Regretting taking kids out of school.

[apocketfulofposy]

Posting here for traffic,sorry.

I have 5 children ranging from aged 6 to 10 weeks old.

We always planned to home educate after reading a book about it when ds1 and 2 were toddlers,then when ds1 was about 4 and a half,and i was pregnant with baby number 4,i decided to give our local primary a go,partly because it was just that time where he would of been going and partly because i was finding it hard with them all at home (no family on either side for 3 hours,husband who works away monday to friday,rural ish area,i cant even drive!).

Anyway reception was ok,he liked it,made plenty of friends,dc2 and 3 went to the pre school and liked it,except dc2 had lots of issues with hitting other children and just general destructive behaviour.

When ds1 started yr1 last year he hated it from the word go,he still liked seeing his friends but he really noticed the change between mostly play to mostly lessons,plus his teacher left after a term and the new one was very strict and spoke to the children like she was some kind of prison officer.

Ds2 started reception and seemed to enjoy it but after a few weeks i was called in a few times about his hitting and destroying things,they said he just physically wasnt ready to be at schoolt hat much so put him down to half days,which was a bit of a faff for me as i was in and out all day but it was fine.It didnt seem to help though and he was behaving worse and worse at school,especially at lunchtime,but strangely his behaviour at home was getting better.

Add to this the fact i was finding it hard carting them all around everywhere and i felt crap because i kept forgetting to reply to things and i kept hearing all this micheal gove stuff,i just decided to pull them out,id been thinking about it on and off for a while and just thought do it,and id id it almost on a bit of a whim.

The first few weeks were great and we all loved the novelty of not rushing around in mornings and the kids have been playing all day,and actually one good point is that they have been getting on so much better.

But apart from that i am starting to regret taking them out,i miss the routine,i miss being able to take the babies to their groups and talking to my "mummy friends"(cringe) i miss being able to go to the shop quickly with just the double buggy,i also just dont know what to do with them,and the house is just such a mess!

I know these are'nt huge things but its starting to feel chaotic and i can feel it going back to the way it used to be,before school,and it hink i underestimated how much it did for all of us.I just dont know what to do!

Help and advice please!xxxxx

Luce, this is what I don't understand either.

If a child simply follows their interests and learns what they want to then doesn't this impact the comprehensiveness of the subect?

Thay may enjoy Maths and Physics but don't want to learn Algebra, so they don't learn anything about that area, or Mummy tells the tutor to skip algebra. They then find that they struggle with kinetics because they threw a vital piece of the jigsaw out of the pram.
They miss the bigger picture of relevance and interconnectivity of the subjects.
Just because something may be tedious doesn't mean it's not worthwhile and may be essential in enhancing our understanding of another area of learning.

A teacher who has studied these subjects in depth has a retropective understanding of what skills and preparatory subjects are essential for study in other areas. They can see the bigger picture and know that even if a child finds Algebra tedious he will see the relevance and appreciate his knowlege when he continues with his kinetics studies.

This is just an example. Having a child just follow his nose ( or a parent for that matter) and idly wandering through their own interests is to study blindly, shuffling along in the dark without realising the complexities of the subjects they are pursuing.

That's why I think qualified teachers are so important.

Atthestrokeofmidnight, as a teacher I totally agree with you.

If a child is allowed to simply learn and do the things they are interested in, then how is this preparing them for later life? Surely teaching them that they only need do what they want is not a good life lesson?

And how do they discover new things? For example, during My A levels I hated Shakespeare, couldn't understand the point of studying it. I had an exceptional teacher however, who helped me to explore it and completely changed my opinion. His ability to help us think critically by asking the right questions was crucial to my success in the subject. This is the talent of a good teacher and something I would never have received at home.

I share your love of Shakespeare Melon, I had tried to read a few plays and discarded them, thinking them boring and stuffy.
We were required to study Shakespeare at school and I braced myself for a couple of years of tedious lessons.

However I had a teacher who adored Shakespeare, brought the work to life and I was completely captivated. I couldn't believe what I had been missing- even used Shakespeare to audition and win a part at the National Youth theatre for a summer production.
I passed my English exams with flying colours.

If I had been home educated Macbeth would still be gathering dust in the corner.

Yes atthestrokeoftwelve, people who are studying subjects purely out of interest and not for some other purpose may often skip the parts which don't interest them at the time. I certainly did that when I was at university and was studying additional maths topics recreationally which weren't on my university's curriculum. In some cases I later "filled in the gaps"; in some cases I didn't.

