Homeschooling? Anyone done it for 10yo?

[majurormi]

DS not thriving at school, bright boy and inquisitive but I find he is just being prepared for the CE not for a life of learning. He is currently at a private, I love the music, art and drama just not the teaching of the core subjects. Would it be crazy to take him out for 1-2 years and get him up to speed and give him a break from the rat race? Money not an issue, so we can supplement with lots and he has lots of outside interests.

"get him up to speed and give him a break from the rat race? "
That sounds a bit contrary

How does he feel about coming out of school?

We did it with one of ours but it was their choice.
Came out at the end of Y3 and returned in Y7 (secondary) - again child's choice to go back.

It's a tough choice, and a very tough decision to make.
Have you really considered every aspect of it?
How frustrating might it be to you and to him, to be one on one all day every day for two years? It's an intense way of working and it certainly doesn't suit everyone.

I know several home schoolers. The good ones are awe inspiring. The others worry me. It is a terrifically challenging thing to do.

Do you love love love sitting and helping him with homework? Does he love love love working out fun ways to solve dull homework problems with you because you inspire him so much? If not, what's your starting point for assuming HE will be a solution?

Are you trained as a teacher? If not, what prep will you do to ensure you are capable of teaching subjects that perhaps you didn't excel at yourself, or ones you excel at so easily that you know them without having to think about how to explain them?

What steps can you take to ensure he doesn't become socially isolated?
how will you monitor his progress to make sure he doesn't fall behind? Not just academically but socially and emotionally. Can he really jump back into school at 13 having been out of it for two years?

If it were my child, I'd be asking why he's not thriving - get to the root of the problem, don't just try and solve it from the front end iyswim. Is something specific at the heart of it? Are you sure it's school specifically and not just hormones or a fall out with certain pupils or teachers that could be set right? If it is the ethos of the school that's a misfit, maybe you could look for a more relaxed, well-rounded school.

majurormi, you'd probably be better posting on the home ed board. People there with much experience of HE. My DC (now 17 and 19) were HE throughout their compulsory school years. Many others have taken their DC out of school at all ages, when it is not working.

RacingHeart: I know several home schoolers. The good ones are awe inspiring. The others worry me. It is a terrifically challenging thing to do.

And your criteria are...?

Do you love love love sitting and helping him with homework? Does he love love love working out fun ways to solve dull homework problems with you because you inspire him so much? If not, what's your starting point for assuming HE will be a solution?

Fortunately, majurormi (as you probably know), the above is irrelevant as you don't need to help with homework or solve dull homework problems while HEing.

Are you trained as a teacher? ...

Again, this is irrelevant. Home educators do not need to "teach subjects". Majurormi can learn along with her DS as they do things that interest him.

What steps can you take to ensure he doesn't become socially isolated?

He already has outside interests - leaving school does not mean giving up everything else.

how will you monitor his progress to make sure he doesn't fall behind?

When my DD decided to try school for the first time at Y5, I went to WHSmith and bought some NC workbooks so that we could check how she would cope with maths and English. If Majurormi wants to check his progress in terms of the NC, it is not difficult.

Not just academically but socially and emotionally. Can he really jump back into school at 13 having been out of it for two years?

Most HEers report that their children have no problem re-entering school - two years of building confidence, interacting with all the people they meet as equals and enjoying themselves tends not to have a negative impact on young people. He may, however, have a lower tolerance for the irrelevant nonsense that goes on in school (e.g. petty uniform rules, name-calling, "typical" teenage behaviour).

SDeuchars, why does a post that draws attention to the main issues surrounding HE raise your hackles so much? It's a discussion, not a pro or anti lobby. These were things I thought about when I considered whether it would be suitable for us, given that I am friendly with a lot of local home ed families. I was sharing the issues I know are frequently raised. Friends of mine who home ed are second to none. Others aren't. Not because they are bad people or HE doesn't work but because it simply wasn't right for them and they went into it without thinking about the consequences.

The question about homework is to test whether you'd enjoy teaching one to one all day. It clearly wasn't referring to homework set by a home edder. That interpretation is just daft. How you respond when helping with homework is a fairly good indicator of that. And of course you will encounter material that either you or your child finds dull or tough at some point, unless you have a dilettante approach and only teach them things that engage you. Finding out how to feel engaged with material you have no flair or natural interest in, and how to pass on that enthusiasm is essential.

If you plan to home educate a child you think about all the points I raised above. I wasn't suggesting OP hadn't thought about them, or that they were insurmountable, I was suggesting they are questions of critical importance to ask yourself. The OP was asking for opinions. HE is not a thing to do on a whim.

