Be honest, I want everyone's views......what do you think of home ed???

[3Ddonut]

I suspect this may get nasty, but please try to keep it nice ladies (and gents) I really like the idea of home ed, I would dearly love to home ed my dc but there are some problems, firstly I work 3 nights a week and my dh works 2 full days,my eldest dd is 5 and she really loves school, but some of things that she says about school unsettle me, I always said that it is their choice if they want to go to school or not, which is why she is there and my ds is in nursery but I wish she'd want to stay home and the longer that she's there, the more I feel that we're wasting time...

I've read a lot of the other threads and see that you can do some home-ed stuff alongside school but I don't think that it's enough for me, I want them to remain interested and not be moved on from one thing too quickly or forced to spend time on things they dislike.

We're already a close family because of mine and dh's shifts there is nearly always someone in the house and we get to spend a lot of time with the kids. I suppose I'd just like it to be more of the same.

My main concerns are that the dc would resent us for it in the future (although I would not take a happy child out of school) I also worry about the effect of home ed-ing the children would have on future employers and university places, I do worry about the socialisation aspect although the kids are in a few groups and are very social, they interact well with adults as well as other children, I'm concerned about how much time I'd have to work with them with working full time myself (no opportunity to cut hours)

I'm going round in circles at the min, I think my ds would be more open to the idea and I'm considering not sending dd2 to nursery at all.

The other biggie is that the school they attend is out of area and it's a really good one, they wouldn't get back in there if we deregistered, I've considered flexi-schooling but I feel that would bring more problems than solutions....

OK, Open fire!!!

you & your

Are most HEers quite "alternative" to start with? I know that's a vague word and I'm struggling to think of a better one. But if you are not particularly "mainstream" then home education probably makes a lot of sense.

I am totally mainstream, according to lifestyle. House , 2 cars, computers, computer games, widescreen TV, Sky, the works. I do have a compost heap in the garden, but I wear trousers and don't eat lentils.
The only way you can consider us alternative is that we cared more for our son than we cared for the opinion of other people.

Caring more for your child than for other people's opinion is mainstream I'd say. So mainstream and home educates. Interesting.

I used to be very negative to he until my children started school. Now, I think I would have done it myself if I thought I would be any good at it.

HErs & their lifestyles are as varied as those who send their children to school....we are just people

I would say (as I always do) that hourses are for courses.

But probably for most children schoo is an excellent option. They get a wide and very varied range of inputs from peolpe who are reasonably expert in their field.

they get a wide range of resoursces.

They get to do things they like, and most often learn to cope with things that they don't like.

They also get a varied education that will make it easier for them to change their mind in later life, without vast hasstle....so for example while I had to train for my PGCE. I already have the GCSE equivalents in English , Maths and science that I needed to teach (that all teacher need)

without those basics I would have had to put another year on my training, which would have been a waste of time, at that point in my like

*NKF: "But the OPs children want to be at school. Or at least one child does. Isn't that right? it sounds as if the OP wants her children to want tto be home educated. And they don't. That's surely a separate issue and a slightly different one to home ed versus schools."

Yes indeed, but it always always deteriorates into HE versus school here at Mumsnet.

About 14 pages ago, I gave my opinion, as a HEer, that if the OPs children want to be in school then they should be in school, and she should do everything she can to minimise whatever the disadvantages of school are that she was wanting to take them out of school to avoid. Convoluted sentences, moi?

NKF again "Can you home educate AND have a career or at the very least an interesting job?"

I do - both the career and the interest (I'm the chief breadwinner in our family).

And filthymindedvixen - I am not the person to answer your question, but I also would love to hear what the school-is-almost-always-best people have to say about your situation.

Thank you Emmaagain. Very succint.

nkf - I have a very interesting job: being a mum. Far more rewarding & fun than anything I did whilst in paid employment and it still leaves me time to persue a career voluntary work.

exactly emmaagain! I want to believe school is best. But I just can't!

"Are most HEers quite "alternative" to start with? I know that's a vague word and I'm struggling to think of a better one. But if you are not particularly "mainstream" then home education probably makes a lot of sense. "

Er... define mainstream and alternative. Really, you get EVERY flavour of person, as far as I can tell, and the reasons for HEing are as multifarious as the families involved.

