What do I really truly think about schools?

[emmaagain]

In response to a discussion with AbbeyA in another thread, but I can't cope with these Byzantine conversations-go-everywhere thread.

I'll try to be very succinct.

1. Schools are inherently places where people get bullied [it's a feature of closed societies which people have not chosen to enter, like prison. Where outside such societies those who don't fit in with the particular culture can choose to leave it, finding alternative people to mix with, in schools you have to stay in a room with people you dislike day in day out]. If your child is not one of the ones being bullied, you might not notice it, but look around. There is often someone being belittled, whether it is by staff or pupils. Except of course in the perfectly happy skippy schools where it never ever happens (only I'm not sure I believe in them)

1. Schools are inherently and institutionally coercive. The teacher is the authority figure, and right and proper in a room of 30 pupils not all of whom want to do what everyone else wants to do, or even be there. The alternative would be chaos. But I am ideologically opposed to my children spending their days in a dictatorship, however benevolent. (NB I am aware that most will not agree with me about it being wrong to submit children to the dictatorship of adults, at home or at school. I am a libertarian and that's an unusual stance. But I am trying to express my objections to the institution of school and this is a large part of my moral objection)

1. Schools have really weird cultures which don't reflect the world outside at all (asking permission to speak or urinate? Eating on someone else's timetable? Stopping an activity when someone else says it's time to move on rather than because you've finished?)

1. Schools, by definition, cannot enable a child to learn in the most efficient manner, as responsive to their ability and interests. Because there is a national curriculum. Because there are so many children for each adult - there's no way there could be a truly personalised curriculum. Educational professionals do their bets, I know, to respond to the needs of each child, but there's no way they're going to come close to what a parent can do, just by definition.

It is all moving too fast for me to keep up. You seem to be getting very upset over something that happens in a small minority of places Juuule.

Yurt, I have found the perfect special needs unit for my boys.
It is a school where every teacher has specialist dyslexic training, and where most of the learning is kinesthetic.
Only problems are that it is a boarding school 300 miles away, and it costs £56K per child per year!

My friend's son is in a wonderful speech and language unit at a special needs school, and it has been the making of him. He adores it. And he has gone from being non-verbal at 6, to speaking in full sentences, and being part time in mainstream at 10.

Oh - I'd check out the affordable private schools too - if you were going to try school, you'd get to try whichever one you liked best. This is in la-la land, of course, where I am the heiress to a Greek shipping fortune.

I won't be disappointed at all if you don't deregister. I'll be delighted that you are having such a wonderful time.

I hated school and was bored to death and would have loved to be HE'd. I'm sure I'd have thrived in an HE environment and learned well.

But.... I had a very good subject teacher at secondary level who was so inspirational that she determined my ultimate choice of career. I'll always be grateful to her for that. My parents could probably have managed to teach me the subject matter, but they wouldn't have had that "spark".

Tricky.

last post was for abbeyA

(And when one of the teachers from his SN unit retired, we snaffled her as a tutor for our children! )

Can you take the LEA to tribunal too pay HC?

We'll have this with SS when ds1 hits 18- I have found the most wonderful place for him- like adult school - perfect, but it cost 300 quid a day

Humphreycushion-my middle DS is dyslexic-we had a bit of a problem in Year 7 because he wasn't getting the fantastic support that he got in the Junior School. Once I had seen the special needs person and she realised that I was wanting to work as a partnership, and not having unrealisic expectations of resources,he got special help. He was not lumped in an old classroom. He was tested, had extra time and a reader in exams. Support in some lessons and extra English Lessons in a very small group. Your mistake is to lump all schools together. I keep telling you there are good and bad , the same as there is good and bad HE.

"Your mistake is to lump all schools together".

I was referring specifically to the school my children would have attended for secondary school.

And it was exactly as I described it in my post.

And I know this because I visited it.

You keep telling me a lot of things, AbbeyA. And seem very clear about the exact nature of my mistakes.

Ye Gods.. how many times can word "inherent" be used on one thread??! It makes inherently tiresome reading

Yurt, we certainly have grounds for a tribunal.

But we spent five years battling the LEA for adequate support, and I just don't have the energy any more.

And I'm a bit emotionally wobbly about raking over the memories of tiny child in school uniform trying to throw himself out of car on way to school, etc, etc, etc.

You don't need to be Greek shipping heiress,emmaagain-you have already paid through taxes. I don't want a private school-I want to mix with all sort, as in real life.
I went to a variety of schools-we moved a couple of times-so 3 primary schools (I didn't make friends at the second but it was only for 6 months and I still wouldn't have wanted to leave). I also went to Secondary Modern and Grammar (in that order). The Secondary Modern was very good-I have 2 lifelong friends from there. I wasn't bullied at any. The chances of me deregestring are nil -if you let me choose the school-I am very fussy as to which school!

So because it's not nationwide (at the moment)and it's only for library books (at the moment) I shouldn't really be feeling as unsettled (outraged actually) about it as I am?
Yurt so you would be ok for your dc to give fingerprints? No problem with it?
Must just be me then.