Put your claws in and get less defensive so there can be a proper discussion of pros and cons.

lol at 'a dilettante approach' only teaching them stuff they are interested in. you mean not teaching them the dull uninspiring stuff that makes up 5 out of 6 hours of every school day that no-one will ever ask them about again in their adult lives? how terrible!

who makes up the curriculum, racingheart? the majority of it is completely arbitrary 'knowledge' that can well do without being taught tbh. following what interests you and learning more about that seems a far more sensible way to proceed, really. it just doesn't fit the mass market, which is what school is. in my experience he kids who acquire an element of responsibility for their own learning seem to have a far better grip on reality than the schooled who are spoon fed.

only you can know if HE will suit you and your son, op. but there is a certain dichotomy in the 'removal from the rat race' in order to catch up (with it) thing. HE seems to me about the value of going at your own pace, rather than continuing to impose a set of arbitrary external values... that could be faster, slower, or just plain differently to the schooled peer group. i can see what you mean though. you just think he will learn faster and with less stress out of school than in it.

i have three children in school by the way. two are fine and dandy (inc one with sn), but the other one just isn't. he doesn't seem to be cut out for the sausage machine that is state schooling. he's still there (at the moment) though.

racingheart is quite right with the statement that you need to think about it on a personal level. we are doing just that. no-one seems to apply the same logic to school, though, which i find a bit weird.

anyway, ds1 is almost 10, and we are considering he for him, which is why i clicked on this thread. i'm finding the consideration a very interesting process, as it is forcing me to evaluate the efficacy of the school system, amongst other things. my entire value system is being questioned, which is interesting in itself.

racingheart, I am afraid that the information you gathered when considering home educating your children was not very comprehensive or representative. The issues you have mentioned with home education are not ones which are actually problematic. Ask on any home ed list and you will find them listed under "common prejudices and misconceptions." I am sorry to put it so bluntly, but you have got the wrong end of the stick entirely.

Home educating is nothing like helping a child with dull homework problems set by someone else. Many teachers who have home educated their own children will tell you that their teacher training was not relevant to home education because home education is not like classroom teaching. Social isolation is not the norm for home educated kids. Parents can use formal tools to monitor progress if they want to reassure themselves, but it is no more necessary than measuring children's height on a monthly basis to check they haven't stopped growing: I suppose it's possible that a healthy-seeming child could stop learning or growing, but it isn't very likely.

There are other issues which may sometimes be real obstacles to home education: can you afford to give up work or employ someone else to look after your children while you work, will a place still be available at your preferred school should you decide you want to return after giving the place up, are you ready and willing to pay for GCSE exam fees and find an exam centre if your child wants to do GCSEs, does your partner (if you have one) agree with the idea of home education, if your child has special needs which make her behaviour particularly challenging can you cope without much time off.

You see, it is not the case that home educating parents want to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with respect to the disadvantages of home education. It is just that we get fed up with hearing these red herrings repeatedly trotted out about teaching qualifications and socialisation. It is this that raises our hackles (well, mine anyway).

madwomanintheattic, you might like to read what my dictionary has to say about dilettantes:

Origin of DILETTANTE

Italian, from present participle of dilettare to delight, from Latin dilectare ? more at "DELIGHT"

If that describes the approach I am taking to my daughters' education then I guess I am doing a pretty good job.

it sounded fabulous to me. but i don't think it was the intention...

i love etymology, words are endlessly fascinating.

at risk of a small hijack. someone talk to me about these damned lists. yahoo groups make no sense to me at all. i have successfully joined a few, and even managed to post on one of them, but it's like double dutch. every time someone replies to a thread, i get yet another e-mail. is there some desperately technical way of creating a string, so that they all pile up in one place, instead of all individual replies. tis ridiculous!

Saracen,

I am certainly not against HE, but I do differ in opinion from you. Without wanting to go into detail, some of the biggest problems I've witnessed among HE families where HE went wrong were where the parent in charge of tutoring had no patience, felt out of their depth and the frustration caused misery and huge loss of self confidence for all concerned. I have misgivings about state education and a lot of respect for HE. But my opinions are not the woolly opinions of someone who knows nothing about HE. It was an option I considered thoroughly when one of my children was being bullied. I also work as a tutor for several HE children and have detailed discussions with their parents about how and what they teach and what they want me to provide in addition.

I understand why HE parents feel so passionately about what they do and didn't set out anywhere to attack the choice. But some of the points I raise are valid. I didn't suggest the OP needed a teaching qualification. I suggested they think about how they would tackle subjects they aren't naturally strong on if they haven't had any training in doing so. That's a fair question. Teaching, even from home, is a skill. Learning how to explain in a way that engages and encourages a child to tackle work they find challenging is a skill. Why is it misleading to suggest these points to the OP?

