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!!!

MB
There are as many diffierent ways of home educating as there are people doing it-I think accurate information should be out there and families will make the decision that is right for their family-so i won't be shooting down anyone-whether you have sent their children to boarding school/public school/alternative/local comp OR formally/informally home educate your children.

We ARE totally autonomous educators.
It is surprisingly common amongst home educators-but many many use a mixture of forms.
Autonomous doesn't necessarily mean unstructured mind-if the child chose structure that would still be autonomous.

Many, many autonomously educated children learn to read later than schooled children.

Our youngest child left school aged 8 totally unable to read or write a single word-not even her name.
We did start off structured (I had a schooled mindset after all I knew no different) but we quickly found that it didn't work for us, we allowed time for deschooling and that eventually became unschooling.
We had been told that this dd would always need extra help on a one to one basis as she has such complex difficulties, with dyslexia.
Any reading/writing left her hysterically upset.
After finding out more about autonomous education we stopped 'making' her read or write at all.
No more 'sounding it out'or trying to read what it said.
Instead if she asked what a word was, we told her, we read everything for her, we got loads of talking books so that she would still get the pleasure of novels, all to herself.
We managed to allow her education to run ahead, by talking, talking to her and still looking and doing all of the things that she was interested in-lots and lots of practical learning and visits to places of interest, workshops and galleries, whilst waiting for her reading and writing ability to catch up, when ready.

It worked for her as it has worked for countless autonomously educated children. Though I don't know of anyone else personally where it happened so late.
She finally began to get it aged 13!
She is now 15 years old and is a fluent reader and spells and writes pretty damn well!
She is a confident, well educated, happy individual with self confidence and self belief.
The same cannot be said of the children she was in the remedial class with.
The professional who last saw her aged 9 and spelt out to us, how bad her dyslexia was, cannot believe the results and has gone away to read up more about autonomous home education.
DD is choosing which OU course to start with in June.

My other two are dyslexic as well, although not to the same extent.
They both were attending a Dyslexia Institute sessions but chose to stop them when we began to home educate autonomously.
When ds went back into the system at FE college to do A levels, he was reassessed and the dyslexia assessor was very impressed with the improvement and has actually written in the report that his parents must have worked him really really hard at his home schooling lessons
At school teachers had said he may achieve GCSE grade D if he worked very, very hard.
He achieved B's at GCSE and then got the same at A level.
His turors were very happy with how well he settled in academically and socially.
He is working now locally and saving up towards going to Uni later-his choice as he doesn't want to be bogged down with debt.

Middle child has much the same story except she has just this month left home to work for a very well known national organisation.
She will be working whilst doing her OU degree and saving towards a Competent Crew certificate, so she can go sailing again.
They have both had part time jobs since they were able to-and life experiences that would not have happened if they had been in school-I am not saying more valuable life experiences-just different ones.
Neither has had any difficulty getting full time jobs and have always been highly recommended by previous employers.
They also have had a socila life that is the envy of their schooled cousins and peers, we have spent many a long week at camps and gatherings all over the country

Now our story is not unusual amongst home educated young people.
I personally know a lot of autonomously educated young people at Uni at the moment-including one at Oxford doing Law who bypassed GCSEs and A levels and used the OU to provide evidence that they can study to the required level.
There is another mom on this board whose autonomously educated child, won a full scholarship to a posh public school-and another here whose child is the youngest person ever to be doing a PHd at Manchester-he is doing it in medical research.
Others at the same age who didn't choose Uni are doing very well at their chosen career paths. These are not unusal in our circles.

If you really would like to know more about autonomous education and autonomous life MB, or anyone else, I have pasted links previously on this thread and there is also a website calledJoyfully Rejoycing. This is an American site so they talk about 'Unschooling' but it will answer all of your questions about watching TV all day/not reading/respecting children's choices. Please do go and have a look there as you will get much more coherent answers to your questions as I am struggling with a dreadful virus at the moment.

I don't think any of us can be 100% certain that the choices we make are the right ones-but we just make the best decision we can with the choices we have to hand at that time.

So I'll be respecting your choices that you have all made to do the best for your children, as we have made ours.

JNS, again, I'm delighted to ready your happy resolution.

Fab post, Julie.

Could you post a link to the article written by the man who spent some time with your HE family, please? That was a very interesting read.

Here it is

I started reading that Bubble99 - but it got a bit dense, and I don't want to read on [poor discipline in pursuing things].

I liked the grouping thing. If there was a straw poll here of HEers on MN
a) those that do for religious reason
b) those that do for pedagogical reasons

c) those that do because they withdrew from school due to problems

Which would be the biggest group? I think C.

I think that a lot of people don't know that HE is an option unless they have had probs with schooling and searched for help and advice.

So you are prob right ahundredtimes.

We'd be a 'b' though our issues are with the NC, rather than those 'delivering' .....teaching it. Also, the class sizes.

I must say that i'm finding this thread more interesting than the usual 'debating pros and cons of HE and school' threads.

It's really getting me thinking especially about the autonomous/guiding/directed learning aspect.

I think that I would let DS follow his interests, introduce ideas that he might like (or that I feel may be important), but not push anything.

About the eating sweets all day/playing potentially addictive computer games all day. Isn't that more of a parenting aspect than an educational aspect ?

Is there a difference between learning autonomously and living autonomously.

DS could not live autonomously any more than I could because we affect eachother.

I think the point I was getting at is that as adults we often do not allow our children free range, if we feel that they are incapable of making an informed decision that is ultimately going to be beneficial.

