'Home Schoolers should be treated robustly'

[maverick]

If you scroll down to igb's posting on this thread/page you'll see he has strong views on home education. He believes that 'the purpose of education is to protect children from their parents' prejudices', and therefore, 'Home Schoolers should be treated robustly'

Any thoughts?

www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10249&start=75

One of mine wants to try secondary school, so is going in Sept.
Another wants to go to college.
2 others (9yo and 6yo) don't want to go at all at the moment.

are the schools funny at all about dc coming in from HEd families?

We'll find out in September

They've been okay so far for the induction day.

how do you use the local adult college? I mean do the dc just sit exams there or attend regular courses? (No idea how it works emoticon)

Being accepted into college under-16 seems to differ from area to area. Our local colleges don't accept under-16s on courses unless they are referred from school.

I'm in the final stages of a roast chicken dinner here but would love to chat further. I will return in an hour or so to answer/ask any questions.

Thanks.

Thanks , that's interesting

I'm not worrying about the expense - it would definitely be cheaper than the alternative (2 at private school at the moment).

Is HEing easier to do if you live in/near a city?

The additional activities like drama etc would presumably take place late on in the afternoon.

There is definitely a perception that HEed kids are a bit 'weird'. I've never met any so I'm just going on what friends have said when I've mentioned the idea.

the HE groups have morning activities I believe so if there were a group you liked based near you, it might be worth investigating, seeing what/if anything they organise.

My HE friends are in the US and they are obliged by Californian law as I understand it to educate the dc at home till 2pm I think, so the activities they attend are after that.

My children's drama/singing/dancing are in the evenings and w/e.
There is a HE drama group on a Friday afternoon but we can't get to it.

Where does the perception come from then? I am guessing that there are a number of DC HEed because they are somewhat 'antisocial' to begin with and so wouldn't fit into the school environment.

I have been talking to DH about this and he thinks that the social side is the bit that suffers. My argument is that the only reason they need to learn to get on in a group of 20-30 kids of the same age is if they are going to be in one.

Could you HE a 5 year old and an 8 year old with a 2 year old in tow?

lots of people think the soial side is a problem-before they start home educating.

If you lived in a rural area and didn't drive, then yes it would be more of an isssue to meet other home educators, but if you live in a town/city, you'll find us everywhere
Someone said to me recently 'it's a bit like Alice going through the Looking Glass, there is a whole world out there that you never new existed'

There isn't anything that my children did in school that we haven't done in HE.
Until very recently, I'd have said well we don't have a Sports Day, but that was until this years HesFes where a couple of parents and a big bunch of teens organised a whole bunch of races and events, with rosettes for the winners etc! The youngsters had a brilliant time.

I remember when my daughter went to her danceing lessons one day, with a sore leg from falling over in Rugby that afternoon the other dancers said "Oh My God they MAKE you play rugby?!"

LOL!
In the last year my daughter has done drama/sailing/kayaking/ice skating/ten pin bowling/rock climbing/abseiling/zip wires/go karting/swimming/rugby/rounders plus lots and lots of 'British Bulldog' and 'Rachet Screwdriver' at national and local camps and gatherings all through the summer-all in the company of home educated youngstaers of all ages.

We have done Christmas shows and summer Street Theatre performances. Anything and everything.

We have a very active local home education group-all it has taken is a bunch of interested families and my children's social lives were the envy of their schooled cousins and peers

You could most definately home ed an eight year old and two year old together.

MuddlePuddle
is an excellent website for families who home educate children under 8 years old.
They have an affiliated email support group groups.yahoo.com/group/EarlyYearsHE/ which could be very helpful to you, I know members there would be happy to answer questions if you are thinking of home educating.

sorry
That link was meant to be for the HE Early Years email support list

I was HEed. I didn't realize I loved team sports until I went to secondary school at 13. It was a bit late them.

But I should know by now that if I post on a HE thread I get shot down in flames because I know nothing about it.

