Will somebody think of the children!

[bellinisurge]

This is specifically about education although obviously people can post how they want. That said: It's not a Brexit thread. I'm not talking about Brexit.

I don't home school and have no strong wish to. But, let's say normal service isn't in play euphemism) what resources would you use for your children's education? Mine is in secondary now and my own and dh's ability to keep her education going is a bit limited to particularly topics and no doubt hopelessly out of date.
I'd kind of hope it would be prioritised locally so school would keep going. Then it might just be a logistical question of getting there, feeding her and getting home.
But ... well, we are preppers so we do think about this stuff .
Online there's plenty of resources- patchy but plentiful. And offline?
What are your thoughts?

Offline: books. Lots of books. We have various science books up to GCSE. We could study the stars... If it has gone tits up and lights are off then they be more visible. Teach them cooking, gardening and as much knowledge as possible to learn to survive. If ex was around, he could teach them German. Ds would be able to access DD's school books so there would be some stuff there. DD would work through any text books she had.
I have GCSE Spanish book we could use, dictionary and verb book. Should get some more french and some German as well.

Wood work/ DIY skills. Sewing and cooking for technology. I have a hand cranked sewing machine.

Maths/ English /geography/history are trickier as we have fewer books on those. If the internet was up and going would use that.

It is scary to think that several countries have gone from thriving to wartorn in my lifetime, some back again.it is nicer to think it could not happen here.

Thanks l@BlackeyedGruesome . I suppose that is my concern. There are some areas in which I am strong and relatively up to date with up to date or at least still useful offline material - so that I could bumble something along with my dd. but I have areas of weakness in important stuff, like maths. I'm tempted to get some curriculum books.

I am waiting for confirmation of options first.

Dd is end of y7 so we aren't there yet. Still not clear where her preferences are.

but will check I have maths and language anyway.

Interesting thought. My DC are much younger and I have to admit i’ve cast my eye over some younger age school type books in Poundland before wondering if I should pick up a couple. You could always buy a few GCSE revision guides to tuck away just in case?

Agree if it got that bad though the best education you could give at that stage would be the more practical skills - fishing, producing drinking water, sewing, gardening etc.

The BBC series ‘in the flesh’ touches on this aspect a bit - after the ‘apocalyptic’ scenario it shows school resuming and one of the characters is now an adult (18-20ish?) and it shows her at school again doing lessons. I’m not sure they’d do it in quite that way (she’s made to wear uniform and there doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement of the traumas they’ve been through or the fact that some of them are now adults). But I imagine it would be similar - if the education system were to resume there would be an acknowledgement that everyone would be behind in their education, so you wouldn’t have to worry that your DC were ‘behind’, as such.

Thinking about it though, DC would probably cope much better with any SHTF type situation by having a structure, and a school type thing would enable that nicely. Even if it’s not the traditional route, you could still get them to do ‘projects’ around germinating from seeds, reading books you have lying around and producing a report etc.

During WWII (our nearest vaguely analogous situation) , there was a concerted effort to make sure children got schooling - look at the Anne Frank diaries for example.

To be honest, would secondary education matter? There's more to education than book learning. Where normal schooling couldn't happen older young people could be well placed to help younger ones.

Yes. Of course it would matter.

There may be the opportunity to use the education to escape any tricky situations.

I think I will find out which exam board the school uses and get some books to support those courses.

I agree bellinisurge - I think they would try and keep schooling going, even if it were in a reduced format/curriculum - I suppose it depends how “SHTF” your “SHTF scenario” is!

I’ve now got lovely romantic notions of clubbing together with my neighbours to try and educate the children in the street in the absence of formal education - I think we’ve got a few retired teachers/engineers etc that I’m sure would have lots of value in that area!

Interesting thought.
All 4 of my DC are primary or below.
At home we have basic art and craft supplies, paper/pens/crayons/pencils/craft supplies/Chalk/Paint/PVA glue/clay/plaster of Paris/sewing machine etc, knitting/crochet supplies and wool, jewellery supplies.
DH is a joiner and I studied woodwork and metalwork at school, we have tools, supplies and experience to teach.
I speak basic French, German and Spanish.
We have age appropriate Maths/science/English workbooks and educational books, I do them with the DC during summer holidays. I still have last years books that I used colour coordinated tabs to link subjects and made a book with plans for subjects including experiments and linked videos on youtube/bbc etc.
I can cook/bake from memory/online/books and have age appropriate cookbooks for the DC.
I have thousands of seeds, DC eat fresh food from the garden on daily or weekly basis at the moment. I think its important for them to learn life skills.
So, I guess for at least up until they were maybe 13 I would be confident that we could at least cover basics.

My issue is @Spaghetticarbanana , that my dd is 12, going on 13. I could certainly have had a go at teaching a primary age child but feel out of my depth in several key areas for a secondary school child.

Primary is so different to when I was young that im expecting to have no clue what I'm doing once they hit secondary.
I suppose maybe if someone wanted to prep for schooling then they could get a copy of the curriculum or guidelines or something and make some term arrangements, lesson plans and resources?

I bet there are several in my parents loft..

There was the one where science had 17 attainment targets or something...the 9 ringbinders, the book that fell apart, the spiral bound...

Best bet is getting study books for the GCSEs offered at your school or exam centre. You can download the national curriculum from the government website too.

Even if you taught slightly different stuff at least you would have made a start and there would be less to catch up.

I think that keeping schools open is always going to be a priority so it is very unlikely that you'd be in a position of needing to educate your child for more than a few weeks (if that) outside of school.
Honestly, I'd use the time to teach your child skills they will need in later life that are not covered well enough in school (although you probably already have done so) such as self care, basic first aid, laundry, hygiene, food storage/cooking, how to change a lightbulb or re-pressure the gas boiler, run a household budget, shop for the week etc..

As I am an Elective Home Educator I have offline resources & equipment to cover over a dozen subjects up to A Level as well as online courses my son currently follows.
We use a mixture of paid for resources online as well as free ones & occasional tutors as needed.

If he showed an interest in studying a subject I don't yet have, I'd just add that to our collection, but most of it has been picked up because of my own personal interests.

A microscope is still a microscope even if it's 3 years old - not all resources date that fast.

If the SHTF for real then being up to date on your History or Drama GCSE coursework is not going to be anyone's priority.
Chances are though that the Drama & History teachers in that situation might well be willing to barter tuition for food or similar which you as a prepper would be in a better position to supply.

Thanks @Snugglepumpkin . I hoped a home educator would comment.

Things like CGP books are pretty cheap. I've just used them to refresh my GCSE French.

You can register for free with Twinkl and get access to lots of teaching resources to print. They do get a bit spammy with 'why don't you try this' at key teacher planning dates though.

Thanks @MeDownSouth

Pinterest has a lot of ideas.

Times ed page also.

Reminded by the spammy comment!

Tesco have revision guides 20% off in their back to school event :)

Excellent thanks. Will check that out.