This approach may seem alarming if you believe that the young person will only have one opportunity to study that topic. Classroom-based study uses this linear model. Topics are studied in a certain order, as specified in the curriculum (or perhaps in the order specified by a textbook if a single textbook is being used) with support from the teacher. Miss something out and it seems difficult or impossible to revisit it later.

Independent learners don't tend to view things this way. They aren't going to get left behind by the rest of the class. Some do prefer to start at the beginning of a textbook or set curriculum and work their way through systematically, particularly if they are certain that they will need a thorough grounding in the subject. A young person aiming to do physics at university level is very unlikely to think she can miss algebra out forever. She may prefer to be guided by a tutor or curriculum or textbook which says in essence, "Trust me, you'll be needing this. Just learn it now."

But many kids who are learning under their own steam prefer to learn things as and when they see the need. That works too. Take your kinetics example. Such a child might initially skip algebra, then reach the point where she discovers that she does need it after all in order to study kinetics. She will then go learn algebra in order to do the kinetics. What's more, she is likely to really steam through algebra, because she sees the point now and is eager to get algebra under her belt so she can return to the kinetics she loves.

Some of the most brilliant maths students at my university had a very haphazard grounding in certain topics. Nobody saw that as a big deal. A professor might mention in class that anyone who hadn't already done xyz should go learn it now, and we did. That's what motivated, independent learners expect to have to do sometimes.

My SIL discovered in adulthood that she enjoyed Shakespeare, by being taken to a play she wouldn't have expected to like. There is no deadline for learning these things.

Sandra Dodds is a very interesting person. As a Radical Unschooler she takes her philosophy into parenting as a whole as well as into education. She is very different to either john Holt and Kenneth Robertson, both of whom can back up their arguments with evidence and some sort of academic rigor.
Would it be very unkind to wonder if Sandra Dodds children have moved on from the part time jobs in gaming shops that certainly the eldest one was doing the last time I read anything about him?

That's very interesting Saracen and I'm sure you're right, but what about if the child is never naturally interested in something? We were talking about something we didn't like until a teacher helped us to be. How does this apply to HE?

The trouble is that there sometimes is a deadline. And sometimes you don't realise it until you've passed it.

There are many ways to discover an interest in something, melonribena. Being made to do it against one's will is one possible way to discover an interest, but I would say a fairly unlikely way. There are, after all, many people who have gone through school and been exposed to algebra and Shakespeare there without finding a love of it. If I were a betting woman, I'd lay odds on someone discovering an interest by having it offered to him rather than having it forced upon him.

Martorana, there aren't a great many inflexible age-linked deadlines in life. Could you give an example of one which a young person is likely to come up against?

Oops, just realised the time - I'm now off out for most of the day. Sorry to rudely ask you a question just before disappearing!

A question, for those who dislike HE. If the mum was a teacher, experienced through the Primary years up to GCSE - what would you say then?

Depends on her circumstances.
Is she a single parent with 6 other kids for example?

True, but if I'd been offered Shakespeare a thousand times I would have said 'no, I'm not interested' It was only through being 'made' to do it that I found that interest!

No all children are alike, some need 'encouraging' to find things that interest them and they are good at.

Bronya, it's a case of individual circumstances. I'm qualified like you state but wouldn't HE as I wouldn't feel that was the best for my child. I want him to go to school and experience that. We're lucky to have excellent schools locally though.

Someone else may feel differently!

I don't dislike HE but it's not what I would choose and my experiences of children who have been HE hasn't been entirely positive so my opinion has been coloured by that too!

I think there seems to be a conflation of what students are taught and what they actually learn in school.

No matter how well thought out the curriculum, how well designed the lesson plan or how fine the teaching, it only means that good teaching is happening around the student. It doesn't guarantee the student is learning anything let alone the intended lesson. The process of learning is easily disrupted by a myriad of factors both major and minor.

I'm thinking of everything from a teenage student just being a bit distracted from a key lesson (perhaps that classmate he/she has a crush on spoke to them at break, maybe they are thirsty, overheated in a stuffy classroom etc.), to them trying to keep up with their education while going through major life events such as a prolonged illness or severe bullying. Of course in real schools there are other disruptions e.g. staff illness not covered by adequate supply.

Disruption can happen in home education too, the difference is the students can adapt to individual circumstances much more flexibly. Can't concentrate on that textbook on a warm afternoon? No matter, take advantage of the fine weather to do something outside and come back to it in the evening. Or for something more major, like a new sibling or family bereavement, just take a break off from structured work (if any) if they need to and go back to it. No need for 'holiday' to be during school holidays.