There's a lot of really strong feeling on this thread that school is the the best place for most children to be, and that children need to do things, educationally, that they didn't want to do, for their own good, isn't there? I think those are the two BIG things potential HEers face (after "SOCIALISATION!!!!!!") from friends, family, and completely random strangers whose opinion they didn't even ask. That, I would say, is the strongest current in these Mumsnet HE threads - that there is a huge amount of negativity towards the idea of swimming against the stream in this particular way. Obviously this thread asked for *everybody's^ opinion, and so of course it's open season, but it's interesting to wonder why so many people are really quite so ready to leap in and condemn this particular lifestyle choice which doesn't affect them or their families.

These threads are really starting to get me down, actually.

It is such a shame that people who have never home educated think that it is OK to perpetuate the myths of HE.

Because it is important that HEing parents can come on here and be proud of the achievements made by their children, without being accused of being smug.

That we can have a moan if we are having a bad day, without being made to feel that we are self-serving for HEing in the first place, and we should just shut up or put our children in school.

For many children, HE might just save their sanity, if not their lives.

And parents need to know that there IS an option to school.

And that option MAY be better for their children than sending them to school.

And that every parent has the right to make that decision without being made to feel as if they are odd.

I am sick of reading about how I am damaging my children by HEing them.

I did what I had to do to save them from a school system that let them down.

You know what, we gave the state education system lots of chances to educate our children appropriately.

And they fucked it up - big time.

FMF, I have been there, and I know how it feels.

Filthymindedvixen I would look very carefully at ways of taking him out. If that wasn't possible I would look at changing school. My cousin left school because she was very very unhappy, was home edded for a bit (I 'facilitated' her learning ) then returned to school. She was not keen to return to school but for various unavoidable reasons had to. She came home from the first day and said 'wow what a difference'. And although her confidence was shot when she started her new school she quickly built it up again and very soon loved school (in fact started boarding as her choice). Thinking about it perhaps I would try changing school first then home ed if you have to work

Is something like a small human scale education school a possibility?

NKF - I said the same thing in my first post. My main concern was the comment that the OP wanted her dd to want to stay home and I'm not sure that home edding is the best choice in that sort of situation.

Emmaagian, well, that's why I put the words in inverted commas. In a small group stastically is probably the best I could come up with if I wanted to avoid a value laden description of alternative. And I take the point that you get all sorts who home educate. I don't think I've ever bashed home education actually but then pehaps you weren't referring to me.

Mum, Mum, HumphreyCushion said "fuck"...

No I wasn't saying you were a basher at all. It was the courtesy of your questions which pulled me back onto the thread

you know, nkf, I guess all Heers are "alternative" by definition, because the overwhelmingly normal thing to do is to send your children to pre-school aged 3.5 and then leave them in the system right through. Even the act of NOT sending them at 3.5 ("Is (s)he in nursery instead then?" with anxious furrowed brow) is "alternative".

So yes, in this sense we are all unconventional, by definition, just because we are doing the very unusual thing

Emma - I think you'll find I actually said "fucked".

I swear online just as rarely as I provide online hugs.

True enough. I suppose I'm trying to tease out is if many HEers find the choice to do that very different thing relatively easy, in that it jibes very well with other aspects of their lifestyle. Or is it usually in response to a bad school? I know that people have different reasons for choosing it but are there trends? For example, in the States, I've heard it's often a religious choice.

Ah. Don't know stats. Doubt anyone does.

I have no idea what trend there might be, if any - an unanswerable question

I don't really go in for HE bashing. Looked into it for ds1 when he was small (wasn't an option for us in the end). I brought up the point about having to do the dreary stuff because it was something that has concerned me in the past (including when I was looking into HE) about autonomous learning (not HE as such), so I was interested to see Seeker- who was Hedded raising it.

I suppose if you look at schools that take an autonomous learning type approach it explains why I love the look of Sands (where the child decides which lessons they want to attend- but once they've decided and signed up for them is obliged to attend) but am very suspicious of the Summerhill approach.

That's just my view on autonomous learning- although I think the concerns I have about it apply far more to teens than to younger children.

FWIW I don't think tha you are damaging your children HC.

I think that every parent needs to make the best decision for their own child. Sometimes that is HE, many times it is school.

What I dislike is the attitude that HE is always best. That there are no down sides to it, that nothing is ever better in school. Both have their advantages and disadvantages (I've said this a lot )

What is Sands?

Sands I doubt very much that ds2 and ds3 will go there, but if either of them really struggled with school for whatever reason I would certainly look at it. It has a primary school associated with it as well but I can't remember the name of the top of my head.