So how do you teach what you don't know?

[Bodenbabe]

Practically-speaking, how does this work? Do you read up beforehand? (and if so do you spend a long time doing prep work?) Or do you and your DC learn it together? Or any other methods...?

It's a mixture of both for us. I sometimes read up beforehand and sometimes learn together with grandson.
If we're working on a project, grandson will research it on the internet/books etc.
I suppose the age of the child is relevant here. When he was younger [he's 11 now], I did most of the 'donkey' work.
I'm up early printing off templates for projects he's working on at the moment - snakes, meerkats, and The Great Fire of London, and then later today, he'll write in the material for whatever he wants to work on.
For maths,initially I explained the concept to him and when he felt confident, then I would write in his diary how much work he was expected to do for that day.
As he struggles with reading/literacy, I mostly work alongside him but that's becoming less frequent now as he gains in confidence.
I've learnt more now than I ever learnt about in school and I left school in 1963.:)

As a teacher in mainstream, both. I do a lot of prep work, but it's also that if the learning within the class takes a different, child-lead route, I KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING.
As the parent of a child with SN who is in his GCSE year and needs support at home, both.
Much more fun that way, and better quality learning for all involved.

Sorry, early morning eyesight combined with typing whilst looking at the keyboard.
Didn't realise I had caps lock on.
ICT is one of the things I've had to learn...

A third method, often used by autonomous educators, is to just let her do it on her own. The child may want your help to find resources for this purpose. "Resources" could include books, computer programs, or other people who are good at the subject.

If you couldn't ride a bike, how would you teach your child to ride one? You might wait until she asks, then get her a bike and let her work it out for herself. If she finds it tricky, she'll go ask someone else to show her.

@Goblinchild: "if the learning within the class takes a different, child-lead route, I KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING."

I'm confused. Was that a typo? If the learning takes a child-led route, how can you know where it's going?

I never know where we're going, LOL. We can start on space travel and end up in Beowulf.

Saracen, re. the child learning things on her own, how do they know that they need to learn this? Does that make sense? For example, they won't wake up and think "hey, I need to learn all about the difference between refraction and reflection" whent hey have probably never even heard of either. Or is the point of autonomous ed that if they're not interested then they don't need to know?

Whatever is necessary at the time, is what we do! Either they find it out themselves, or they ask me or some other adult who might know, or we look it up together.

They know they need to learn things based on the things they want to do. If they want to learn to play chess well, then they need to learn some maths...which they'll pick up as they discuss tactics with a helpful opponent.

If you want to do baking, then you've got to learn about how scales work, and how the ingredients react with eachother.

Why on earth would anyone need ot know the difference between refraction and reflection unless they want to be a physicist (or something!). I don't, and I seem to have survived so far in my life.

Your last sentence is entirely right...and quite scary to accept, until you really dig down into it. How much do you really remember from all you learnt in school? Unless you're very unusual, it's not much...therefore, you clearly didn't need to know it!

If you're interested in it, or you need to know it, you'll learn about it. If you're not, then you won't...and it won't matter.

I should imagine that most people do think about reflection and refraction sometimes, though they may not learn those words. There can't be many people who have never wondered why the world looks the way it does when you see it through a glass of water, or what a mirror is and how those funny fairground ones work, or how magnifying glasses and eyeglasses and telescopes and binoculars can make things look bigger or smaller or just weird, or why metal is shiny and cloth isn't, or why rainbows exist in the sky or on the bedroom wall, or why you sometimes get "redeye" in flash photography and how you can avoid it, or why you can't see out the window very well if you are in a lighted room at night, or why you get a clear reflection in a pond on a still day but not when it's breezy, or why the moon is bright when you've been told it isn't on fire, or how eyes work and why some people can see better than others, or what the difference is between matte and gloss paint, or why a drawing of a ball appears to have a spot of light on it and why the spot is the shape it is, or why we can't see as well as fish can when we swim underwater.

