Thinking about HE

[birthdaycake]

I am thinking about HE my dc mainly because I am worried that sending them into school will lead to them losing a lot of their individuality and confidence and also because the school they are likely to get a place at does not have a good reputation. The eldest one (age 3) is due to start nursery in Sept and I am thinking about keeping him at home for starters. I was wondering why other parents had decided to HE right from the start and also they had got on with it.

singingmum - you have mis-read my post as well. I did not say ANYTHING about emotional intelligence or socialisation - I was QUOTING a person on the radio!

It is not my intention to insult anyone who HE- you really are a very touchy, defensive lot!

singingmum - I don't know how many times I have to say this - I have TAUGHT HE children! I KNOW they can get GCSEs at 10 or whatever.....I don't need to do the research.

please will you read my posts fully before having a go at me.

I am making general points- there will always be children or situations which are not covered by my posts.

Only when people give advice without looking at all the facts and research,which by the way most HE'ers do before they make their decision.
And you did insult HE'ers as you basically stated that most do not have the intelligence to teach GCSE level education

Yes, you were quoting Janet Daley but combined with a comment in a previous post
"Fundementally, I think that socialisation at school is important for children. "
"
The implication for me is that you agree with Janet Daley.

As regards being touchy or defensive, it is difficult to stand by and say nothing when someone claims to know all about home-education and then goes on to reinforce misconceptions about various aspects of it. I don't think that is particularly touchy. I think it's an attempt to put the record straight.

Gig - I have to say you don't seem to have much faith in children being able to learn when you say that parents can't teach up to GCSE & beyond. Children will learn if they given the resources & motivation to do so. I have to say I don't consider myself in a "teaching" role when I think about DS & HEing.... More of a facilitator & mentor tbh. I am almost certain there will come a point when he will overtake my knowledge in certain subjects but by the time that happens he will have the skills he needs to know how to find things out for himself. I'm looking forward to learning everything with him actually.

I would again question that we have a "system that demands lots of exam grades for Higher Ed". You don't need to do GCSE's to do A levels or A levels to get to university....I thought we had covered that?

gig-WHAT are your qualifications/experience/whatever for talking about HE'd kids?

It seems to me you have a lot of experience with SCHOOLED kids (as incidentally do a LOT of HErs. I'd guess that easily 50% of the HErs I know are ex teachers, as are most of the big names in HE-Holt, Gatto etc).

Plus most of us have BEEN through school and had our own experiences there.

So what you are actually qualified to say is that you think school is good, based on your experience.

You may further conjecture that you can't see how HErs can provide as good an experience eg with socialisation, but that IS just your conjecture-its not based on experience. Whereas those of us with HE'd kids-esp with older ones, eg juule, sue etc-DO have this experience.

It is most interesting that many of the posts her about HE are from Mums with toddlers ages 2-3 who are not et part of the education system, in the formal sense.

So rather than ask me what my qualifications are, I'd like to return the question and sk what your experience of HE is, apart from heresay?

I have not HE'd my children, but as I have said in previous posts, I am a very experienced teacher who has taught children 1:1 to support their HE. I am now in my 50s. I have also worked for several years as distance tutor for the national Extension College, where I taught English GCSE to both children and adults who were learning from home- including 12 year olds. I have also been a counsellor for parents of gifted children, advising them on HE options.

I don't see why I need to defend myself anyway- but you asked for my experience and there it is.

No more posts from me now- that's it.

Does talking & listening to hundreds of HE families, reading research studies on HE, books on educational methods, styles etc, and going to local HE meetings, events & workshops count as experience?

juuule - you are fabulous - as ever!

And a lot more patient than me.

..than I!

arrrgh, I posted a reply which has gone awol!

Right. This is a summary.

I started off by saying that I do think HE people can be rather touchy on here.

I also think it's a tad patronising to assume Gil is not aware of autonomous ed. etc.

however by dint of the fact that she has been a tutor for some HE families (sorry, Gil, talking about you as a 'she') suggests that such families might be in a particular HE 'camp' (emphasis on suggests) and therefore her experience may not be so much of the more autonomous HE-ers (however, I do accept that she is aware of autonomous ed as a concept).

I did pick up on the point about a parent not being able to offer as much as the ed. system - however, not all children have one parent and indeed, HE parents may spread their knowledge around (i.e. running workshops at HE meets).

The socialisation question is such a doozie - turns up every time. I've already highlighted our experiences and the fact that my elder two have since gone to school and had little difficulty fitting in (even though my eldest is dx. Aspergers and therefore has some support).

Obviously, I have older children and therefore my experience of HE is practical and my experience of HE & socialisation isn't a negative one (if anything it's the other way around in that initially the boys' experience of school was negative).

I still don't think it is necessary to have 10 GCSEs though or, in fact, GCSEs at all

Oh and I also don't see the need for her to defend herself, her experience of HE-ed children is as valid as any HE person as our view of HE is coloured by our own personal experience and the spectrum within HE is so wide that there's always bound to be someone that fits any particular assertion.

