The most powerful argument for home education I have ever seen!!

[Spidermama]

Has this link already been shown on MN?

If it hasn't, it certainly should be. This is

It was brought to my attention by a friend who's a primary school teacher in South London. Yet she goes on teaching and I go on sending them to school.

The school system needs a radical shake up.

Saracen- I agree at the moment they're not legally obliged to. I suppose I was just thinking out loud about what might happen if the state went from "allowing but not being especially encouraging of HE" to actually encouraging and endorsing it. Then I bet there would be all this registration and monitoring put in place so that they could assess if it was actually a good idea or not.

The video is a clear argument against the current education system.

Can't see how it promotes HE though.

It doesn't really. It just makes me want to pull mine out of school but I'm neither brave nor rich enough.

I LOVE the bus and taxi analogy.

Not sure I would want my children to travel in taxis all the time, though. They learn huge amounts from the company on the bus!

To me it seems blindingly obvious that a huge system like education, can't possibly siut all children.

For those children whom it does not suit, I think HE is a fabulous alternative, and hope to God, this government leave HEers alone.

Watched the Ken Robinson link (love the art work) - what's he proposing as an alternative?

I think Ken Robinson has some fab theory, not so much pragmatic advice to apply it.

I also think, in defence of a system that has to transform constantly to meet the ever-changing needs and demands, that it is utterly impossible to please everybody. Not all schools (esp primary, my speciality) are crap, and it's unfair to tar them all with the same brush. There are many teachers out there doing an unbelievably good job in the face of bewilderingly diverse demands.

I think SATS are awful, though - the maths test in KS1, for example, is nothing to do with how good a mathematician you are, but how good you are at reading comprehension. It's a shocker.

I'm amazed and inspired by the post from the person in British Columbia who said that HE is funded at an equivalent rate to the cost of having a child in school. IMHO, that's how it should be!!

A few people on here have been saying they were wondering if a kind of middle ground were possible - by secondary school, could a pupil attend for some specialist subjects? Apparently this is possible, but you would probably need to approach individual secondary schools with some kind of workable proposal. Some are open to it, though I don't know of specific examples. (I found this out from the Home Ed websites - there are some amazing articles and research on them, if you've time.)

I also love the bus and taxi analogy.

In the end, I like to think that, although the school has my child from 9 til 3 at the moment, I'm lucky enough to have her the rest of the time. I see it as my job to let her have time and space to dream, to get bored, to therefore get creative (though painting is banned ). We also use the time to do some creative and open-ended tasks together.. some of it has made me sad, as I realise how much of my schooling has stamped out so much of my creativity - DD is so much more of a divergent thinker than I'll probably ever be...

If I could choose one 'mainstream' route for her, it'll be - with any luck - doing an International Baccalaureate, rather than a mainstream sausage factory route. Fingers crossed...

Good post Matilda.

'...although the school has my child from 9 til 3 at the moment, I'm lucky enough to have her the rest of the time. I see it as my job to let her have time and space to dream, to get bored, to therefore get creative ...'

It's for this very reason I thouroughly resent how much homework my dd has been getting since she started at secondary school.

Yes... there is WAY too much homework. There needs to be down time from structured learning.

HE requires a lot of discipline on the parents and child. One of my friends 12 year old is now starting to try and slack a bit and (tongue and cheek) the dad says threatens he'll send him to school if he doesn't get to his work.

I couldn't watch the whole video, it kept making arguments and assumptions (to build up his thesis that) I couldn't go along with.

For instance: "It used to be that getting a degree was a guarantee of a job." Not in my country, not in my background, not in my parent's generation (went to Uni in the 1960s).

Am not even sure if it applied in my grandfather's generation (Uni in the 1920s).

There are other statements like that in the video, presented as fact but not proven at all in themselves.

Absolutely, ragged, I think this is a very emotionally-driven piece of work, if I'm honest, perhaps driven in part by his own unhappiness with his schooling (rather than education)..

it does have food for thought, though. It would be good if we recognise the need for open-ended tasks in school, as a balance to linear ones. I do resent his implication that it's in groups that the best creative thought and outcomes take place - I, personally, loathe trying to create something as part of a group and would by far prefer to work individually. Groups/committees are great for planning sometimes (if they're well run) but that's about all.

