Three questions from a budding home ed family

[EggyBreadAndBeans]

I'm having one of my periodical bursts of intense enthusiasm for home ed, hence all the questions at the moment! Grateful for others' perspectives ...

(1) Ds (2 years, 4 months) wants to go to school. He cried when we dropped a friend's son at pre-school and he wasn't allowed to stay, and talks a lot about how he'll go to school when he's a bigger boy. If we get to age 4 and I know I believe in home ed, do I explain the school and home ed options to ds and let him decide? Freedom of choice and all ...

(2) Ds is registered to begin pre-school as he approaches 3, for a few mornings a week. (We live in a lovely, friendly village with a "good" pre-school and school - more on this in a bit.) I'm not 100% sure about it but, given ds's enthusiasm for it and it's play-orientated nature, am going to give it a try. What's the home ed perspective on pre-school/nursery?

(3) We moved to the village we live in because it's where dp grew up, and he loved it. Loved the school, the community feel, the friendships. If we choose the home ed route, I can see our decision setting us apart from other parents, friends and families in the village, with the church/pre-school/school at its heart. I can even see some people feeling insulted by our decision. Have other home ed families come across this? How have you handled it and managed to still feel part of the community?

There are my questions for this evening.

Thanks all. Night night. EBAB

If your children actively want to go to school, are you home educating them for their benefit, or yours? Are you sure you are not being selfish? And I speak as someone who didn't like school. YOur children are not you and they may love it. My dh did, to my astonishment. Lots of children do.

If you can be rid of them for free why not? Darling then you can start a card making company and knit things. Bake your husband a cake and wear gingham.
Noticed you said 'dp'. Unwed. How bohemian. Don't wear gingham in that case, tye dye would suit much better.

Oh, as Dorothy Parker I really think you should spell accurately. It's tie dye sweetie.

Oops, just read this and it sounds dreadful. Mean to put .

Actually, still think it sounds dreadful. Bedtime, I think. Goodnight all!

Pedant.

Curlew - Why do you think that HE wont provide a basic education.

terramum, I was interested in Curlew's comment

"how are they going to feel if they have not been given the basic conventional education"

My home educated children are getting a basic conventional education - plus so much more!

IME HE gives a child the opportunity to concentrate on areas that particularly appeal to them, so I would think it is ideal for children who know at an early age which career they want to concentrate on eg "doctors, or physicists or study medieval French literature".

I'm very interested in Curlew's views as a home educated child, particularly in hearing about areas that she feels were lacking due to not being in school.

eggy, do what you think is right for you. thats my advice. I take it you have done basic research and a bit of reading and not just fallen out of bed one morning and thought "oooh, home edding, what a fab idea".

feel free to CAT me or email me if you want to chat further: [email protected].

Sorry - I think I didn't express myself very well at one in the morning. A quick post - I'll come back to this thread when we come back from the beach if it's still active. I didn't mean that home ed does not give a good basic education - of course it does. Or rather, of course it can - I'm not sure that the American Christian Fundamentalists do! What I meant was that you do need specialist teaching if you want to do physics A level for example. Or are we talking about primary level only? I went to school when I was 16 to do A levels, and there were lots of subjects that were out of the question for me, simply because I had concentrated largely on the subjects that particularly interested me (and I was way ahead of my peers in those) but I hadn't fully realized that not doing the subjects that didn't interest me in particular would close doors to me.

I teach in a state secondary school . I have 'lost' one child to be home educated. in that case it was because his fundimentalist Christian parents did not want him to learn about other religions. or even read Harry Potter.

He was a nice kid, and his parents were good poeple, but that did worry me a little.

You can limit choice when you get to GCSE levels if you rely on adult ed to bridge the gaps. I have taught in adult ed, and in our county there is no facility for studying any scince other than Biology. No-one teachers physics, Chemistry of combined science GCSEs in adult education classes.

the only way round that would be to emply a home tutor.

I really dont see how people can say that HE limits choice, when at school your choice of subject is limited by what the school chooses to do and which examining boards they use and then how they can timetable all of them. If GCSEs are taken by a HE child (& I put the emphasis on IF - as I have seen many skip GCSEs & go straight to A levels or other higher course either thru a local college or by correspondence) they are able to take which ever ones they choose.

"Choosing" the wrong subjects at an early age is also not just a problem for HE. I think its simply a fact of life that our priorities change as we get older. I know very few people who are working in a career they had chosen at GCSE level! Thats what correspondence courses, colleges, access courses and the like are for. Also, just because a college or university states you have to have x subjects at x level doesnt mean there isnt room for manouver. I know plenty of HE students who have got onto such courses through submitting a portfolio of their work and an interview.