It's a shame she's gone, as I would've been interested to hear about the ed. phils underpinning the family's she has tutored for reason for HE-ing.

Crikey, that sentence was a mess!

The ed. phils underpinning the families-she-has-tutored-for's reason for HE-ing.

LOL - perhaps it's my lack of English GCSE showing.

I think you're right about the touchy thing, DS. I think that's true in a lot of online forums I visit.
I think it just arises because HEdders come across the same things over and over, and probably don't display as much patience as we probably should. Mea Culpa on that, for sure.

It's easy to get defensive when you hear the same misconceptions time and again, and it does sometimes mean that the valid points of critique can get missed.

No I'm annoyed off by this

yet another potential HEr is asking for support, from those people who have a lot more experience, and someone who on the fact of it has VERY little experience of home education, aside from tutoring a few HE'd kids (putting her in line with a lot of other secondary school teachers really), has come on with a bunch of not-very-original prejudices and its turned into a discussion on THAT. AGAIN.

And as a consequence, birthdaycake hasn't really had a decent discussion but has had to defend her position.

I don't know why my experience of HErs would be relevant, incidentally. I have not really actually contributed to the debate (because I DON'T have older kids). But you will find that most HErs with younger kids DO have a lot of friends with older HEd kids, since groups are not segregated by age.

I agree, Filly.

I actually think that this forum on this subject is not as touchy as it could be - considering the number of times a request for information has been turned into the 'old socialisation chestnut'.

Or ends up with HEing families having to defend their choices in order for their opinions to be validated by people with opposing views.

All part of the cut and thrust of debate, obviously.

But I think we do pretty well at keeping calm when the very way we conduct our lives is constantly under criticism from people who often have a very limited amount of information about HE, or a rather skewed view of it.

fillyjonk
I said that Iwould not be posting again, but your post made me so angry that I have no choice.

Please do not belittle me and make assumptions without knowing anything about me- you state that I have taught a few HEs- how on earth do you know WHAT I have done in 30 years of teaching? I am not going to produce a CV here to allow people to gun me down, just because I happen to point out the other side of the argument. (and BTW did I EVER say that I disagreed 100% with HE???)

It might be news to you, but I chose to initially HE my children instead of sending them to nursery at the earliest possible age. Just don't make assumptions and sweeping statements about people about whom you know nothing. And try to have a debate here without it being personal.

Gig- just calm down. No-one is belittling you. I'm sure you are fantastic at what you do. Filly is just pointing out that birthday cake asked why other parents decided to HE right from the start and how they had got on with it. The tone of your posts have been to put a very negative slant on HE and also to support some popular misconceptions. To people who do home-ed you don't sound as though you know very much about how it works. This may or may not be true but it is how your posts are coming across. So it follows that you don't appear to be responding to the original request you are just highlighting what you perceive to be the problems with HE which the people who are doing the HE rightly know have no real foundation.
Filly is justifiably imo annoyed that someone who has come on here to find out more about home-ed has had the thread hi-jacked by a 'debate' going over the same ground which many he-ers get a little tired of going over when with a bit more research the person objecting to HE could find out about very easily.
Home-ed may not have worked for you, for whatever reason, but it does for many, many people. I think the op was wanting to know how and why it worked for those that it does work for.

Gig - how on earth are we expected to know that you have HE'd you own children? You stated earlier "I have not HE'd my children..." and have only talked about you professional experience until now.

No wonder you don't think mine & other parents outside the formal education system have sufficient experience to comment here...you dont see your own HE experience as relevant to mention in the context of the OP either

Aviatrix - I think you've hit the nail on the head, there.

thank you all

gig i am sorry you are upset. I'm afraid I do see this as something worth taking a stand over.

I stand by both my original points

1. If someone is making assertions and criticisms it is reasonable to ask what their qualifications/experiences are. Why on earth NOT? Otherwise it comes across as just a bunch of HE prejudices and, honestly, do you think we are all too daft to have worried for ourselves about socialisation/maths etc?

2. Birthdaycake started this thread for information and support. There certainly is a place for the discussion of the legitimacy of home education. And actually I agree generally re the defensiveness on some forums. But there needs to be a space for people just to discuss HE on a public forum (allowing lurkers for whom the info is also valuable).

Hi Birthdaycake

I started HE right from the start, largely due to having a very bright child who was reading tolkien at 5 and there seemed very little point in sending him into pre-reading schemes.

We did autonomous education throughout, no sign of Gig's army of tutors - lol. My son did his first qualifications at 11, open college credits in IT through the WEA, and then his first GCSE at 13, studying on his own and coming to us if he got stuck. This was his own choice.

He went to college part time at 14 to do A levels, and gcse's concurrently (he ended up with only 4 gcse's, which has not been a problem at any stage for going into higher education), then to Sheffield university at 17 to do a degree in Biology, and now at 21 he has just finished his first year of his PhD at Manchester School of Medicine.

He is also very interested in music, having played in a band for a couple of years, and is also heavily interested in martial arts. He is a very popular and friendly lad, with loads of friends.