Given that most of us would not allow a child free range of diet, I'm genuinely interested as to why people do allow free reign over learning.

many teenagers that I see follow patterns of very self destructive behaviour while they are maturing. I'm not sure I would aloow my children do do what they want if that were happeneing

Yes, it is an interesting thread TM.

I think free range learning is close to philistinism actually. It's very crass I think.

I can see that it does lead to children who are very, very good at the things they like and are able at - and that is a HUGE advantage for children with SEN and their confidence - but it also denies rigour, intellectual challenge and graft.

I find the child-centered argument suspicious too. We all think our children are unique and special, but they are not. They are not original thinkers or creative genius's. Most children draw very similar conclusions to a set problem. I think they can be denied access to areas of knowledge which might be boring, but will be useful, or mind-expanding or ultimately fascinating.

I do trust my children to be interested and curious in things. They do follow their own noses, and I want them to have the time to emerge themselves in the world of Musical Theatre (v. camp ds2) but I also think that it isn't harmful for him to forced to consider his times tables.

TM- but there are autonomous educators who do allow their child to play computer games all day (not an opinion I've gained from mumsnet more one that I came across when I was on HE lists and planning to home ed ds1). It's one reason why I was reassured that allowing ds2 his 'fill' of DS time would work- and that he would be sensible with it. but he's not at all.

Thanks for the link Bubble99. And interesting. I can see why it's such an alien idea to me if a main way of learning autonomously is via conversations. DS1 (the once potentially home edded one) isn't capable of having a conversation so it really is miles away from anything that could be beneficial to him. I suppose the idea of enriching conversations is how I imagined motherhood- rather than our reality (which is so far from it to seem on a different planet).

Not all children with SN though 100x. DS1's SN are such that he can't learn from his environment. I can see the advantages in the situation described above though.

100x

you say, 'I can see that it does lead to children who are very, very good at the things they like and are able at - and that is a HUGE advantage for children with SEN and their confidence - but it also denies rigour, intellectual challenge and graft'

I'm not even convinced that it is always helpful for the confidence of children with SEN.

Avoiding the things that he is bad at would have left ds literate, and that would have been a real downer on his self confidence.

Being the world champ at LOTRs games wouldn't have counter ballaced
that.

Now granted if a child can never grasp something, regardless of help, then it would be better to avoid it, but that is a slightly different issue, I think.

Oh yes Yurt, I suppose I meant the Dys's when I said SEN.

From everything I've read, MB - exclusively HE and schooled children often have different attitudes to learning. If a child hasn't been time-tabled to learn something, natural curiosity has room and time to grow. All the accounts from families who have moved to autonomous learning from school learning share a common theme of initial anxieties wrt their child's abilities compared to their schooled peers.

If a child has left school to autonomously HE it must take parental nerves of steel in the early days! I've found it interesting to read how HE children often make huge leaps in reading once they start, even though they may not begin reading until age 8.

WRT teenagers, perhaps HE teenagers have less to rebel against? Not sure, I'm not blessed with teenagers yet.

ds has dyspraxia, and I'm not sure that avoiding his problems would have built up his self confidence. He's always realised that not being able to read isn't 'normal' even in the home environmnet

sceptical about HE teens not rebelling. It think it is a natural (and healthy) part of that time in their life.

Yes I agree with you MB. I called them all philistines!

I know with my supposed 'free-range' education I spent my entire time in the drama department, art block, english and history room. I specialized at O'level

And that was rubbish frankly, and not good enough. Now partly that reflected my interests and my abilities BUT it would have been better if someone had dragged me in to the maths room by the scruff of my neck and said 'SIT DOWN. WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS, AND YOU WILL LISTEN.' Though tbh if they'd tried that in the physics lab we'd all have ended up crying.

Though I had bad teachers too, so perhaps it's different.

DS1 taught me how to add up big numbers. Thank god for ds1, I mean I literally didn't have the tools to do it. It's pathetic I think. Anyway he is a big help.

If I'h have followed my initial instincts I'd have done history.

I'm so glad I had to do other things, because much as I still enjoy history, I love science so much more.

Left to my own devices I might never have found that out, or if I did would have had a lot more faff getting the education in it that I ended up having.

Oh god bad teachers are a curse, i've had them too. thankfully the bad wones were counterballanced by the good ones

Well my decisions were very sound I think. I mean I loved those subjects, and carried on studying them and then took them on in my professional life.

But I also had to catch up a lot when I was older. I wanted to do it, I saw the point in intellectual activity for the sake of it I think. There were HUGE gaps in my knowledge, and it wasn't until I found a structured environment for my A levels that I suddenly started reading about science, geography and philosophy.

where were you taught 100x? Were you at Summerhill or something?

Yes, but it was the environment which led to 'bad' teachers I think. I don't know.

I like teachers now, I value them enormously. I also do lots of stuff here, because I'm curious about the world and I want to pass that on to mine.

I also WANT them to have access to areas I can't provide, or which might not interest them but which will help them develop their choices and means of looking at the world.

I like intellectual activity for the sake of it.

I did all the sittign in maths classes listening at school, and only partly understood what it was all about (once I got beyond the basics). It was only when I "autonomously" chose a maths course as part of the OU degree I'm doing, that I actually understood things, like the point of quadratic equations for example. No amount of teaching me in a clasroom at 13 woudl have got me there, I needed to want to know why myself, and not because that was the next chapter in the textbook.
I haven't done much encouraging DD2 to learn her times tables, but she's now coming round to seeign why it might be useful not to have to sit and work out the six times seven each time when she wants to beat her big sister doing some mind gym puzzle in the newspaper.