I have a dn who is a sociologist specializing in family dynamics. I remember she once said to me when I tried to express an opinion about the raising of children from my own experience "But how can you talk about it - you haven't done the reading"

That's how I feel on HE threads!

Why was it a bit late, Seeker?

Seeker - do you resent the fact that you were HEed? How do you educate your own DC?

dn? sorry Seeker, i don't know that abbreviation.

I know your experience wasn't the same as ours Seeker.
I can only talk from my experience and say that the home educators I know, are very willing to faciliate their childrens interests and education.

As I said it only takes a bunch of interested families and we can match any activity presented in schools and IMO and IME out do them.

I'm sorry if that is not your experience.
For me it was vitally important that I addressed the children's social needs, the education I could do, but I thought the social side very important-and so we made sure we addressed this.
I stick by what i said-that we can be found all over the place and if you are willing to travel, you should be able to find home educators to mix with.
If this hadn't been the case for us, then I'd have made sure the children were involved with team sports/games/social events with after school clubs or Sciuts/Guides etc.

However we never needed to do this as we had local home educating families close enough for us to travel and meet, and what our children thought was missing from HE groups activities we organised ourselves and invited other HE families to join us.
The children chose to mostly mix with our home ed crowd-apart from my daughters danicng lessons and latterly choir and drama groups.

No, I don't resent the fact hat I was HE-ed. I had a wonderful time and my parents - specifically my father - did an excellent job.

But, like everything else in life there are negatives as well as positives. And it doesn't seem to be possible to discuss the negatives on mumsnet. The "party line" has to be that HE is completely wonderful and school only good for preparing children for working in call centres. Neither of these depictions are accurate.

In answer to another question, my children are school educated. There are lots of HE children in my extended family and I have involvement with others in my area so I do have quite a wide experience of many different types of HE, not just my own personal experience.

Of course it wasn't too late to play team games when I started school at 13, but because I had no experience of them, it took me a long time to catch up with my peers in both the physical skills and the mindset necessary. It was definitely too late to be on school teams and things like that - the others had too much of a start on me!

Oh, and dn stands for dear niece.

I think that 11 yrs is too late for team games. I went to a lovely little village school, which I adored, but we didn't have enough for team games and I felt that everyone else had too much of a start when I got to secondary. I think it might have been OK if I was especially talented, but I wasn't.

I think there is a bit of a danger in reading about all the success stories in autonomous education and it gives the illusion that anyone can do it. We never hear about the failures.I think that everyone knows a success. My SIL had a boy in her EO group who did nothing-got up late, watched TV etc, couldn't read, no motivation but suddenly aged 15yrs he got his act together and ended up going to Cambridge at 18yrs. However he must have had an IQ well above average to start with-you have to bear in mind that most HEers have average DCs, if they all had IQs of 130 that would be the new average. My SIL equally knows those who she feels will be utterly unemployable (like the innercity kids failed by the system, they have been failed at home).

I would think that the main problem with autonomous education is that you don't know what you want to learn in the first place. It is like giving a DC a choice of food and saying 'you can have whatever you like', they choose from what they have already experienced and everyone else has much more interesting dishes and they then get upset and say 'why didn't you tell me-I would rather have had what x had'.
I can think of quite a few subjects that have seemed as dull as ditchwater in advance, but have turned out to be fascinating.

I always like reading seekers posts on HE, I think she is one of the few people who can give an unbiased account from both sides. She has been HEd, enjoyed it, doesn't regret it, but because she doesn't stick to 'the party line'and can point out negatives and sends her own DCs to school, people don't want to listen and I have been surprised at how unpleasant people can be. There was one thread recently where she had to give up posting(unless she just went on holiday and wasn't around).

Not everyone supplies a positive experience of HE for their DCs just because they are a parent, and want to-they may be hopeless. The DC who gets up late,watches TV , plays computer games and has no motivation may never change.

The social side of HE wouldn't worry me because I think that there is a sizeable HE community-however there is a thread running at the moment where 2 people are finding their DC very isolated and the HE groups quite cliquey-so perhaps that varies according to area and isn't such a rosy picture everywhere.