If they are scientifically inclined then they will play about with these things - being home educated and having plenty of time on their hands - and discuss them with other people, or perk up when the subject is on TV or is in a book they've picked up. If they are artistically inclined then they will spend a lot of time just looking at the world, and trying to make their drawings match what they see. If they like engineering then they may need to find out how light works when building a periscope or telescope or camera obscura. And if they just aren't interested at all then no, they don't need to know right now - maybe they will be interested some day. After all, there's no deadline for learning.

"After all, there's no deadline for learning."

That's sort of right - but if you want to follow particular career paths, or go to University with people the same age as you, then there are educational hoops you have to jump through at particular times.

'Why on earth would anyone need ot know the difference between refraction and reflection unless they want to be a physicist (or something!). I don't, and I seem to have survived so far in my life."

But you don't know if you want to be a physicist if you never so any physics!

"Why on earth would anyone need ot know the difference between refraction and reflection unless they want to be a physicist"

Well obviously it was just an example :) But what concerns me about the autonomous route is that DD now couldn't care less about physics but (a) as seeker said, if you don't do any physics you won't find out if it interests you and (b) what a child is interested in now might not be what they are interested in later. For example, I wasn't at all interested in history or geography at school but now I am and I wish I had paid more attention then. But I do take the point that a child could learn these things later. Thanks for your input, everyone.

You know you want to do physics if you are fascinated by how refraction and reflection works, even if you don't know the words at first. You go and find out more; ask your mum for more mirrors to play with. Your mum says 'you can get prisms and things too - shall we get hold of them - they're interesting to look at' and you say 'yes - can we go to the library too' and you read about it; and learn more about it, and get more interested in it. Then you ask your mum for more resources, and your mum says 'hang on, I think auntie lucy used to be a physicist - shall we ask her?' and you say 'what's a physicist' and you say 'someone who studies all the things you're interested in at the moment'.

My DDs watched Victorian Farm on tv when it was on and loved it, so I got them the dvd. I remembered enjoying 1900 house when I was younger, so got them that too...and that did a package thing on amazon with 1940s house so got them both. They loved them both and asked to do a victorian day at the local museum when I told them they did one so we arranged one with other HEors. They have learnt lots about WWII too from 1940s and been to the Imperial War Museum with us, and done the Blitz experience; and taken lots of books out of the schools library and devoured them all. They've dressed up as victorians and played air raids under the dining room table. They've put the different time periods on the timeline we have on our hall wall. They've made recipes from the war and agreed it was a bit horrible and wouldnt' have been nice to have so little food. They've watched the evacuees programme on CBBC. They've learnt about Mary Anning and looked for fossils on holiday; and learnt how fossils are made. They've learnt about how people viewed the world differently back then and understood how we learn to see the world through exploring and investigating.

They have powered all this learning from their own interests...and lots, lots more - this is just a snapshot of all the things they've 'studied' in their lives so far!

If you engage with your child, give them plenty of opportunities to discover interests, then they will learn. That's all you have to do.

saracen - I guess what goblinchild meant was not that she would know what topic they'd end up on - as you say, it's always difficult to know that - but more that by being prepared and reading ahead, she at least has a bit of background knowledge to prop up the learning. e.g. if she was doing the greek olympics with her class she might find out a bit about modern olympics just in case the conversation steered that way.

LackingInspiration, your name belies you - that second paragraph is fantastic! What a wonderful education you are giving your children! That sounds so exciting and just the sort of thing I'd like to do.

The only problem here is that sometimes in order to do something that really really interests you, like, for example, be a lawyer, or a nurse or a train driver, you need to have some stuff that doesn't interest you, like GCSE maths or english. And if you haven't done it you're stuffed.

Except you don't necessarily need GCSE maths and English - other things might qualify you instead. And you can get what you need as a stepping-stone when you need it - you do not necessarily need to work up to it over, say, nine years. Many EHErs take a GCSE after 6-8 months of work, so you don't get to the point where it is boringly repetitive.

One of the problems with the school system, IMHO, is that it suggests putting in place a bunch of knowledge just in case you need it later. This is a "bottom-up" attitude - if you collect enough bricks, you hope you'll be able to build something recognisable.