I'm sure that many students do manage to cope with minor and even some major disruption in their learning at school but it's pretty difficult to catch up with a moving vehicle. I think that some school students also find it difficult to take responsibility for their education because they aren't used to doing so - its quite easy to see it as the teacher's job to teach them, rather than their job to learn IYSWIM? The ones who do best at school are ones who take that responsibility anyway.

So I'm not sure that its fair to assume that there aren't gaps in a school student's understanding of a subject. Just because the teacher taught those lessons, doesn't mean the content was learnt by an individual student. They end up having to do the same as a HE student and catch up in their own time if they miss something.

I realise I'm labouring this point - sorry.

Our son is only a toddler at the moment so we are keeping our minds open about the different options available for his education. One of the reasons I am interested in HE is being able to go at the child's own pace in individual 'subjects' without being constantly compared to children born the same year as them and the unhelpful associated stigma of being judged to be poor at maths just because they take longer to grasp something, or talented at something else just becomes more easily (so perhaps feel they don't need to try). Labels and perceptions about themselves as learners which can follow them throughout their school years (and into adult life). I think it harms learning to set the bar at the wrong level rather than just see what they can do and encourage them to do their best always.

You know school education can result in rather patchy stuff too. I learnt about dinosaurs in Primary 3. They might have been touched upon later in biology when learning about evolution but not in any significant way. As it happened I like dinosaurs and took my knowledge of them further in my free time. But I have a 1st or 2nd year understanding of the Egyptians and Romans in history whilst doing Chemistry and Physics to Advanced Higher and Higher level (A Level equivalent).

My school IT lessons (1st and 2nd year of high school) consisted of copying out text and formatting it (bold, italics, alignment etc) which I could already do easily. But I taught myself HTML in my own time to build websites - and I still learn about design and coding in my spare time because its something that interests me. Likewise our English lessons at school didn't really go into depth about creative writing (as opposed to critical reading) and I was actively discouraged from writing fiction as part of the course (not because I was spectacularly bad at it! but because the teachers were not confident of fiction being done in exams - and if its not for exams they didn't spend time on it). But its something I've continued to read about and practice as an adult, joining a writer's group etc. I had to give up Art after standard grade because I didn't have room for it on my time table, but I do love it and continue to improve my skills. I had to choose between doing geography or history at one point too (and picked geography because the standard grade history course was very world war I and II heavy, topics which I was less interested in at the time, but I've learnt a lot about since through documentaries and my DH who loves his history.

This is all a bit random. It's just snippets from my education, chances are most people have similar stories of learning what interests them rather than (or in addition to) the taught curriculum - school doesn't have the monopoly on learning. No inspirational teacher taught me to code The way subjects are structured are arbitrary to some extent - because it is possible to study almost anything in depth but if they are introduced earlier in the curriculum and not revisited then it doesn't happen in class.

HE realise how much of learning can be gained by following interests and using them to gain transferable skills which can then be used to explore other topics.

There seems to be an underlying assumption in some posters that students will not tackle anything difficult if they are not forced to do so. But kids love to learn and challenge themselves, and once they are past a certain point developmentally, are able to do something they find tedious because they see the value in learning it. Forcing them to sit through lessons they aren't interested in doesn't mean they will learn it.

Another reason I'm interested in HE is because I think intrinsic motivation is important, something undermined at all levels of schooling by rewards and grades. So I'd add Alfie Kohn to my list of influences as well as John Holt and Sir Ken Robinson.

Sorry for the epic post, its a long thread with lots of interesting discussion!

Lovely post, spiritedwolf

For the naysayers on this thread:

Next time you wonder why all HEers don't accept compulsory inspections in order to weed out the people who aren't doing it "properly", please bear in mind that the answer is "You. Because of you. Because the chances of having a LA education officer who shares your distaste for what we do without valuing it as we value it is too high. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, and we are the turkeys here."

