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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

Just found this website for kids that hate school

6 replies

catnipkitty · 12/01/2012 10:02

www.school-survival.net/index.php

It's enlightening, especially the forums, and upsetting how many kids are so unhappy :(

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shineynewthings · 12/01/2012 10:22

Really interesting catnipkitty Thanks for posting. The psychologist on there Sarah Fitz-Claridge, makes some very profound and truthful statements regarding the labelling of children who refuse or don't like school as 'school phobic' - as if they are somehow mentally ill - as unfair and cruel. I agree with everything she says.

I don't know if I can bear to read the stories on the forums.Sad

shineynewthings · 12/01/2012 10:26

Not sure if I'm allowed to quote but here's some of it:

'School phobia? is a dreadful label for some children's perfectly understandable response to being compelled to go to school against their will. They are not phobic, any more than a conscientious objector is a coward; they are refusing ? and in most cases very nobly. Over the years, I have spoken to many worried parents of school-refusing children. The outrages these children have been subjected to in the name of ?education? disgust me. They have been saddled with a pseudo-medical label that has deliberate connotations of ?mental illness? ? with all the stigma and the implied (and not-so-implied) menace that goes with that. Their perfectly reasonable dissent, and their desperately courageous resistance to being hurt and harmed has been cynically redefined as ?overdependence,? ?psychological instability,? and ?immaturity.? They have been psychologically tortured under the guise of psychiatric or psychological ?treatment? for a non-existent ailment. Their parents ? also demeaned by labels such as ?overprotective? ? have been threatened with court action unless they physically force their terrified, traumatised children into school every day. Many such parents who have sought my advice have themselves been in a terrible state of stress and trauma. Why don't they just comply? Because they know that forcing their child to go so school is immoral, psychologically harmful, and inimical to their child's education.

Or do they know that? Parents often do not seem to know it consciously. Or if they do, they also ?know? the contradictory idea that it is right and important for children to be schooled, because the law, the psychiatric, psychological, and educational professions all say so. They may be nice people in many respects, but as a result of their own parents' coercion, they are simply unable to see how damaging and wrong it is to force a child to go to school.'

ommmward · 12/01/2012 16:50

fascinating that that's a Sarah FC project. She's one of the founders of the Taking Children Seriously philosophy (together with the theoretical physicist David Deutsch - it's basically an application of Karl Popper's theory of knowledge to the specific situation of child rearing).

Zinkies · 14/01/2012 22:15

I don't think it's Sarah FC's project; they're just syndicating her article.

There is a group for TCS:

groups.google.com/group/taking-children-seriously/about

ommmward · 15/01/2012 12:43

Ah- that's makes sense, thanks :)

I rejoined the TCS google group recently, after leaving it ages ago when I was in email-list overwhelm :)

catnipkitty · 16/01/2012 12:48

Thanks for the messages on the thread...I'd never come across TCS before or Karl Popper, really interesting. Gosh, I'm learning alot by getting into home education Wink (hope the children are too!!)

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