If you are against Home Ed, can you tell me why?

[Bodenbabe]

I'm in the very early stages of thinking about HE and want to know all the pros and cons. If you are against HE, can you tell me why?

Haven't read the whole thread. I did consider he'ing but decided against because:

1. Whole family were dead against it, and I would have had to do a lot of self justification all the time. This self justification was tedious enough when I breastfed DS1 for almost 3 years.

1. I like my job, and would have been sad to give it up. We also would struggle for money on one income in Oxfordshire

1. And this was the decider. I was worried about a tendency I have to make the children, or various aspects of their lives, my 'project'. This is something I am trying to overcome. It is an individual thing related to my personality, and in no way applies in a general way to home edders.

Reasons I sometimes wish I was home edding:

1. Sheer grind of the pick up, drop off routine and exhaustion related to combining work and children.

1. Niggles with school. It is a great school, but I sometimes find myself thinking (erroneously I'm sure) 'oh I could teach that better'.

1. Seeing DS1 (only 4.6 ) looking like a little white ghost from exhaustion at the end of the Christmas term (he pleaded to go in although I wanted to keep him off for a day or two)

So there you have it! Good luck with your decision.

Glory be, what a thread!

Have only skimmed it.

Am a HEer.

Disadvantages:

1. [insert snippy comment about having to listen to the uninformed opinions of everyone and his wife about the perfectly legitimate educational and lifestyle choices of my family every five minutes]

1. [insert snippy comment about being part of the community to which, for whatever godawful bully-boy reason, Ed Balls has decided to extend the remit of the collectivist paradise asap, using lies, spin, smears and completely ignoring proper parliamentary process wherever necessary]

1. (being serious now) having to come fully to terms with the fact that one's child might be the kind of peg that ain't ever going to fit into the holes provided by mainstream society, and school as a representative of that society just won't cut the mustard for that child. I think this can be a big moment for a lot of HE parents whose children have SN of some kind - there's a moment of having to say "actually, the only people who are likely to help my child educationally and socially the way (s)he needs at this point are his/her own family" - often coincides with coming out of a system that has failed a child. Can be lonely and overwhelming - doctor/teacher has demonstrated that (s)he doesn't know best after all.

And can I just say: HE is becoming more and more mainstream. There are lots of 'normal' people doing it. And increasing numbers for whom it is the only way out of a state system whose values the family does not share. But of course there are lots of us whose children are delicate healthwise or socially unskilled or demonstrating massive sensory issues or just weird. Ffs, that's why they didn't/wouldn't cope in school, that's often why they aren't in school, that's why so many of the HE families you might have met seem weird. They wouldn't magically be unweird if their children were in school - those would be the children being locked in the stationary cupboard/ stuffed in the bin whenever the teacher left the room/ nicknamed Mecon man or rainman.

So many people seem to think that by HEing our children we make them weird. No, ladies, they were weird already, and it is the intolerance of people like you and, I imagine, your children, that contribute to some of us keeping our weird offspring out of school to work on their social skills and academic attainment in an environment full of support and love rather than one filled with sneers and ridicule.

otoh some us have children who would be made even weirder by staying at home

dd's way of coping with her (perfectly genuine) health issues is to stay in bed and go to sleep

she needs to be shot out of the house at 8.30 every morning before she starts convincing herself that she can't get up. (it's like jumping off the trampoline- if you dither for too long you can't do it)

if she was HE'd it would no doubt have serious repercussions on her health.

But this does not invalidate the choice of any other parent whose dc has totally different needs.

I am not aginst HED per se, but I do wonder how home edders introduce their kids to areas of knowledge and interest they themselves don't have. For example, I had an amazing German teacher who inspired me to go on and study German at University, I had an amazing RE teacher who made me think in ways I had never considered and I now have a lifelong fascination for religion. My parents are very intelligent highly educated people, but they don't speak German and are no-debate atheists. I am very grateful I got the input of both my parents and these fantastic teachers to my education.

Well, to stick with your language example; I've never learnt more than basic French but now me and DD are learning Latin together. If she wanted to learn something I had no interest at all in I'd arrrange for her to join/set up a group to take it further or find a tutor.

I know that I can't offer experience of everything DD could possibly ever be interested in - but then I don't believe that schools do that either, actually I don't believe ANYONE/WHERE can. If by chance you'd done Spanish with a less amazing teacher you might have made different choices and your whole life may have been different - but we can't compare another version of you like that. Perhaps you would have been an exceptionally happy multi-millionaire. Or maybe not. Home educated children may develop in a different way to if those same children went to school - but its impossible to judge in that way. (obviously making the point that the family/children should feel happy with how things are going and be open to finding ways of meeting the child's needs etc...)