Biometric stuff? Oh yeah, probably it will be introduced for a term then the systems will go down and no-one will have any money or expertise to carry on with it...

FWIW I am quite interested in home ed, am quite a hippyish teacher (as MB says, there are a few of us who don't stand and shout formulae at the class ) and emmaagain have read lots of your posts on other subjects and agree with your listening approach to parenting

so can I ask you some questions too?

You say you don't like the 'authority' of school. I can kind of see this although for me, I would like to teach dd how to 'use' this authority well, eg how to talk to teachers and get what you want? how to accept your mistakes and how to defend your decisions appropriately.

How do you feel about the police? They are an institution which we 'have' to respect even though we may not agree. Do you teach an anti-police 'argue back all you want' stance? Or do you teach respect for the law?

I think the original post was pretty succint actually. I recently spent a few days helping out in a perfectly lovely primary school and came home on day 1 and said I now understood why people home educated. Couldn't actually do it mind.

You will keep misunderstanding me Humphreycushion! I was only saying that all schools are not like this. There are good schools -there are bad schools. There is good HE and there is bad HE.

I gave fingerprints when I lived in Japan for my 'alien registration card'. Carried them round with me. TBH I don't have a huge problem with it. I have MORE problems with SS gassing to the LEA and HA about ds1 as I have been on the receiving end of whispers - but I can't see that they can do that much with fingerprints.

HC I can understand why you are HEdding- I would in the same cinrcumstances.

I don't get on this this thread (not you HC) - why all schools have to be seen as evil or why all schooling parents are being seen as lazy.

Yes as a home edder it must be irritating to come up repeatedly against ignorance, but why be equally ignorant back. Just tell people about it, If it's right for a family they'll embrace it.

Indeed Yurk. It's extremely patronising despite claims to the contrary.

Indeed Yurk. It's extremely patronising despite claims to the contrary.

("Yurk" ) Yurt! Sorry. Completely knackered, that why I can neither type not be bothered to get properly embroiled into the generalistations going on, on this thread..

'Yes as a home edder it must be irritating to come up repeatedly against ignorance, but why be equally ignorant back. Just tell people about it, If it's right for a family they'll embrace it'

Fantastic Yurt-all said in a few words!

I keep saying I have nothing against HE, but I do object to the assumption that it is right for everyone and we are some sort of programmed robot if we go through 'the system'and that all schools are prisons, hotbeds of bullying with frisking for metal and sniffer dogs for drugs with every DC fingerprinted in case they are a future criminal. If you really believe that then I can see why you avoid it! I can't speak for places like Moss Side-but I haven't seen any of it!

inherent inherent inherent [raspberry]

ok point taken

yes, AbbeyA, you're right I've already paid through taxes. The school choice is yours. You're the one who wants to go there

But also, AbbeyA, we are still disagreeing. I am saying that there are things fundamental to the instutition of compulsory school, however good the school, which means that the school experience is going to be suboptomal for some children, and that parents should be finding happier alternatives for those children. It's not about 'good schools' and 'bad schools', it's about happy children and unhappy children.

Hello Umlellala, thank you for joining in the bun fight

I respect the rule of law, and the police as enforcers of it. The law of the land reflects its moral code and its values. If I don't like it I should emigrate or stand for election or, I guess, become a judge (puts on wig).

The kind of authority one encounters at school is just weird, yk? You don't get it anywhere else. So if a parent wants their child to learn about respecting the rightful authority of a shopkeeper who says "don't touch", then I think they are probably better off having lots of encounters with shop keepers rather than with school teachers. Unless I'm missing some other context in the wider community in which the kind of authority structures of school are mirrored.

If a child wanted to use school as a forum for learning how to deal with a particular kind of authority, then of course I'd support them in that.

some children, so why are you making it sounds as if schools are alway bad for all children?

"I don't get on this this thread (not you HC) - why all schools have to be seen as evil or why all schooling parents are being seen as lazy." says yurt1

All schooling parents are not being seen as lazy. I'm not saying that at all. I've said about 14 times so far that if a child is happy at school then that's all hunky dory. Their parents are not being lazy. They are making the best choice for or with their children.

If those original premises in the OP are true, then yes, there are disadvantages to schools, no getting away from it, although not all schools will be experienced by all children as ghastly places, but the potential for them to be ghastly places is there, because of the power structures you get in them, and because even the very best teachers just can't go at the pace of every single child AND follow all their interests. Not without a time machine.

For some children, those negative characteristics of school don't affect them at all, or hardly affect them, and of course they should be there if they want.

But in school there is so much potential for children to suffer intellectually or emotionally with the parents either not knowing there are alternatives, or firmly persuaded by mainstream opinion that schools are just fine, so it must be this child who is somehow wrong, who must be persuaded or forced to continue going every day, despite them being unhappy and unfulfilled intellectually. There have to be better solutions for those children, don't you think?