either

Well, I’m not sure whether you’re missing out or not 😂
But mine were in them from the age of three, but they were rubbing shoulders with local footballers children again. I’m not sure whether that’s an advantage or something to hide from.

I think schools are getting stricter. I have several friends who teachers and they all saying things like behaviour is getting worse. One of them (secondary school teacher) even said they are recruiting a behaviour specialist.

However most children do go to school, even though increasing numbers are being home educated.

As a PP has said school is not for everyone. DB failed all his GCSEs twice, left school at 16. Then worked ar Iceland …. But eventually did his A Levels at night school and then got a good degree at a good uni.

Home schooling is a bit trendy at the moment. If you have bright, unproblematic and generally well behaved dc with no particular sen then they will be just great at school, as most dc are.

As a secondary teacher of 25 years, I recognise parents concerns. The desire to control kids’ every action in and out of school has become obsessional . I think it’s the software that makes teachers log every misdemeanour, knowing they’ll be monitored by HTT and disciplined if they’re not punishing enough. Parents then get multiple notifications and the overall impression is of punitive environments. When I started teaching, you had to go to the staff room and look up the parents’ phone number in a big book, then wait for the one phone to be free, if you wanted the head of year to intervene you filled out a slip and put it in their pigeon hole, where it probably stayed! Everyone was much happier and you could have a good laugh with the kids and sometimes a beer with your colleagues after school. Results were good and it was unusual to meet a kid with autism/ADHD or a burnt out teacher whereas now it’s the norm .

Fivelegged So John Major, the former prime minister of our great country. only famously had 2 0 Levels. Does that make him "thick" then? I have no idea of MM qualifications ,but I am guessing being an Influencer is probably harder than it appears . She will probably engage a private Tutor anyway . Some Schools are good ,some average and a great deal lacking TBH.I am sure she and her DH are capable of selecting the right HE for their child!

If a child struggles with lessons but has good friends and extracurricular times, they'll cope.

If a child struggles with break times but enjoys lessons, they'll cope.

If a child struggles with lessons and break times, each day is torture.

I have 3 children. All have been broken by their education. Not the fault of individual teachers. But the fault of governments (do note the plural - I'm not being political) who think that the answer to poor attainment and aspirations in some groups of pupils is to drag the curriculum further and further out of reach of the low attainers.

What practical use is it for children to be taught about split digraphs? They need to learn to read, and read for enjoyment.

When a year 10 pupil, working hard with no learning disability, in a 'good school' is working at grade 1 in GCSE English and that is communicated to the parents by a report card with no further communication... You've got to think that something has gone wrong.

100% this. She/her team have worked out that a post speculating about home schooling will get a load of hits and comments, spawn a MN thread (which will lead some people to look at her insta), probably get picked up by tabloid papers, maybe even a Loose Women discussion or This Morning phone in, if they are lucky. She keeps her views, likes and followers up. Brands still want to pay her lots of money. Happy days for Mollie.

There is also a Very Online home-ed community (which I know is not representative of the whole community) who seem to see part of their mission as advocating for home-ed in every possible space, or because they are monetizing their home-ed content while they don't work a traditional job in order to home-ed. Those people will jump on Mollie's post in order to press their case and re-direct to their own content (click here for my resources!). And so the attention economy goes on.

95% of people send their kids to school with a normal level of anxiety (will they miss me, will someone listen to them if they have a problem) and deep down knowing that their kids will have some tough moments and learn to cope. For 90% of kids, this will be true. We just hear about the 10% who opt out or for whom school doesn't work because their experience is outside the norm. Which is not to say it's not important, or meaningful, or shouldn't be addressed that some kids struggle, and that changes to schooling have increased that number.

You also have to remember that Tommy is from a traveller background where children do not attend school
I remember her making a throwaway comment when she was pregnant about how of course the baby would go to school. That’s just what happens.
Somebody will dig that sound bite up shortly and present her with it no doubt

Oh I agree, I don't think she's daft at all, I just wouldn't really call her a businesswoman when it's highly unlikely she's actually running any part of her business, her input is unlikely to go beyond maybe offering some design ideas, modeling the designs on her page and carefully maintaining her own public image so the brand stays popular.

There are plenty of LI contestants who have come out and absolutely bombed or embarrassed themselves though so she is obviously more sensible and savvy than the majority.

A lot of adults have trauma from being at school themselves. That's not a word I use lightly. I finished school 2 decades ago yet I can vividly remember some behaviour towards certain children, from both teachers and other kids, that still makes me feel physically shaky. Someone deliberately trying to upset you when you are a child, your parents are not there and you cannot defend yourself, is a particularly horrendous feeling that stays with you.

