Why children go to school

[HSMM]

Had a very interesting debate at my OU tutorial this week about why children go to school. The tutor wrote 'school' up on the whiteboard and then had lots of lines going off it saying things like socialisation, qualifications, etc. When everyone had finished shouting out, he went through each thing and we had to decide if it was accessible without going to school and he wiped off the ones which were. At the end, the only 2 reasons he had left for children going to school were:

1. To keep them off the streets
2. So their parents can go to work I am considering HE my DD, so found this backed me up. The other students were very shocked and still could not agree, even though the evidence was in front of them!

I do believe that learning from a young age the importance of being up and ready to a timeline is a great skill, needed for the majority in work.

I don't understand why HEers seem to think that parents with children at school don't educate in the way they do. We don't just leave education to the school hours. We do what they do, just leaving the base of academia to school. Our children continue to learn out of school, especially in things not academia based

School educated teens have also learned to self educate as much learning is seeking information but also have the advantage (imo) of having structure and deadlines

"I do believe that learning from a young age the importance of being up and ready to a timeline is a great skill, needed for the majority in work."

Have just realised that on this matter we could probably divide ourselves into the families with routine-led baby life and families with go-with-the-flow baby life. I'm a go-with-the-flow-er, I confess it. I think we can learn to live according to timelines when we need to - it doesn't seem like that big a challenge to me. [shrug]

"I don't understand why HEers seem to think that parents with children at school don't educate in the way they do. We don't just leave education to the school hours. We do what they do, just leaving the base of academia to school. Our children continue to learn out of school, especially in things not academia based"

I understand that. Apart from the schooling families who keep their children in cupboards from 4pm to 830am every day, obviously.

"School educated teens have also learned to self educate as much learning is seeking information but also have the advantage (imo) of having structure and deadlines"

If a HE teen is thinking of university, they will need to be doing something to demonstrate to the university that they are worth accepting. This would often be A levels (either taken privately or by signing up to an FE college) or some OU courses. So of course they've done structure and deadlines. Not really seeing the problem TBH. When a person wants to achieve something which requires deadlines, they learn how to keep to deadlines. And again, I know any number of young adults who went to school who still can't meet deadlines, so I'm not really seeing it as a school/HE differentiator. Am I missing something?

I think if I hadn't been up at 7-8 each morning for school every day from 5-17, I might not have felt so sick and tired of doing this that I decided to drop out at 18.

It all seemed so depressing and so relentless...not that I got up any later once I'd left, but it was a sense of breaking free that was ultimately quite frightening, as I didn't feel 'right' being outdoors during 'working hours'.

I think it can be counter productive.

2kidzandi,

I wish I could put that into words as well as you have.

I think the majority of HEers do a great job. I am very close friends with two families and have represented a lot of HE parents as a lawyer.
If I hadn't found the perfect school for my kids five mins away and been able to afford the horrendous fees I would cerainly have considered it myself.
What would worry me though is that I would put too much slant on the arts side of their education. I know very few scientists or mathmeticians.
I would also want to keep on working and don't see how I could manage it.

Thanks Kayteee! How are you all? If you've been following my last thread you'll know it's becuse I get more 'time' to be intelligent Anyway you did pretty good yourself!

'because' perhaps I need more time to be intelligent?

"I do believe that learning from a young age the importance of being up and ready to a timeline is a great skill, needed for the majority in work"

My god, really?

I spent something like 17+ years in education of various sorts and I STILL hate getting up in the mornings.

In fact my kids get ME up (because they want to read/ask a million questions/get dressed and go off to some cool HE thing with friends or whatever but hey whose counting )

My god, how many years practice of this do I need?

But this is completely surreal, isn't it?

The argument for schooling seems to have boiled down to:

"Kids need to go to school so they will have lots of practice in getting up early."

Ok, I went to school, my university friends all went to school, my current Mummy friends went to school and I can tell you all without a doubt that school had absolutely bugger all to do with the current patterns we now live our lives by. I, and my friends, skipped lectures at uni, slept late, turned up late for placements - the only placements and lectures we turned up on time for were the ones we actually had a real interest in and enjoyed.

As Mummys, myself and my Mummy friends have all struggled over the first years of motherhood to find a pattern that suits our families and it bears no similarity whatsoever to our school routines.

The 'you need school to know how to have structure in your life' argument holds no water at all IMO.

