AIBU to wonder how home educators feel confident teaching children?

[Toodledootwo]

Genuinely interested in those that home school? What do you think you can do better? Do you plan the full curriculum till 18? It is an ethos? how do you have the confidence to teach?
as an educated professional, doing training courses drains me from the stress. I have a masters in engineering but can’t possibly believe I can teach my child maths. So how do home educators have the confidence to think they can do it?

We have a natural desire to learn the things that interest us. That's a very different thing. Unfortunately some of the things we need to learn aren't always those things. To a degree, we can gain a rudimentary understanding of the necessities by useful application, but it's still going to be a push to get the kid who would rather read a book to find out how to count change.

As I said before, I was that kid. I would spend hours reading Shakespeare, researching his influence, etc, and about ten minutes doing anything involving numbers. No interest.
It's not how my brain works.

Think about things you have no interest in learning. You'd need a bit of a push, wouldn't you? And even then, you wouldn't put as much effort into it if you didn't enjoy it, but had to do it because you needed to. That's what core subjects are like, to the not particularly interested/academically minded. That is where the skill in teaching really lies. Getting the 'need to know' stuff into the minds of the disinterested, and those lacking in natural aptitude.
Not everything is interesting to everybody. And humans can also be very good at not wanting to do things they find hard, especially if they find they can get by without needing to do said hard thing.

And these days, whether we like it or not, it's a lot harder to be an adult who can only 'get by' in the basics. So they will need somebody who can get them to a certain standard, whether we think that standard should be there or not. And preferably, they will need to get there before they enter adulthood. As the world needs fewer people to do the kind of work the average kids like me who 'got by' could do, and more specialists, it really isn't going to be enough to simply let your kids get there in their own time, or, indeed, never get there. So to get some kids there is going to take that skill. An 'engaged adult who can facilitate it' really isn't any adult with some ability in the subject.

We have to start recognising the fact that average kids, the ones who wouldn't be Oxford graduates but aren't considered 'SEN' really do need to be taught by somebody who has skill. And despite some of the claims, here, it IS a skill, it's not one everyone has, and we can't just assume all the kids naturally want to learn what they need to know.

True, there's four other days! That could have been me if I home educated (which I couldn't have done as I was working five days when DD was small). I now work three longer shifts a week and if I was to have a small child now I could absolutely home ed if needed to on the other four days of the week. It would be exhausting, but doable in theory (in practice, I'd probably reduce down to two days a week to accommodate the childcare aspect and so I wouldn't be too exhausted to provide a suitable education on my days off)

I don't think a lot of that is necessarily universally true - plenty of children learn a wide variety of skills autonomously when provided with the means and a source of support, even when that support takes the form of encouragement rather than subject knowledge.

Conversely, I don't believe there's necessarily evidence to show that a school environment and the subject curricula used are the best way to engender enthusiasm and motivation in children who don't have a natural aptitude for a subject. Many leave formal education without functional skills in some core areas.

The reality is that the education system is mostly centred around the philosophy that teacher knows X and that child need to know X and there is a small number of methods for teacher to impart their knowledge of X to child.

This is a reasonably sensible philosophy for schools because they are working to a model where in general 30 children of a certain age need to gain knowledge of X together in a classroom. I would argue that there are many people who would know X as well as teachers, and could explain X one-on-one. In school though, teachers need to be able to impart that knowledge en-mass to a large number of students at once. This includes being able to explain X in multiple ways to children with different learning styles, while still teaching W to those who didn't get it and teaching Z to those who got X the minute they said it. While managing the fact that Jonny and Bill are chatting and David's feeling sick, and Bethany needs a wee...! It's managing that that's hard... just imparting knowledge one-on-one, not so much!

My experience is that children and adults do learn what they NEED to know, when they need it.

I’m like you, naturally able with language but not the slightest interest or aptitude for maths. I got an A in maths GCSE, but not because of the school, because I was motivated to learn it. It doesn’t mean anything . I didn’t understand it and I’m still crap at number. It takes me ages to work out change in a shop!

My experience of home educating is that teens who learn autonomously do reach a point where they know they need to learn something to get where they want to be, and they learn it. For example, needing certain GCSEs for college entry. They might not learn it when an adult thinks it’s the right time.

Also, most of the things I was taught at school that I found boring are of very little use to me as an adult. I would have been fine had I only learnt what interests me.