So yeah I think a lot of these kids when they become parents themselves are hellbent that their DC won't ever have that same experience, whatever the cost.

Sadly I do think kids who love school are the exception not the rule. How can one teacher possibly monitor 30+ kids in a room at all times, every day, and ensure they are all emotionally ok?

Unusually low intelligence? Surely she would need support in her day to day life?

Three children here who have all loved school.

Schools are just not like they used to be.. high schools can be more strict than being in the army.. my school days were lovely.. the teachers were fun.. ( im talking early 70s).. now its all about numbers .. my Grandkids are all home schooled or were.. two are now 18 n 21 and at University.. which is more relaxed and how high schools used to be.

Probably a daft Q - but homeschooling isn’t an option for many people - as most two parent families work. So is she really talking homeschooling here or does she mean private tutor?

Her child is only just 3, so presumably she’s not looking at state schools for her yet. I live near her, and a lot of the private schools around here do have reputations for being strict so it’s a reasonable concern for her to have.

I have a DD the same age and feel the same about secondary, she didn’t mind primary, but absolutely loathes secondary. At my dd’s school they give out detentions for everything, even genuine mistakes or misunderstandings, there’s no room to explain yourself, or learn from mistakes.

I’m not against detentions but also don’t feel they serve much of a purpose when they’re given out so often. During the actual detention at my dd’s school, the kids get put in a room with a random member of staff with the news on, they talk amongst themselves, mess about etc until the clock has run down. It doesn’t seem like a deterrent at all, more like an after school club. My dd has actually said that sometimes getting a detention for not doing homework is a good payoff as the detention is only 20mins whereas the homework takes longer than that to complete. We’ve now started having consequences at home for detentions, like taking away devices and not going out with friends, because it was getting out of hand and I don’t like the above mentality she’s developing but I believe it’s being perpetuated in the school environment due to how they handle things. There’s no discussion on what they did wrong, it's just do your time and off you go. It's not something we’ve encouraged at home at all, we want her to succeed and be a good student.

When I was at school and got detention, it was with the teacher who gave it, and they would chat with me about why I was there. If it was for no homework or not doing work in class, then I’d be expected to complete the work during the detention, rather than sitting around dossing for half an hour and we certainly weren’t allowed to chat with each other or have a laugh. I never needed further punishment at home because the detention was enough for me to understand I’d done wrong. Could probably count the number of detentions I got on one hand, which isn’t the case for my dd sadly.

It feels like they do it just to show ofsted they are dealing with behaviour, but they’re not actually properly dealing with issues or trying to deter it at all. I have sympathy with schools as managing the behaviour of nearly a thousand teens and pre-teens is never going to be straight forward but the blanket approach they now have doesn’t seem effective either.

They also seem incredibly controlling. There’s a shop down the road and round the corner from the school, they had four members of staff hanging around there recently to tell kids to put their ties on and tuck shirts in. That’s ridiculous to me, if they’re concerned about behaviour or fighting that’s one thing, but doing it just to police their uniform outside of school gates and outside of school hours just rubs me the wrong way.

I understand why some parents decide to home educate now.

School broke my daughter's spirit. It was a large school and just about crowd control. I like rules but think they should have common sense. The school was just about results and was churning out kids with no common sense or life skills because they werent even allowed to chose their own pens!

She almost certainly means with a private tutor.

From what I've seen I don't think TF and MM are in any way fit to home educate.

Although I guess that education doesn't matter when you're raising another influencer.

I had a terrible time all the way through school because I was bullied the whole time by both kids and teachers. It turns out I had undiagnosed audhd and was ignored my whole school life. My two children are home educated and have been from birth, Schools are awful places for neurodivergent children.

I loved learning but hated school and my daughter is pretty much the same now. At least in primary school we had decent PE and got to take our work outside when it was really sunny and had proper green space to play on - all of primary schools did. All the little good things about primary school are harder and harder to come by now. My impression is that everything is a bit frantic and frenetic in primary schools now.

I think most kids enjoy school for the most part. My dd loved primary, now in year 10 moans about school but is doing really well and has a group of friends. My nieces and nephews all love school and have done/ are doing very well. I’m in Ireland though and schools are different. Teachers are respected and there isn’t the same behavioural issues gauging from my own experience of the UK and what I hear on MN.

I deeply regret sending my children to school. My eldest has ended up with a chronic health condition due to school stress and is unlikely to ever recover, she's disabled and her future prospects are dire. She effectively missed due years of school after that made her ill because they didn't want to provide her with education outside school. My youngest was struggling due to send and complete lack of proper support so I took him out a few years ago and now he's over the trauma of having been at school he's a different child, so happy and doing really well.

I'm wish I had home educated from the beginning. Schools are terrible places for children's wellbeing.