Do you send your kids to school on their birthdays?

[charliecat]

My dds have the same birthday and this year I am planning on keeping them off so they can enjoy their birthday.
The alternative is sending them, them not having 5 mins to open their pressies let alone play with them and then with a heavy heart sending them off crying. Not for me.
If they got up at 5am and had chance to play I wouldnt mind but we barely have time for anything in the morning as it is so it would be chaotic...anyway...how much trouble am I going to get in for this? Do I lie and say they both had tummy bugs or what? What do you do?

At risk of setting this thing off again, I do think it's a bit extreme to suggest that anyone who criticising the school system or doesn't sign up for it absolutely and uncritically should home educate. We don't tell women who have been upset by midwife or consultant or who has criticisms of the NHS that they should go private or have a home birth whether they want to or not.
This isn't about the day off on birthdays thing at all, just a comment that I don't think it is as simple as 'you are with us or against us'.

Just wanted to add to the last message. I dont think all schools are perfect and I think that it is every parents right to criticise the system, thats how improvements are made. In my pervious job I had to be 100% accountable for everything I done, it was my responsibility if something went wrong. I hope that when my dd's go to school I wont have to criticise/question the school at all, but if they do something that I disagree of I certainly will. I am a little criticial of the school now, DD starts next Sept, she will be 4 at the end of August and they start full time straight away. My feelings are that this is far too much for a barely 4 year old, but looks like I could come to some arrangement with the teachers if it looks like she is struggling.

But do you question it Jenkel, or just decide that you don't like the rules and you'll do it your way anyway? I'm all for questioning the rules, but what do you do if you question the rules and you just don't agree with them? cc seems to view that she has drawn a particular line and doesn't care what the school or the other parents and kids think.

The reason I raised the home ed thing was not because someone had criticised a school. Goodness knows I know that schools are not perfect, I work in one!

I have noworries if people make rational and helpful criticisms of schools. With luck that will help things to imporove. It was just that spidermama felt that her children would get more education going ice scating than in school. Now however you look at it, if a school is providing that little education in a day, I for one, wouldn't be prepared to send my child there. In another post she said that she wished that the holidays were much longer and that they didn't have to go to school so often.

Now these are valid points. I don't know spidermama, or her children, I'm taking her at her word that these are her honest opinions. And I must say that if I felt so little for the school system I wouldn't send my kids, I'd home educate.

There is a difference between having specific criticisms of a system and having no faith in in.

I'll question the rules and hopefully with the help of the headteacher come to see arrangement, if that doesnt happen I dont know what I would do as I havent been in that situation yet and hopefully never will be. But I do think schools and teachers need to be questioned and need to be accountable for everything, after all the majority of people in industry/commerce are all the time. Just because its a rule now doesnt mean it has to be a rule in the future. If that was the case we would still not be able to vote.....

My post wasn't aimed specifically at you MB - or anyone in fact. It was more a general observation. Who knows, I may adore the children's schools and they may love going. I hope so.

Martainbishop, I never once said I had no faith in the school. On the contrary, I think it's an extremely good, inspiring school with a great deal to offer.

I just don't feel that, with the best will in the world, it's the best place for my young kids for six hours a day, five days a week. It's not the best learning environment.

However, I'm aware it's all or nothing with the vast majority of schools so I'm left with stark choices.

In my ideal world my children would go to school three days a week and have the rest of the time family learning. My children learn a phenomenal amount in the summer holidays and it's a joy to be able to cater for their specific interests and watch them fly off into learning heaven.

Yet here I am again faced with the typical 'fit in of fuck off' attitude with a whole big gang of mumsnetters shouting 'Home educate then' with astonishing agression. Grown women. Tsk! (Left over gang mentality from school perhaps?)

Clearly I'm not allowed to raise any points about school because it makes people come over all emotional.

So I won't.

I have never said 'fit in of fuck off' Please dont insinuate that I did

As a point of fact, the last thing I posted to you was that I hoped you would feel better today, as I ubderstood you were feeling ill. There is nothing in any of my posts to you that is offensive, please don't paint me that way.

Howvere if I didn't think that

'I just don't feel that, with the best will in the world, it's the best place for my young kids for six hours a day, five days a week. It's not the best learning environment. ' and that your children learn an amazing amount in the summer holidays and that you are (iirc) a SAHM, why *don't you home ed?

This is an hoinest question , and is not offensive in any way.