It's interesting that both posters who criticised my points didn't read what I actually wrote but jumped to conclusions and assumed it was a veiled attack. As I said before, far from it. I applaud HE, but I don't think it's an easy option. I think sending your DC out to school is by far the easier option and not always the right one.

Mad - sweeping statements really don't help, about brain washing, and 'no one' applying the same logic to the personal effect of schooling outside the home. Of course people who send their children to school think about how it effects the family personally. School gates chat revolves around the wellbeing of the children, family time etc.

I hope some H-Edders come on and give less flaming responses.

i suppose they do chat about how it impacts them on a personal level in terms of their pick up times or the teacher telling jonny off, but there's no questioning the system itself. apols if i was talking at cross purposes.

that's what i meant by brain washing, really. an entire western civilisation of people who hand over their 4 and 5yos to strangers to be spoon fed a particular set of knowledge, in the belief that it is exactly what they need to function as a member of society. it's really interesting. even when it's clearly not working, people are looking to the child to see what's wrong with it, rather than looking to the system itself. school is just what you do between 5 and 18. no question. brain washing might be a bit strong, but it's fascinating.

i don't he, though. i might. but i don't yet. i've seen some schools that are very good at what they do. and i've seen some schools that are less good at what they're supposed to be doing. but none of them seem intrinsically better at turning out 18yos than he-ers. some children thrive, some fail. why is school the default?

Madwoman, there is a lot of discussion about what is wrong with the system at our school gates (a fair amount of dissatisfaction at what goes wrong as well as pleasure at what the school does well) and we also seem to endlessly discuss how worthwhile the curriculum or a given aspect of it is. I agree that our society tends to accept that school is the normal way, even though there's no reason for us to accept this.

I'd never advocate one system over another, but look at the suitability of one system for a given child or family. I think school is the default for a number of not very admirable reasons. It's free, it's minimal parental effort and you have someone else to blame if it all goes wrong! But I also think it is a rare person who is up to the task of home schooling.

I'm still puzzled at how sweepingly you misread points I made and then attack them. I said dilettante in teaching what appeals to you, not your children. And yes Saracen, I know dilettante means to delight in. The question was: how does one go about teaching the stuff one doesn't delight in? I'd gladly teach languages and literature and art to my children all day and be confident they would excel in what we learned.The test is how I'd enable their very mathematically, scientifically inclined brains to be fulfilled by my teaching of those subjects I'm weakest at but they have a natural flair for. I'd be very unconfident in doing anything more than limping alongside them.

I do hope you encourage your children to read texts more closely than you do before critically responding to them.

oh fair enough about the dilettante approach then. i obv misread it. autonomous learning in the child's interests seems far more preferable. not much difference between a parent-led curriculum and a school one, probably, just the delivery.

the british ed system is clearly fatally flawed as i have a first in english

but i think the real q is about why you think 'teaching' is necessary really - if you are learning about what interests you, you find a way to access it. if i want to know how to, i dunno, stargaze, it's reasonable easy to find out how. likewise with any aspect of math. nothing is so secretive in this world that it takes someone with a teaching degree to access it and disperse the knowledge. particularly when the average teacher requires a barely scraped couple of a levels at the beginning of their training and has trouble putting together a ks1 spelling list at the end of it.

i think anyone can learn. there are far better qualified people or technological substitutes or books or indeed real life examples than teachers.

i should add that at one point i actually briefly attended a teaching course and have nothing against teachers at all, but to pretend they are somehow the be-all and end-all of knowledge doesn't tally with my own personal experiences.

some teachers are of course brilliant. some are brilliant at getting kids to learn and understand, others are brilliant at getting them to learn and dump for test taking (these are the ones that seem to be prized the most, weirdly). others still (the majority) are no better than you or i. but presumably as you earn a living at it you have some professional regard for imparters of 'the' knowledge. (with due respect to london cabbies)

as you say, there is no 'right' way, or 'wrong' way, we all have to make decisions at a personal level. i'm just always curious about the level of misconception about he, and of the intrinsic 'value' of the school system in comparison. and i was struck by how many of your points are discussed by john holt and john taylor gatto, and as someone else said, on he lists all the time. so it appeared that you were anti-he. but that was obv a misconception.

mostly i'm not even particularly commenting about the minutiae of a post directly - although the dilettante comment just made me laugh, apparently in error. i'm just on a stream of consciousness diatribe about issues or half-opinions that the post raised in my head. i just mn to engage in debate or chit chat about issues i'm interested in really. particularly when i've been pondering them a lot.