I do learn things that are difficult and boring. Driving is hard for me. I learnt it because I was utterly sick of catching the bus. It took me ages and isn’t my best skill but i was motivated enough!

I also think that the idea that we have all the skills we will get by the time we leave school is madness - lifelong learning through experience and understanding is a much more realistic and effective way to acquire knowledge.

And most of the things we (as in mankind) know were discovered/described/invented/formalised by people who didn't go to the kinds of schools we're talking about - human knowledge and understanding have been motivated by a simple desire to understand for centuries. I'd argue that the current school system is perhaps setting that process back rather than advancing it in a lot of cases.

I don't disagree about school not necessarily being the best place. I'm just trying to get the point across that whoever does it, and wherever they do it, teaching, when done well, is a skill, and it isn't something anybody and everybody can do effectively.

In no way does that mean teachers in school are by default better at it than home educators, but it's the lack of appreciation for the skill involved that I am struggling with. Elsewhere, we recognise that some children are, for want of a better word, 'easier' than others. I am not sure why there is difficulty recognising that the same applies to learning. Some children are more inclined than others. Being able to teach the less inclined is a skill, even if those children aren't in the SEN bracket.

It's lovely to think that all kids just need the right environment, etc, but actually, that's a pretty big, 'just'. You have to be able to understand why they are struggling, even with something you might find comparatively easy. Often very capable people make poorer teachers because they don't understand how anybody could find, say, long division difficult.

Recognising strengths and weaknesses can obviously be much easier to do at home. But if you don't really understand why, in the absence of SEN, those cognitive difficulties are there, you aren't going to be able to effectively improve outcomes. It's still a skill you need, and yes, you can research it, but you need to recognise that it's a skill you need in the first place.

I do agree that some people do have more aptitude for teaching / facilitating / whatever approach or terminology we choose, than others. My dad, for example, would have been an appalling teacher or home educator!!

As mentioned above, the skills needed to be an effective classroom teacher don't have a huge amount of crossover with the skills required to help your own child learn something.

I don't think anyone disagrees that classroom teaching is an important and valuable skill, it's just that it is so different from the way you support kids through an autonomous education that it's not really a useful comparison to make. I would never describe myself as 'teaching' my children and don't find much common ground between what most people think of as 'teaching' and the way my kids learn.

I do think it's much easier to do with kids who have never been to school because they don't have that experience of learning being something 'taught' to them as you describe.

Mine have only ever seen it as something they do themselves - as my only child who sent to school (albeit relatively briefly) famously announced when asked about home ed 'we never really learn anything - we just find stuff out'. 😬

Of course not all the learning needs to, or could possibly BE done by the time we leave school. But we do have to have reached a certain point. We shouldn't have to, but it's a competitive world.

You can't really compare the Great minds with the majority of school aged children. It's the average masses that really aren't going to be finding a cure for cancer or inventing the next lightbulb that still needs employment. Much of the mass employment the academically average went into, even when I left school at the start of the 90s is gone.

Historically, yes, there are people who have been hugely successful who were unable to read and write. But that has never been the majority,and despite advancements in technology, it's much harder to do that now.

It's certainly a lot harder to start at the bottom and work your way up. More crucially, the 'bottom', in terms of wages, which was once enough for me, an 18 year old, to rent a flat on my own and have money to spare, is now not enough to live on for one person, let alone a family.

All this puts greater pressure to be at a certain level by a certain time. I don't like it, any more than you do, but we can't pretend we are still living in a mass employment age, where people who left school at 15 with no qualifications could financially sustain themselves as they worked their way up from factory floor to foreman to manager.

I have wondered this before too! But now I have a friend who homeschools and I think it’s really great. Her oldest is school age and he’s super clever and exceptionally curious. It doesn’t seem too intimidating for the primary school years as far as subject matter if you can make it work financially (it seems expensive- they get tutors for things like music and reading, plus lots of memberships and homeschool group , trips to museums, etc.). They only need to do about 2 solid hours of academic style learning a day and I think any shortcomings a parent might have in teaching methods is made up for in the fact that the ratio is 1:1. TBH- mine is in Year 1 and we do home learning each day because his class ratio isn’t great and I want him to have 1:1 time. At school he probably gets 5 min of a teacher’s time a day. The unfortunate reality is state school parents should be trying to do some level of homeschooling even if their kids are at school all day- sometimes I wonder if I may as well just homeschool with the amt of home learning we opt to do. But I’d go insane so that’s a no- major kudos to those who do IMO.