I'm trying to imagine a thread about Judaism where Christians would lay into Jewish values, beliefs and practices without really understanding them as some HE practices have been laid into here. Or a thread about struggling with breastfeeding but wanting to continue with it where an army of people would come on and say repeatedly and forcefully that the person ought to stop being so ridiculous and actually formula feeding is much more beneficial, in fact people shouldn't be allowed to breastfeed at all. Or we can vice versa either of those scenarios. Please don't forget that the people at the other end of your comments are real people not just words on an internet forum, and this is our daily lives and those of our thriving, learning, happy children that you are not-so-implicitly saying are inadequate at best. I don't go onto education threads and say "get your children out of school, all school is evil" partly because it would be discourteous and partly because I don't believe that - I think there is a set of children for whom school is a very good fit. That doesn't mean I think it is optimal for every child in every family, but I wouldn't dream of telling individual people that I think their choices for their families are horrible

But it is partly your last sentence that bothers me.
I work in a certain sector of industry.
There are good practices there and bad ones.
If a fellow practicer in the industry is doing it badly, I dont have hesitation in saying so.
Pertly becuase it is right that I should, and partly becuase I dont want the whole sector to have a bad reputation.

I consider it even worse when the whold childhood education of a child or children is what is being discussed and talked about.

HE parents should care about that and speak out. Not stay silent as most seem to do.

OP, it's not your educational stance though, is it ? Reread your OP and maybe you will understand why people are dubious about the preparation and "philosophy" behind what seems to be letting your children do what they like because it's easier for you

i kept forgetting to reply to things and i kept hearing all this micheal gove stuff,i just decided to pull them out,id been thinking about it on and off for a while and just thought do it,and id id it almost on a bit of a whim

Those are your words, copied exactly

And i certainly have no axe to grind with HE. I hav seen it work very well and if we weren't in catchment for an excellent school which we loved i would certainly consider HEing if i could afford to give up work.

Would it be possible for the HE ers on here to ignore the very few actively hostile posters and just carry on the debate with the vast majority of us who are not? I find the discussions endlessly fascinating- but they are always spoiled because HEers (understandably) feel the need to lay into the very few nay swyers and the rest of us end up as collateral damage.and end up feeling the need to defend out own choice to use schools. Which is unhelpful,not say the least. So could we just assume that the act of questioning does not imply negativity or hostility. (Negativity and hostility imply negativity and hostility!) And believing that there are things about some HEers and aspects of HE in general that may be problematic is not being Anti HE.

Great post Martorana

I have to say - I don't have children old enough to HE at the moment, but the one thing that makes me think that I wouldn't discount it, is the local schools. If you don't get into a grammar school around here, the education at secondary level is pretty dire. At primary level, there are some good schools (and some awful ones!). Even in the 'good' primary schools though, if your child has a learning disability, they never achieve their intellectual potential unless they are tutored at home, at their own pace, to catch up. To be fair that is true of schools in general. I know children at well regarded prep schools with Dyslexia/dyspraxia, who could do so much more but are caught up to 'average' and left there as doing 'well enough'. Extremely bright children, at that.

• interesting lack of capitals - need to re-read before posting!!

I certainly offer advice and counsel when asked for it, but

(A) not on a thread like this, where any specifics about my life or that of others will be pulled apart without a sense of the whole. I'm not a masochist;

(B) not when the op has a ten week old baby. I would completely expect someone with a ten week baby to be struggling with holding everything together, whatever the educational setting. In my experience and opinion, the most important thing for children with a ten week old sibling to be learning is their new place in a changed family dynamic. And the most important thing for the mother to hear is that this, too, shall pass. Others have made this point supportively above.

I totally agree Martorana, excellent post. I'm an outstanding teacher (Ofsted said so must be true!!!) who believes wholeheartedly in state education, but I'm open minded and realise this isn't true for everyone. I like debate and discussion and welcome the opportunity to learn about HE. I don't dislike it, but it's not my choice. I have actually ignored lots of posts that people have written stereotypical things about schools that I don't agree with.

And the point about not being inspected because the inspectors don't agree with the philosophy of HE, do you think that Ofsted come into schools in a positive agreeable way?

Martorana, it's really hard to engage with the interested-and-courteous-but-doubtful people on this thread because it gets drowned out in the chorus of "home educators are failing their children" which, if one is a home eu actor, is hard not to take personally...

Also, home edders should no more be expected to want to be debating the finer points of their educational philosophy and approach than school users should. Some will, some wont, but it doesn't make their educational choices any less valid. You could start your own friendly and supportive HE debt ate thread, but I don't know how many of us will bother to engage - in the same way that Jews don't always want to talk with Christians about the possible problems with Judaism, and formula feeders definitely do not always want to talk with breast feeders about the possible downsides of formula feeding. We make our choices, which we think are right for our children and our families; there definitely is not an onus on us to be willing to discuss endlessly, with strangers on mums net, what the relative merits of these And other choices are.