RacingHeart: SDeuchars, why does a post that draws attention to the main issues surrounding HE raise your hackles so much?

No hackles were particularly raised and I am sorry that you thought I jumped to conclusions and was critical. I did not see what you said as an attack (veiled or otherwise) but as mostly not relevant to the lives of HEers and not necessarily relevant to the OP in deciding to HE.

I am genuinely interested in your criteria for judging HE.

I did not misunderstand your point about homework. I agree with Saracen that the OP's approach to homework is irrelevant because HE is not similar to working through dull homework set by a teacher.

Similarly, it is not necessary for the OP to monitor her son's progress.

Teaching, even from home, is a skill. Learning how to explain in a way that engages and encourages a child to tackle work they find challenging is a skill. Why is it misleading to suggest these points to the OP?

Many HEers do not teach their children - they learn alongside them. For example, my DD started to learn violin with a Suzuki teacher at 11. I learned from the teacher how to help her (I had never touched a violin before). Because almost everything we did was about sharing enthusiasms, I had no need to learn how to explain in a way that engaged the DC. If they were interested, we did it; if not, we didn't.

My job was to facilitate their learning and to ensure that I offered the DC every opportunity that came past us. Until a DC is ready to prepare for exams, there is no need to have a specialist in school curricula. At exam time, the main specialist knowledge missing in a non-teacher-trained parent is skill in tackling exams. The subject knowledge tested in the exam paper is relatively easily gained (especially at GCSE level) - book shops are full of GCSE texts.

SDeuchars and Mad, I love what you both say about learning alongside, rather than teaching. Sharing and exploring rather than one person imparting (forcing?) what they know onto someone else. That makes sense. I'm doing that with my son and piano, having never played before. But he has outstripped me, and without someone else to bring him on with it, I'd be holding him back. Our mutual enthusiasm is a fine feeling but I'm not musical and wouldn't help him get far whereas he is. Or maybe we'd muddle along together up to Grade 5 or so in a relaxed fashion and just enjoy it, without stress. To be honest that approach hasn't occurred to me before and erm, it's very appealing.

It is very liberating to realise that it is not necessary to force children to learn or to reach a specific level. It is usually much harder for a parent to absorb this than for a child - they know they are learning stuff and take joy in it until we (often) stop them by making it "work".

I always tell new HE parents that the hardest things are to bite your tongue and sit on your hands. It is also hard to trust that it will all turn out right in the end because learning is not a linear process (schools just make it look as if it is because that is easier to manage).

For example, my DS was word-perfect on walking with dinosaurs at 5yo (and I was mostly uninterested). He then picked it up again by choosing to do a 10-point OU course on fossils and the history of life at about 14yo. We had probably done odd bits of stuff on the topic in the interim, but we did not do a regular stint on topping up that area.

Similarly, we went to the theatre because we enjoy it and so the DC were exposed to Shakespeare at an early age and have not been turned off by having to analyse characterisation, etc.

For me, the best thing about HE is that my DC do not consider any area of human knowledge a no-go area - they expect to be able to learn, the challenge is in finding the correct resources.

racing - i'm finding reading about it really interesting (and as i said earlier, it is challenging, because up until a few years back i hadn't considered anything other than school as 'the' education process for my kids) but i'm content now that i have another option which will not disadvantage them, and will potentially advantage (at least one of) them.

it is kind of liberating. and if you can get get your head away from what school counts as 'achievement' (and endless testing to measure the same) very appealing. and i am about as conservative as it gets.

ds1 asked a random question about averages at breakfast the other morning, so i said 'ah, well, it depends how you work it out' and we had a completely random chat about the weather and average temperatures, and mean, median and mode. for the next hour whilst he got ready he was working out different averages of completely random stuff, and seeing which made 'sense' (like if you have one day at -25 and the rest of the month is about -5 or 6, what's the 'best' or most 'useful' average to use and why). then he went to school and came home on a complete downer because he'd had to sit through four hours of worksheets on subjects that were introduced cold and children were expected to sit and be interested. some of it will have stuck, but he could have spent the whole day consolidating his understanding of what interested him at that particular time, or gone for a walk and made footprints in the snow, or taken a thermometer out and found out whether it was an average day, or looked on the web to see what are the averages here for november? or in other parts of the. world. which learning opportunity was best?

totally subjective - no right answer. but i know which one seemed more appealing to me!

"particularly when the average teacher requires a barely scraped couple of a levels at the beginning of their training and has trouble putting together a ks1 spelling list at the end of it. "

I hope this is a joke! Doesn't describe most teachers I know!