As autonomous educators, we have a "just-in-time" attitude - when we need to know something we go and find it out. If we want to get onto a course, we find out what qualifications are acceptable and work for the ones we need.

My point is that it is not necessary to impose lessons in X on a 5, 7, or 11 year old. They are bound to be interested in something, so you can do that and when they are 14, 15, 16, you can discuss what they want to do as an adult and work out how to get there.

My DD (18) will start on a law course at Exeter in Oct. She has NO A levels and only one IGCSE (Drama). Her academic quals for entry are 190 OU points, gained from five courses over 3.5 years. We started on the OU route by accident, almost, when my DD (then 14) came back from an exchange with so much German that GCSE would have been a waste of money. She did the level 1 OU maths course because it was more interesting and covered more than the GCSE. Also, by that time we knew she wanted to have enough qualifications for uni entrance, so she wanted to tick the 'GCSE maths' box (as that is the only mandatory qualification required for Law at Oxford...). She did ECDL this year simply because most places seem to want some proof that you have IT competence so we wanted to get a GCSE-level qualification in the easiest and cheapest way we could - 36 hours of personal ECDL study seemed more efficient than two years of GCSE.

My DS (16) has not decided what he wants to do but he is considering engineering. Over the past 2.5 years, he has studied for interest 60 OU points in a variety of science subjects and 30 points in maths. Because he does not know what he wants to do but it is likely to involve applying to uni, he has chosen to do an OU English course next year (to tick the English language box). We are also doing Russian, with a view to taking an exam next year, because it seems like a good idea for him to have a modern language and we've been doing Russian at a (very) low level over the last eight years.

None of this has involved a master plan - it has always been under discussion and the DC have always had the choice of whether or not to do courses. In fact, DS has decided that he will do another short course while waiting for the English course to start in February, so that he does not get out of the habit of working.

I know that's all possible - and people do it. But it is not easy, and I suspect that getting into University with non -conventional qualifications is going to become increasingly difficult. I do worry that this is an aspect of HE - particularly autonomous HE that people often do't think about properly. You seem, SDeuchars, to be very aware of what's required and your children are very motivated. This isn't always the case. I hate the thought of something so gloriously liberating as HE actually closing doors in people's futures, rather than opening them. And without care, it can.

Seeker - I think you'd need to get some data from the universities on whether non-conventional qualifications close or open the doors.

It has certainly been my experience from within academia that the unconventional students - the mature ones, those with an odd bunch of qualifications etc - frequently outperform, or certainly out-diligence and out-motivate, the conventionally qualified and conventionally educated ones. It's because they aren't just on the conveyor belt of KS1->KS2->KS3->GCSE->A Level->Do a Degree in My Best Subject->What Next?

And the Access/Widening Participation/whatever-this-week's-word-for-the-phenomenon-is agenda means that university admissions tutor are expected to look particularly closely at unconventional, particularly local, applications.

Without the obvious 9 GCSEs/5 AS levels/ 3 A levels trajectory, a candidate is a LOT more likely to be required to have an interview rather than just an automatic yes/no based on UCAS form and predicted grades. So you might even say that an unconventional educational path gives a person a better chance of getting into the university of their choice, because they will also get the chance to persuade the tutors in person that they merit a place.

And I think that it is likely to become easier when (as we are told this year) so many people are getting three or four As at A level that the universities cannot tell the difference between them.

Also, it is getting more difficult to do GCSEs and A levels outside an institution. The two ends arenot well joined... But there's a surprise.

SDeuchars said: "One of the problems with the school system, IMHO, is that it suggests putting in place a bunch of knowledge just in case you need it later. This is a "bottom-up" attitude - if you collect enough bricks, you hope you'll be able to build something recognisable."

This approach relies on being able to collect the right sort of bricks, long in advance of knowing what sort of building you will want to create. Given how many different sorts of bricks there are, and how many types of buildings might be wanted, it isn't terribly likely that you will have collected the right sort. Nothing wrong with that if you enjoy collecting bricks for fun - they are free, after all, and there's unlimited space to put them in - but if you don't like collecting them then why do it? Toting heavy bricks which you may not need could put you off the enjoyment of building entirely.