But that still takes skill. You have taken the time, and have the skill, to work with your kids in this way. Not every parent does. Some parents could take the same approach as you but get vastly different results. Some children will need more structure, whether they have been to school or not. We all recognise that kids learn in different ways. If your method wasn't working for, say, your second, but it worked for your first, you'll need to have the skill to adjust to that.

You might not think you have a skill that not everyone has. But believe me, you do.

But only in the same way that parenting is a skill. I assume we all teach our kids stuff all the time and help them look stuff up, suggest someone to ask, or research it ourselves so we can explain it to them.

It doesn't suddenly become much more difficult and specialised when it's something that might otherwise be taught in schools.

Yes, parenting is another vastly underestimated skill, that not everyone can do well.
Again, it's not an 'only'. Anyone can be a parent. Being a good one takes skill.

You’ll find 2 very distinct camps on MN when it comes to home schooling/educating.

Those that do, are completely precious about it being the only and best way for kids to learn, will defend their position regardless and don’t like to be questioned (even if you are curious and want to learn.

Then

Those that think the home schooling/educators are mad. They don’t want to learn about it, will criticise what they don’t understand and think it’s full of middle class parents, with a bit of dosh.

Why can’t the home schoolers/educators just be bloody polite and answer the OP’s questions - she is clearly curious (and not slagging the concept off) and anyone in the other camp, who dislikes it, just stay off the thread.

It’s bloody worse than a thread about dogs in cages!

@Toodledootwo to give you my experience...

I don't feel confident that I can teach my child everything they will need to know, but I have been left with no choice. Secondary school has literally broken my child, to the point that they can now barely leave the house from anxiety, after only attending for one academic year. It would be impossible to send them back to school, their life would be at risk.

I appreciate that sounds dramatic, but until you have witnessed your own child unable to leave the house, it's very difficult to understand.

I cannot prioritise my child's possible future qualifications over their wellbeing, mental health, or possibly their life. If they are not ready or able to take their GCSEs at 16, then we will have to support them to sit them at a later stage. Conversely, if not attending school helps to get their anxiety under control, they may be able to sit GCSEs/qualifications earlier.

My child is a very capable student, but the school environment was not suited to their needs.

We are devastated that we have had to take them out of school. I would love for them to be able to manage a mainstream education environment, but this hasn't been possible.

Financially, this a double-whammy, as I have had to reduce my income to be able to support their learning at home, whilst also having to pay for all resources we will need, including equipment, courses, and tutoring. We will have to sacrifice things to be able to fund our child's home education.

My husband and I are totally drained and overwhelmed, managing a business, our child's fragile mental health, our own health, and now being legally and financially responsible for our child's education.

So there is certainly no 'us thinking we can do better' in our circumstances.

I think most home educators are fairly defensive by nature - the default society position seems to be that you’re mad and are bringing up feral uneducated weirdos. (I home educate my kids btw- and I don’t think they are any of those things lol!)

For my ds (asd) there was no choice when he was 13 (mh declined til the point he was just crying loudly in classroom everyday). I felt terrible forcing him to go in and school felt terrible to see him suffering. I home schooled for two years and I took it very seriously. It was my only "job" and I revised the lessons every evening to the teach him the day after. It took 2 years before he was well enough to attend school and those 2 years gave me Grey hairs. Not from the homeschooling per se but the worries about his mental health and professionals inability to see what was wrong with him. He was prescribed different antipsychotics that just made him worse... so happy that he's back in a Send adapted prof learning center now.

As a secondary teacher, I feel split on this issue. On the one hand, absolutely, an experienced teacher makes all the difference in terms of how well students master a subject; not just because of their subject expertise, but because of how we've learned to convey the information, break it down, assess understanding and revisit it to help it remain part of students' long-term knowledge.

On the other hand, it would probably take me about 10 minutes to teach most children what we cover in a 50 minute lesson, and for some of the more able students, it would be less than that. I do my absolute utmost to ensure every child in each class is supported and challenged (and I mean regularly getting on my knees while 38+ weeks pregnant to do one to one work with kids that were struggling and would never have raised a hand), but the longer I'm in this profession, the more I realise it's just not possible to ensure every child is supported and challenged to the most possible extent in every class; it's just not. There are too many kids, too many varying abilities, different needs.