When I said that a crap HEor is likely to be a crap parent, I meant that you'd have to be someone who was going to totally ignore your children and have no interest in them whatsoever to be crap at HEing. IMO, a parent who enjoys their child's company and takes an interest in them and their interests will provide a fantastic education for their children.

But again, this all goes back to what Ommwardandupward says - it is very difficult to debate this issue when some of us are coming from a deep trust in the process of autonomous education, and others are coming at it from a strong belief that you can only learn from being taught. Maybe we need a whole different thread for 'learning about autonomous learning'

I genuinely take my hat of to good HEs as a trained teacher I would doubt my abilty to teach my own dd. I know when I am working with students from my tutor group in subject areas outside of my own I find it very very hard and it takes hours of prep from me. As in a HE situation I am working one on one, iy is just me and the student , they are a willing well behaved motivated participant but it is totally out of my comfort zone. This year I am teaching humanities to year 7 rather then just RE as I have done in the past. That takes hours of outside reading every week before I even get on to the lesson planning.

I do totally get the criticisms of the National Curriculum being too restrictive, although I thing it is changing. One of the reasons I teach RE is that there is no National Curriculum or SATS and you have plenty os scope to follow the pupils interests.

It does disturb me to hear that people assume that school lessons are all about teachers battling with 30 demotivated badly behaved children. It does happen in some schools - I have taught in them but in many schools it is not the case.

I do agree with the point about everybody HE to some extent, my dd learns a lot with us at home. Today for example we have been to hambledon hill where as a family we leanrnt lots which was followed up when she got home.

But Twinset, you're still talking about non-autonomous learning - it's such a different kettle of fish to the way a lot of HEors approach HE. It's not about teaching, or preparation, or needing to do outside reading.

It's about your child happening to read a story about someone going into space, so asking you a question about how long it would take to get to the moon, so you don't know the answer so you both go online to look it up, and then you find how interesting the NASA website is and your DC gets engrossed in it, and then asks if you can go to the science museum, and then you hear them telling some other adult or child loads of interesting stuff that you had no idea they knew or understood. Then they get an even more indepth interest in it and you find yourself marvelling at the amazing amount of maths they've had to learn to understand it all, and then they ask you if you can help them find an A-level they can do in astro-physics.....for instance

Yes greatwhite I did think someone would say that , but in the school that I teach in we are very much focussed on independent leaarning. If we are seen to be spoonfeeding harsh words are exchanged. From listening to you describe the nuts and bolts of HE it is very similar to much of my teaching although I can drip in what I know.

It probably says something about me that I am not happy teaching or enabling a student to learn something new if I dont know it insie out. One reason amongst many that I could not HE.

Ok, I see what you're saying now. To be honest, when I started out learning about HE, I was over the moon I'd get to 'play teachers' and then started reading about autonomous learning and was a bit disappointed I wouldn't be able to get my blackboard and chalk out . This was when I was pg with my oldest btw. It took a lot of reading and spending time with autonomous HEors to really give me the confidence to never embark on teaching, and now autonomous education seems so natural to me I can't imagine suddenly doing it any other way.

There's a lot my 5yo knows already that I don't. She learnt to read on her own (well, not entirely on her own of course, but without any teaching). I've basically had years and years to get used to and gain a trust in this process.

It's hard to remember what it felt like to be saying to a friend of mine "You know some people don't do any lessons or anything - they call it radical unschooling (US term) - there's no way I'd be that lax though! how can you possibly know they're learning the stuff they need to know?"

I think the difficulty is that if you have not seen, in action, a child who knows that they have real responsibility for their own learning, then it is very hard to conceptualise how it can work.

And then people generally say "oh but what if they never want to learn physics.". But generally they do seem to want to learn pretty much everything. They simply aren't turned off learning. They learn constantly. They read and ask to be read to constantly, they choose 90% "educational" programs on the tv/computer. They find the world fascinating and so naturally want to know as much about it as possible.

It does seem to work. Autonomously educated kids are not behind their schooled, or structured HE'd, peers, when they take standardised tests. They also score particularly well on tests of socialisation. I can try to referance this if you like, iirc it is in the 2 alan thomas books ("educating children at home" and...something else...), but at this second I am feeding a baby and can't go and find them!

Another point, we have no division between "learning time" and "life". They get up at 6 ( ) and go to bed at about 9 ) and in between that time they are learning all the time. Sometimes their learning is more obvious, and often more quantifiable, than at others. But it is always happening and often throws up suprising results.