If I didb't think that school was the best place for my kids to learn I wouldn't send them, I'd home ed. I realise that for many people this isn't possible as they have to work outside the home.

sorry, computer garbled it even more than I usualy do.

My point was, if you don't think children learn best in school and you are a sahm, why send them?

spidermama it always amazes me that you seem so happy with your occasionally leftfield ideas but then get so unhappy when the majority don't agree.

you should try being me

I don't think there is aggression in suggesting home ed,

Spidermama, there are some progressive LEA's around which will allow part-time schooling and part time home-edding.

I don't know which ones though!

I think that for some people home education is a very practical solution. It doesn't suit everyone (what does?), and it doesn't suit me as well as the school that my kids go to.

However, if I felt that my children would get more education ot of riding for the day than going to school I would send them riding, in other words I would home ed.

As a teacher I strongly feel that children learn best when there is a good relationship between parents and teachers (and the child natch). I would have grave worries about the relationship I would have if a parent honestly thought I was doing so little for their child.

When I am in work I am in loco parentis, this is something that I take very seriously. I strive to make sure that all the children in my care get the best they can in every lesson. I'm no perfect, and neither is the school I work in, however I am sure that the 70 children I worked with today got far more education than they would riding a horse, ice skating or even going to the science museum. To sugest otherwise is more than a little insulting and irritating.

How sensible would it seem to say 'I always get better sooner if I go to my physio, than I do the doctor, but I have to go to the doctor' I know that many people cannot afford to stay home to home ed, I can respect the probelms that will cause them if they feel they would teach better than the school. But my question is this. If youare a SAHM, why not home ed, if only for a little while? And this isn't being snide or nasty, it is just an honest question

spidermama, fwiw, I rather agree with you that the best thing for children would be a mixture of the sort of individual attention and breadth of activities that I could give them at home, and the discipline and social skills, and professional teaching, that they would get at school.
however, sadly, I need to work f/t so havent really got the choice!

I didn't read it as nasty - I'm sure I've seen posts from SM before saying she was looking into home ed?

neither did I, and fwiw, i didn't mean it to be read as such. But sm has taken it that was and has accused me of taking part in 'gang mentality' an implication I find rather offensive, especialy since the last thing i posted to her directly was to hope she felt better today.....hardly the act of some one sugesting 'fit in or fuck off'

Hay ho

MB, I have been considering, reading up about and thouroughly researching home education. In fact the subject is in my head for most of each day and a good deal of each night too. My dh and I are agonsising over this decision. It's an extremely tough decision to make.

Thing is, it would be nice to be able to do pick and mix education - but if everyone did it, it'd be an odd system!

have you asked your kds what they think about it, sm?

it might be better, smaller class sizes!

I did feel the general tone was getting a bit aggressive towards Spidermama for daring to question the infallibility of school, hence my previous post. I don't think it was anyone in particular, but it was snowballing, to the extent that 'gang mentality' was starting to be a justified comment.

I think Aloha has it right - if we use the NHS, are we not allowed to criticise our GP? Choose not to follow his / her advice? Choose whether or not to take medication prescribed for us? I don't think the education system should be a sacred cow, beyond reproach.

Have you asked your kids if they want to go every day Senora?

people are allowed to criticise school. it's never perfect (and never can be).

but as mb said a million posts ago, it's not ok to give your children the message that school is crap because it will damage their education in one way or another.

sm - my question was a perfectly reasonable one regarding whether you should home ed or not. Even if you were home educating you couldn't make every lesson fly by without skipping bits. If you think you can you're kidding yourself.

But if you went riding for a day you would certainly learn more riding than you would learn at a day at school. Likewise ice-skating. I don't think that is insulting to teachers, who aren't actually teaching riding or ice-skating.
I think that learning and educating are not synonyms. You can learn - and learn well - without being taught. You can teach and teach without anybody learning anything.
I think teaching is important and learning is incredibly important. Often teaching leads to learning - sometimes wonderfully so, and with an inspirational teacher, sometimes life-changingly so. But they are not synonyms.
My dd has learned to crawl, pull herself up and charge around the living room with her hideous plastic walker, without any teaching, for example

But cc only wants to give her kids a special day for their birthday ... I don't think she wants to home ed. or criticise school per se. What's mad, to me, about this thread is the way that's been jumped on.

Like spidermama, I would LOVE for dd to go to school 3 days a week and have the others at home. It totally depends on the child as to how much they learn from school and how much from parental 'teaching'.