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!

Both my children attend school but it has messed them up, one is crippled by OCD after years of bullying at primary school (though things are looking up now he’s started high school) and my other is just a complete mess every evening after school and I put it down the trauma of being at school. I can’t homeschool as I don’t think I’d do a very good job and online school is too expensive. I understand people wanting out of the education system.

She doesn't come from an educated background herself.

She's one of those influencer types. She doesn't believe in education and thinks you can make it all on social media. It's worked for her because she's pretty and the right things came at the right time but it's an overly staurated market. She was extremely extremely lucky. Most people (especially girls) should work hard at school and not expect to randomly become an influencer.

In which case everything you have posted on here is fake.

I think it was more that she doesn't feel she's ready yet. The kid is only three I think? So it's true they don't have to put her in school yet.
But she risks a lot of important socialisation if she doesn't try and ease her into educational environments gradually. Otherwise it probably will be a shock if she's been at home only to be with so many other kids.

But I certainly hope they don't go for home schooling. I don't think either are academic enough to provide this to a meaningful level.

GCSEs aren’t a good measure of intelligence. Some of the smartest, most successful people I know have very few qualifications due to various factors during their education. DH (an airline pilot with a physics degree..) has 4 GCSEs to his name. English isn’t even one of them! Also know of a high 6 figure CEO/political consultant with absolutely no GCSEs. Both incredibly intelligent people in their own right - just not the traditional sense!

I don’t blame her, my kids hate school. If I had the money and support to home educated then I would.

Well according to a few on this thread she's a bit dim so the "professionals" didn't do much of a job there did they?

Because UK schools start too early, hours are too long and “good” schools are run like prisons

Strangely how many people on here commenting didn't like school themselves and now their kids don't.

If everyone "home educated" and it's in speech marks for a reason, then the country is stuffed. Most home educated kids I have met are far from educated, getting little actual teaching but being given "experiences" all the time. That said a few are wonderfully stretched and well in advance of their peer group because the parents have actually done some research, paid for academic resources and MADE the kids learn.

Most of the comments here and MMs clearly dislike their kids being made to learn in a structured way

I'm a primary school teacher.
Class sizes get bigger. They widen and widen and widen the bandwidth of who gets a mainstream education. I end up with 30 kids in my class, over half of whom have needs I simply cannot meet. Not simultaniously. Not while delivering T1 learning to those who can learn at standard. I'm just one person. I'm certainly not blaming the kids - their needs are complex and varied. And there is a social and parenting trend to shy away from building resilience, so these kids are coached to expect everything to change for them. I can't do it. I do my best, but it's not enough. School is a chaotic and stressful place to be for many children.

These same kids go home and both parents are working and exhaused, and the child is overstimulated from a day at school, so they get screen time as down time and that just makes everything worse.

I honestly don’t think schools are any stricter than they need to be. DD and DS are both very different children, DD is loud and can be a bit boisterous and DS sometimes needs some encouragement to come out of his shell. They both need some strictness it’s just different kinds - DD needs to be told to calm down and DS needs to be pushed to speak up. I’ve found since they started school they’ve been a lot better regulated. DS has especially come out of his shell and I think a lot of that is down to his teacher who’s nice and offers reassurance but is pretty firm with pushing him to get out of his comfort zone little by little.

Teachers have to be strict, some kids are absolute terrors. A good teacher knows how to strike balance between classroom control and nurturing children.

There's no chance she will do anything herself, she admits herself she struggles to spend time around her child. Plus it would interfere terribly with her coffee drinking and watching Shrek on a loop.

Because I am making money from posting, like she is, with you all clicking away on her posts? Why are people obsessed with what influencers think anyway and naive enough to think they post for anything other than money and influence?

I think "business woman" is a wee bit of a stretch 😂

Thank you for choosing to be a teacher. I appreciate you x

Tommy comes from a gypsy family and homeschooling isn't uncommon for them which probably gives them a different perspectives

From what I see locally it’s a push back against authoritive teaching practices. Modern parents want no school uniform, limited rules and infinite patience when the kids play up.

I was not anti school when my daughter started in reception. She should be in year 13 about to take her A-Levels, but she hasn't been able to attend any form of education for over a year. The system broke her and very nearly me too.
She's autistic, PDA and situational mute and found the current education impossible to live with.
I know there are those who will be saying "You just didn't try hard enough". Believe me, I've tried everything and nothing worked and there was very little support that actually helped her get into and stay in school without having a shutdown. I couldn't fight the system any more and she has no trust in any educational professional or establishment.
I never thought something like this would happen to my child. I'm not a mum who can't be arsed to be involved with their children's education. If I could give my younger self advice it would be that when cracks start showing, home educate when they are young so the damage done by the education system isn't too deep.

@RainsFall yes the sheer volume of detentions is insane and like you say they learn nothing from them. My DD has never had a detention or a demerit since the start of secondary but she is in a minority. The irony is the children at her school who get lots of detentions and are not that interested in learning are the only ones that are happy at her school. The ones that want to get on with it and do well, have a bit of fun with their friends at break times and never get detentions are all absolutely miserable. Something is seriously very wrong. I have no idea if this is true of many secondaries, but makes me so sad.

My kids are both happy to go to school. What they describe (ordinary state primary) sounds very similar to my own primary school experience in the early nineties. The proportion of the day actually spent sat at tables "working" doesn't seem high/intense, there's a good amount of pe, music, projects including history (making a city of cardboard houses and burning them down counts apparently), tech, art, sewing, cooking etc. The "homework" is very simple and takes hardly any time & there are no consequences if you don't do it, until you are in the upper end of ks2 when they reward handing it in timely. They seem to fit in time for trips and the school has a huge field where all the kids play in summer.

I agree with you. My kids are in their twenties, so have left school behind. However, both had an excellent education in state schools, and although I'm a primary teacher we all agree I couldn't have taught them because parenting is a different relationship.

Mine too - my children thrive in school. Most children do!
I’m a primary teacher and I agree that school isn’t for everyone, but I’m talking the children with profound global development delay.

Its hard to hear but children that experience routine at home, a firm but fair approach to parenting (ie they hear no once in a while), they don’t get treated like a prince/ss and don’t have everything done for them and don’t get away with poor behaviour, they lose at some games, they have attention from their parents, and ones that are read to daily absolutely thrive in school.

I’m also a parent of primary aged children so I know the other side of it when your little one comes home upset or they haven’t won a competition etc but it’s life and we have to teach our children that life isn’t always fair. Of course we want to wrap our babies up in cotton wool but I will 100% stand by the fact that over my decades in the career, children who are literally hero worshipped fair worse than those that get no help whatsoever - because often those children have developed a resilience whereas mollycoddled children find it absolutely abhorrent in schools. They cannot stand being told no or centre of attention.

Schools are for the vast majority, it won’t suit everyone but there seems to be a growing trend of uneducated people home educating their children. It’s worrying.

My daughter loves school. When she was a toddler I wanted to homeschool her due to the same fears many talk about. I think I was heavily influenced by social media and all this talk about 'crushing their spirit' etc. If I had done, it would have been selfish of me, she absolutely thrives in school. She loves seeing her friends, loves her teachers and loves learning.

@JoB1kenobi maybe you are talking about primary school? Certainly not secondary though. Most of the children I know who were raised as you describe, like mine have been, are utterly miserable in secondary school. Loved primary, but everything seems to crash out once they hit year 7 for many kids.

Brilliant !