Choices can be limited by schools too. At my secondary school, when it came to options, I had to choose which one of biology, chemistry or physics I wanted to take. My dd has just found out now that if she wanted to do science at 'A' level she needed to have opted for double science last year. She only took single science because this wasn't explained to her.
Oh and I agree with what Terramum said.

That was exceptionaly bad counceling by the school and I would raise that with them as a matter of urgency.

Most schools now offer all three scineces as part of the double science package, or three separate sciences.

But the realisty is, sadly, that if you are relying on adult ed to cover some of the science GCSEs you may well be in the position where you cannot do physics, chemistry or double science.

However poorly some school may deal with this (and I'm not arguing with you btw), the reality is that there are few opertunities to study science GCSE in night school in the county that I teach in.

Filly ? will e-mail you to expand on the Summerhill and other discussions. Thanks for your e-mail address.

Franny ? thanks for looking further into HE "school" in Norfolk. Would be interested to hear more about that.

threebob ? thanks for the NZ school info. Found their website ? www.discovery1.school.nz ? though was down when I tried to visit. An article on the school is here for anyone who's interested.

curlew ? like others, would be interested to hear more on your HE perspective, with you having a home education yourself as a child. Like terramum, I understood that in homeschooling cases ? and where relevant GCSEs/A levels are absent ? portfolio/interview/entrance exam for university were options. Has your niece been called to the bar at 35, and not at an earlier age, purely because of the limitations of homeschooling? Am intrigued by your view that your children learn a lot at school about "life, relationships and independence" that they couldn't at home. For ds, I'm imagining ? and I could be wrong about this, having less experience than you of HE ? that the out-of-school world gives more experience of life than the classroom does, and likewise meeting people of all ages and walks of life and occupations could teach more about relationships than 30 kids the same age. Hmm ?

sorrell ? I appreciate there's a tricky freedom-of-choice issue around ds wanting to go to school, and me and dp favouring HE/freer schools for him. He's just two. I think we'll meet up with some other HE families, help him understand as much as possible about both options, and then see where things go from there. We've each spent 17 years in formal education; ds hasn't. We're researching more and more about how kids learn; he isn't. His aged-four decision about going to school isn't going to be particularly considered ? but it still matters, hence above. From a personal perspective, we are interested in HE/alternative schooling for ds's benefit, not for our own. Like Filly, the thought of 15 years ahead of me of being at home with ds is more than a little bewildering, as there's a lot I want to do too. Hence interest in setting up alternative school. Like this Discovery 1 idea - part school, part home ed.

Dottie ? dotty

Humphrey and terramum ? agree.

Thanks, all. EBAB

Me back again and rambling on. I feel like putting one of those health warnings on my posts "The opinions expressed here are exclusively those of the poster and are not intended to apply more generally. Any offence caused is absolutely unintentional and sincerely apologized for"
FWIW. My experience of home education was in many ways a very positive one. I did all the things that make home ed sound so attractive - I could work at my own pace, we travelled, I learned to work very hard at what interested me - I could spend whole days finding out about thing - I remember becoming fascinated by bridges and I drew them, made them, looked up facts about famous bridges, made a scrapbook.... On nice days we could decide to work in the early morning and evening and go out for the day. I had lots of friends, I went to Brownies and Guides, I spent Saturday morning at the stables mucking out horses with lots of other horsy little girls in exchange for the occasional ride. In many ways it was idyllic.
However, in adult life I have come to realize what I didn't learn. How to fit in. How to get down and get on with something boring or uninteresting because it just has to be done. How to rub along with people I didn't find congenial because they happen to be sitting at the next desk. How to play hockey. How to have silly fun with a gang. How to be better or worse than somebody else at something. How to handle success and failure. These are all hard lessons that I have had to learn painfully as an adult. My dd has learnt - or is learning- them all at her very ordinary state primary school - and she's not 11 til December.

curlew - thanks for sharing those insights. Really useful. FWIW, none of your posts have offended me; they have intrigued me, where I've had (or thought I had) a different perspective. Apologies if my messages have in any way offended you. Really not intended.

In light of your most recent post, it seems that some of the best - and worst - things about both home ed and conventional schooling can be two sides of the same coin. For example, plenty of people go to schools and come to feel that they don't "fit in", and that they might have fitted in better had they not gone to school/learned within a small group of kids. For me personally, I went to a state primary and a results-obsessed private secondary and came out top - and I can't deal with failure very well at all; only success. I got hooked .

So I guess neither option is even close to perfect ... although I love the sound of all your best bits .

Thanks for your sharing your experiences, curlew - v interesting.

Curlew, I certainly haven't been offended by anything you've said either, and I think your comments have been very interesting.

It's really helpful to hear the opinions of someone who was home educated.

