Any solutions to outdated education system?

[MeganS77]

who else is in search of solutions to the outdated education system. We have 2 boys who just don’t fit into the schooling system and we’re at our wits end trying to keep them encouraged. Anyone have any solutions or alternative platforms that they’re using to give the real world readiness skills and money making to their teens?

please, any start would be helpful?

Firstly, what is it that makes them not fit? What are their interests/what are they good at.

I am a teacher and work in an SEMH school that really has it right. 22 years in mainstream and it's broken.

Have you just taken your sons out of school? Don't worry, it will all start to make sense soon. When they are out in the world rather than segregated from it at school, the learning happens naturally.

An aspect of teen life which I think is much overlooked these days is the opportunity to be productive and helpful as they grow into adulthood. Epstein's article "The Myth of the Teen Brain" argues for giving teens more freedom and responsibility. Unsurprisingly, he is an advocate of home education and specifically the unschooling approach. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-teen-brain-2007-06/

Along similar lines, Blake Boles has some good ideas about how to help teen unschoolers towards adulthood. He observes that while home ed parents do encourage young people to discover and follow their passions and develop their related skills - giving them more time and opportunity than they could have if they went to school - sometimes that happens in a vacuum whereby they don't learn how and whether it fits in with the rest of society. I'm certainly guilty of that "you can be anything you want if you work hard enough, darling" mentality. I went to a seminar of his in which he recommends to young people that they consider the overlaps among these three areas:

1. Your passions
2. Your skillset
3. Others' needs, i.e. how can I make myself useful doing this thing I love? or who will pay me to do it? Your kids may never find the holy grail of a job which they love AND which they are good at AND which will pay the bills, but they can work toward some approximation of that. Or perhaps they can indulge their passions via hobbies, while also having a skillset doing something they don't hate, which maps well onto other people's needs which they can use to pay the bills. Ways to encourage that sort of thinking are to do voluntary work or simply spend time talking to people in their everyday life about what those other people want and need. My teen did some stints volunteering on tall ships and that was what all the crew advised: "Here's how you can get a job doing this. But you need to know it will never pay a mortgage. We ALL have other jobs in addition to sailing these ships!"

So the bottom line for me is, let them do more. Let them be useful. Stand back and let them get stuck in. When it comes to their share of the housework, don't give them easy jobs like unloading the dishwasher. Let them tackle hard jobs like fixing the dishwasher when it breaks. And look for ways to engage them with their community in a productive way, whether that is through voluntary or paid work. Can they teach elderly people to use computers? Look after or coach younger kids? Be politically active? Home educated kids have far more time on their hands than schoolchildren, which gives them more scope to do all these things.

Are you in touch with your local home ed community? Other families may be able to advise on local opportunities.

We are looking at online secondary schooling for DD1 who is autistic.