Let's all remember '..a giraffe is a horse designed by a committee.' No idea who originally said that, but I love it, and think of it often when the school advertises for parent governor nominations.

Unless children's groups are highly controlled by adults, there are nearly always one or two who ruthlessly dominate proceedings, dialogue and decision making, and many of the quieter ones (who can have excellent contributions to make) get left out. A great breeding ground for passive aggression, among many other things..

that link was brilliant SpiderMama,

All I learned in school was that I was thick.
It's only been in the past 3 years due to certain incidences, that I've realised I'm not thick
IMagine that! All those years of education, and the only result of it all was that I was certain I was thick

Daniel Dorling covers all of it in his book "Injustice" . The mass-medicating of children is absolutely shocking

I think the medication route is something used by parents and school in desperation. There are children everywhere who don't get what they need during the very early nurturing years (try Googling nurture groups) and therefore are totally unable to function in schools without being anaesthetised. It's a horrifying thought..

Absolutely. Instead of running around climbing trees in a jungle, which is what our children's growing brains are designed for, they're couped up in classrooms; and if their brains can't handle such an artificial environmnet they're drugged.

I couldn't stick with the entire link as I became bored witless after a while, but what a sledgehammer polemic it was! As another poster mentioned, it constantly confused opinion and speculation with fact (ie 'going to university was a GUARANTEE of a job') and was relentless negative about schools in a way that does not chime with children's experiences. My children adore their teachers, love the group activities and opportunities they have, enjoy socialising and have plenty of fun. Not every day is a riot, but they are learning and the idea of school children as univolved, disaffected robots is so off the mark that I don't know where to start. The issue of the diagnosis and medication of ADHD is a separate one, and the idea that ADHD is just 'being bored with school' is a nonsense. My children's education is vastly more entertaining than mine was. And medication patterns are very different here to in the US, where all his evidence was from.
I think the idea of giving parents the cost of their children's schooling is a horrifying one for the UK. Can you imagine how few children would go to school in some areas, where the education cost would provide a huge, spectacular income for a family such as Karen Matthews, and the children would simply not be educated at all. The success of home education in the UK is largely, in my opinion, down to the fact that home educators are a self-selected group who by their nature are massively invested in education, often well off enough for one parent not to work, and who are willing to make financial sacrifices for the sake of education. I am ignoring the ones who refuse to send their children to school because they hold bizarre religious views - and they do exist.

I worry when people who didn't enjoy their education assume their children will be the same. Your children are different to you and their school will be different to yours. I think it's important not to pass on your phobias to your children. I hate spiders,but forced myself to be brave so my kids aren't scared of them at all.

That's terrible Sakura. I was let down by school similarly.

I've been helping out in ds's yr1 class recently. On the first day I had a major reaction. I came home and cried. The teacher is brilliant, but still she had to do so much character supression (anaesthetising?) just in order for the class to run smoothly. I watched kids, especially boys and including ds, be crushed and crushed. (Voice too loud, too much moving, hand up too often, laughing to enthusiastically at funny film they were watching.) I'm really not critisising the teacher but rather the system which has 30+ kids in one class.

I argued with dh for over a year about HE and I couldn't get him on board.

I'f not crushing and character supressing to learn how to adapt to the needs of others and how to behave appropriately in different circumstances for 5 hours a day!

no, but there's something wrong when a child leaves school fully convinced they're thick. Whether they actually are thick or not is by the by.

seeker I understand what you're saying, but I don't think many of us need to adapt to thirty others on a constant basis.

Even when I have worked in a team or for an organisation, I haven't been asked to do my work in such a large group setting. In fact the only time i did, was when I had a holiday job in a factory.

So whilst my kids thrive in school (albeit in much smaller classes) I think it's foolish to assume all children will thrive that way.

Sadly, I must disagree Litchick. I think that the vast majority of people these days have to work in huge and faceless institutions dealing with masses of people; inevitably, that requires a huge degree of institutionalised behaviour socialisation.

I'm not saying that this is optimal for human happiness, just a fact of life.