Returning to Bodenbabe's worry, "But what concerns me about the autonomous route is that DD now couldn't care less about physics but (a) as seeker said, if you don't do any physics you won't find out if it interests you and (b) what a child is interested in now might not be what they are interested in later. For example, I wasn't at all interested in history or geography at school but now I am and I wish I had paid more attention then."

You can't cover everything. What's special about physics, history and geography compared to thousands of other subjects? Why not insist that the child learns about repairing cars in case she may want to be a mechanic, or dyeing hair in case she wants to be a hairdresser, or juggling in case she wants to become a clown? If you don't make her do these things, she may miss out on her calling. But you can't do them all. There's always going to be an element of luck in what people are exposed to, and whether it happens to match their interests. The standard school curriculum is quite arbitrary, if you ask me. Yes, it's hard to predict a child's future interests, but what appears to interest her now is probably a better guide to what will interest her later than the odd collection of subjects which happen to have meandered into the school curriculum.

Saracen, you make a lot of sense with your comment about repairing cars or juggling. I must say, I am coming round to the idea of autonomous ed far more, having read what people have to say about it. I think it's something that has always just seemed wrong for me personally, without having given it a lot of thought. It does make a lot more sense now though and some of you havee really opened my mind about it!

I agree saracen. The problem is that, becuae the system is still very rigid and old fashioned, there are a small number of building blocks (about 5) that are needed for a huge diversity of careers, jobs and further education opportunities. It jsut seems sensible to jump through the hoops that loads of institutions and employers want to see. If you shove the bits of paper behind the clock and forget about them, they will be there when someone says "Sorry - you need GCSE Maths before we'll even think about interviewing you"

I have watched my niece struggle because she didn't have any of the building blocks she found out she needed when she decided she wanted to be a barrister, and she is now in the position of being older than everyone else at her level, still insecure professionally and fighting for a toehols at a time when she should be well established, and, incidentally, realizing that she will very soon have to make a decision about having babies at a completely rubbish time in her career.

This is helpful Seeker. What do you reckon the building blocks are?

GCSE Maths and English, presumably. What else?

I think that those (and probably another few) might well be things that one can quite easily persuade a teen would be a good idea to pick up along the way, since they will open some fairly obvious doors.

But I'd have to add as well that going to school and following the normal route does not at all protect one from having collected a pile of the wrong bricks. I remember the (conventionally schooled) daughter of a family friend saying aged about 17 that she thought she might like to think about being a professional classical musician and, of course, she was waaaaay too late to start thinking about doing serious practice and getting really good at that point, because all her peers were already in the NYO or county youth orchestras, or being juniors at one of the academies, or at a specialist music school like Cheethams or Wells or wherever. A vocation like that you have to be serious about by, well, maybe 14 for a wind or brass player, earlier for piano or strings. It's such a pyramid scheme, and so competitive that it has to be self-motivated very young. I guess ballet is a similar thing - if you're not off to ballet (boarding) school aged 18 months (ahem) you'll never catch up. And tennis, and... and...

Amsolutely. All those specialist things are another matter entirely. And, actually is another of my reservations about HE - particularly HE which doesn't involve HE groups. There is no way my ds would have discovered his bizarre talent for playing the didgeridoo if he hadn't been made (against his will, I may say) to go to a workshop organized by the school!

GCSE English, Maths and a language. And, although it pains me very much to say it, 3 A levels. Without them many potential doors are closed. Or at least, only opened by huge determination, perseverence and being lucky enough to meet the right admissions tutor.

Not sure about the A levels as mission critical TBH. Universities, even Russell Group ones, look at equivalent qualifications. Certainly IB. Certainly OU Foundation and Level 1 courses. And BTechy type things whatever they are called.

The head of department of a Russell Group music department said to me just a few days ago that yes, they ask for A level music as the standard offer but, frankly, grade 8 music theory is a lot more useful in terms of skills base nowadays.