It does spun wonderful, I do get a buzz working like this with dd at home but couldnt do it all the time.

Custardo - I have to pick up on your posting about social maladjustment. I am quite shocked that no-one else has, to be honest.

You seem to be saying that you do not doubt our ability as home educators to ensure that our children are well educated, but that we are depriving them of the common experiences shared by children who go to school (both positive and negative) and that this in itself is a key reason not to home educate as they will be socailly maladjusted compared to the rest of British society.

Have you met any adults who were home educated? Were they maladjusted? Or do you have something else to base this statement on?

Sure, our children will not share these common experiences with schooled children. But school is only one aspect of life. Our children will share common experiences with people in other ways: cultural experiences, religious experiences, hobbies that are shared, etc. How many times as an adult do you start conversations with people you are meeting about school? It is much more likely you will talk about your shared interests, holidays you have been on to the same places, people you both know, etc.

To suggest that sharing common experiences about school is the only way to be socially well adjusted is a slightly warped view in my opinion. I would much prefer my children to have a vast range of daily life experiences to talk about (as they do) than just about school.

I think I couldn't bring myself to answer custardo as it seemed such a ridiculous statement to make! As if school is the only thing anyone ever talks about!

What I talk about most from my childhood with other adults is tv programmes we watched, games we played, toys we owned, music we listened to. The only times we discuss school is when we're relating stories of being naughty!

Besides, even if my children might grow up not to be able to relate similar tales, I'm hardly going to send them to school just to make that possible am I?

At the end of the day, as it's been said before, the choice about how to educate your child depends on what is right for that child. The biggest problem is that so many people don't really understand HE enough to make an informed decision for and with their child about the best way for their education to happen, and that has been really clearly illustrated here. There are so many myths about HE, and they are usually repeated only by people who have very little experience of HE'd children, HEing families and adults who've been HEd and who've read very little about the subject other than newspaper articles written by other people who've very little experience of the above.

I was HE for a year - the first year of secondary school. I didn't get a place at the school my parents wanted me to go to (incidentally the one my dad taught at and the one my mum now also teaches at).

My experience was, from having read this thread, not how most people choose to HE, but my mum taught me everything except history, which my dad taught me. There was a (fairly) rigid timetable. We basically followed the syllabus of the school which I did eventually go to. It was never a proactive experience, or at least not to me. I never felt properly part of the learning - I did what I was told.

I saw people I had been friends with at primary school at guides and a church youth group. Academically I excelled, but socially it did me no good at all. I was always shy but this intensified after my year away from meeting lots of people.

I personally would not choose to HE my children, but obviously my experiences have coloured my opinion a lot, and having seen here how HE does not need to mirror my experience I realise it is the best thing for many families.

I dont HE, but really do believe it is a good way to bring children up. Alot of people on here wouldn't be able to home ed because their minds are set in the competitive way they were educated. When home edding, there is no need to teach all the subjects the way some of you are thinking. It is much more open and child led. Basically, as their parent, you should be able to pinpoint exactly what your child is interested in and that is where you start with their education.

CompareTheMeerkat thanks for describing your personal experience!

I think that my problem is that I want to be taught, automomous learning doesn't suit me.

I would really like to hear from adults who have been home schooled all their lives, I would like to know what they thought of it, whether they think they missed out or whether they thought it was a great start in life and if they are HEing their own DCs.

I get the impression that most people posting are in early days with young children, with some exceptions. I find it interesting because I have lived in the same house for a long time now, longer than I have lived anywhere. DCs that I have known as a 'bump'are now adults! The fascinating thing is that they are very often totally different from what you would have imagined from the days when they were toddlers at NCT coffee mornings in my house.
I would imagine that if you took a cross section of HEed DCs as adults you would have the whole range from those who think it was wonderful and will certainly do the same with their own DCs to those who think it was dire and will earn enough to buy the best education possible for their own DCs. You have no idea what you have, and you could have both within the same family. Although I loved school my brother hated it it-probably the reason he HEs his own DCs.-(he went to the same schools as me!!)

I would worry about the qualifications a bit. My HEd nephew went into school on a flexi arrangement to do a few GCSE (only those that interested him) and he didn't do English. He is there full time for A'levels and asked if he should do English GCSE and was told it wan't important.He has now discovered that he didn't get an interview at the only university he had set his heart on because he he didn't have English GCSE. His girlfriend is having an interview, even though she isn't on the G&T register for the subject they both wish to do, and he is!