EBB, I realize that I didn't answer about my neice the barrister (I am SOOOOO proud!), Yes, I do think her late entry into her profession was directly related to being home educated. The problem was that she was so thrown by arriving at school to do A levels that she just couldn't deal with the structure. She had no experience of having her learning dictated by someone else, so she dropped out. She then drifted for 10 years - some positive drifting, some less so - then she decided to return to studying. She is now very ambitious, but she is in a situation where she is chasing younger people - and she wants to have a baby, but she knows that if she does, she is unlikely to get much further in her career. Swings and roundabouts? Yes, but a more "conventional" education could possibly have given her more choices.

I was called to the Bar at 30. There are lots of mature applicants and I think there is some kind of 'quota'; I found it a distinct advantage as you have more credibility (with clients, judges). Also more confidence. I went to a really crap comprehensive and eventually a polytechnic. I wouldn't have been accepted on an equal footing with my peers at 22. I'm just saying, doesn't necessarily mean Home-Ed held her back, unless the alternative was posh private school and Oxbridge.

Curlew,
I too am very interested to read your posts, as I have just started out as a HE mum to my 2 dds 3 and 7. Did you have quite an autonomous education?
Looking back do you wish you had gone to primary or secondary school? (Assuming you didn't do either).

My personal experience of school was both good and bad.
I did very well academically but was bullied relentlessly because of this throughout my school and college life.
On one hand it's made me painfully awkward, shy and uncomfortable in social situations, particularly around other women (I went to a girls school).
But it also made me quite a strong person inside, I've always tried to do my absolute best just to show the bullies I was better than them!
I took my eldest dd out of school because she is really bright and just wasn't being given work suitable to her ability and aptitude there. She was bored but now she is free to work at her own alarmingly fast pace!
I am hoping she will go on to Grammar School at 11, as I'm not confident I will be able to assist her to the level she may need.
That is a decision we will take when the time comes.

The more I read about HE the more I am convinced it is the right decision for us, but hearing about it from somebody who has actually been Home educated gives a fascinating and vauable perpective.

Curlew
Am interested in why you think that things like fitting in and being better or worse than someone are important skills so to speak. I've been HEing for 9yrs my ds and dd have learnt that fitting in is not that important and that if better at one thing than someone else then they are often better at another thing than themselves. It balances itself out.

My 2 also have to do the stuff that we all found boring in school. As for science they will do all the stuff we did in school as most experiments can be succesfully duplicated at home. The only difference that I can see between HE and what can be taught at home is where expense is concerned i.e. bulk buying=cheaper. I even use subjects they like to teach subjects they hate romans = english, carpentry=math.

I was school educated but found it an horrendous experience.I have never fitted in, was given bad advice career wise and lost interest as taught myself far faster than the school did.

Sorry to go off subject a bit but am curious as to curlews experience.

On subject I removed my son from village nursery as was informed that he was backwards due to being unable to hold stencil still. the fact that he could read and write at 3 were ignored Have since heard rumors that my dp and I keep children prisoner. Have to laugh at them they have never even asked about what we do

Curlew, I'm a bit puzzled by a couple of things you said.
"However, in adult life I have come to realize what I didn't learn. How to fit in. How to get down and get on with something boring or uninteresting because it just has to be done." My children have to do boring things outside of school because they have to be done. How did you get to be an adult without having to do something boring?
"How to rub along with people I didn't find congenial because they happen to be sitting at the next desk." You said you went to Guides/Brownies. Did everybody like everybody else? I know there are some in the Brownie pack my girls attend who irritate the life out of them but they get along with them anyway.
"How to play hockey." I went to school and never learned to play hockey. Same with my children at school. Why hockey?
"How to have silly fun with a gang." Not even with Brownies or friends?
"How to be better or worse than somebody else at something." Surely you've been better or worse than someone at something as a child.
"How to handle success and failure." Did you never succeed or fail at anything as a child?
I don't mean to be offend with these questions. I am genuinely curious about how you managed to avoid the above situations and why you think going to school would have made it any different.

I'm going to come back and have a try at answering people this evening - it's fascinating and I can hardly wait to try and get what I'm thinking down, but my garden is calling me (I have another thread on that subject if anybody's got any helpful tips!)

For now - hockey was just an example picked because it so happens my dd loves it and plays a lot because her school is lucky enough to have a big field and they play loads of games. Substitute football, rounders, recorder group, netball - any activity that requires a lot of people and a teacher with specialist knowledge. More later!

I think it's about what's right for the child, each child is so different and has different social needs. You also have to take into consideration the community. You don't want your child to feel isolated. All the children in the village will attend the same school and play together when they are home. I'm weighing up various education choices at the moment and feel the community aspect is an important one. Is the school so bad?