Everyone will do okay enough but it drives me crazy knowing what I could probably help the high attainers achieve if I could really focus the class on them, or if I could have targeted time with the kids who are struggling, who have exceptionally low reading ages for their age or processing difficulties. I feel like I almost have to choose a "main" priority each class and while everyone will get some of my attention, it feels like no one gets what they really deserve.

My DS is only a toddler but I did consider homeschooling as an option in the future - if we could afford tutors for specialist subjects (especially at secondary), as well as extra-curriculars to socialise with other children. I ultimately don't think it's something we'd go for but I understand why families feel frustrated with the school system. I think if you approach it very seriously and hire subject experts, balance it with social time with peers who aren't necessarily friends, some children will thrive. I remember the difference online teaching made to one autistic student I had, who completely came out of her shell. But I have also seen at least one case personally of a parent pulling her child out of school in year 9 to "home educate" and knowing the home situation, I think there was very little learning going on at all, which was very sad. Don't even get me started on so-called "unschooling".

I probably can't, but my lovely DS can't cope in mainstream and doesn't have a chance of getting a special school place. Thousands of children like him have been let down and forgotten, so it's up to us parents to fill the gap and give them some semblance of an education. Homeschool wouldn't be my first choice, but sometimes it's the only choice.

Some home educators are better at it than others, but then some teachers are better at it than others, and actually now in state schools children often aren't taught by teachers or at least not by subject specialists.
And an alarming number of children, over a 3rd, are totally failed by the school system.

These threads seem to compare home education against a perfect view of state education where children's mental and physical health is safe and they achieve 8+ GCSE passes. That's not the reality for most children.

I don’t. I facilitate my child’s education, I don’t do subject teaching. There are loads of resources, tutors, learning providers. My child is studying for GCSEs and other qualifications, via a mix of online and face to face providers. Some we fund ourselves, and we are lucky to have 14-16 provision at our local college, which is free. There is a whole world of home education programmes that I knew nothing about until I started. For anyone genuinely interested, the home education exams wiki is a useful starting point. I spent a lot of time here when I first deregistered my daughter.

I am responsible for ensuring my child receives a suitable education (as is every parent), but that doesn’t mean I have to deliver every element personally. I am however, far more involved in supporting and encouraging her and monitoring her progress. I am also evaluating the effectiveness and suitability of the teaching resources we use. One thing I have noticed is that the skills required to teach a class of 30 children are not required to teach 121. I couldn’t manage a classroom, but I can work through a textbook, or online lesson, with my daughter and help her to progress.

We elected to home educate because my daughter was too ill for school. It has been enormously expensive (mainly in my lost earnings as I switched to a much lower paying, part-time job). But the flexibility, choice and safety that home education provides has been absolutely worth it. I am like lots of home educators: my only regret is that we didn’t do it sooner.

Yes, but conversely, they also tend to present a perfect view of home education, with super bright kids who all do their own research through sheer love of learning, and don't find anything difficult or boring at all. I'm sure those parents aren't lying, I am just not convinced that's how it goes in every HE household. Especially not around exam time. I am sure there are some NT, average kids being HE whose parents do have to navigate how to get them to focus more on the things they find more challenging and don't enjoy quite as much. In fact, I know there are because I have met a few of them. Doesn't mean HE isn't a good thing for them, but it isn't quite the doddle some make it out to be when it's not these magic kids who just can't get enough of learning and practically teach themselves.

I think the reality, like with schools, is somewhere in the middle for the majority. For those with children with SEN who have been badly let down, it's a different ballgame altogether.

It's been one week.
It was temporary.
It isn't for you.
If isn't for bed.
But you're questioning how other people could have different experiences? Do you live under a rock?

I very rarely comment on threads and have never talked about this, but OP your question is similar to one I asked about 25 years ago when faced with moving abroad and needing to home educate my young children. I went to a conference about home education because someone was speaking who had written a recommended book about it. I pretty much asked your question and was shamed in front of a room full of people. I will never forget the smugness as a speaker and various acolytes made me feel small rather than help me. I was a well educated woman, but no teacher. We ended up buying an entire curriculum from the US ( but I imagine there are plenty of resources from the UK now).