Looking at the state of the school system now, are you really happy about putting your own children through it?

[bronya]

I quit last year but keep up with teacher friends. It makes me feel sad to think of my own children having stressed, overworked teachers, an increasingly narrow curriculum, over emphasis on tests etc.

I home educate and roughly 30%-40% of the home educators that I know have worked in schools in the past. Most of them gave up their work in order to home educate their children because they weren't comfortable putting their children through it.

could you be worse at it than school though? and it's not you who has to be good at it but your children remember - it's learning not teaching remember

(and it's a lot easier for one adult to get out of the way of learning than a whole school system and government obstructing it)

I would definitely be rubbish at it! I am not organised enough or self - disciplined enough. Anyway, my dc would miss being with other kids all day. Also, I feel that I am myself so much a product of the system and have been so ground down by working in it for years that I have had all the creativity and spark for teaching driven out of me . Even if the system is crap, at least there are still some enthusiastic and inspiring teachers hanging on in there (poor souls) who will hopefully spur my dc on to great things.

That animated video was fantastic, thanks for the link. Will show my DH later too.

We've always been very proHE and nearly did from the start, but decided to send our DCs to school, knowing that if they were miserable we would HE instead. And now that's happened. But while their unhappiness was the trigger for us saying "right, that's it, we are taking them out", it's really become about much more than that. It's worrying, in a way, that I think my DCs will learn more with me than at school, and I wouldn't place any blame whatsoever on teachers for that. The pressure on teachers is horrific.

I'm dreading telling my best friend though, she's a teacher.

well try reframing it - maybe see and explain it as you think your children will learn more in an environment where they're free to learn without all the structure and constraint in the way rather than learn more 'with you, than with' sort of thing.

does that make sense in the distinction?

that children are fully capable of learning and learning well when they have the space and freedom to do so without targets and structures and constant chopping and changing and dictates and lack of space and resources and ability to focus on what they're interested in without being told 'now it's time to do this instead' or an elbow in their side or having to do it way x because that's better suited to dealing with and documenting the 'teaching' of 30 kids etc?

you can just say actually i think my children can get on with their learning better in a quiet, less crowded and stressful environment where things can be tailored to their needs and interests. i doubt a teacher could really disagree with that especially given they're all trained to believe in the importance of differentiation and focusing on learning activities and outcomes rather than teaching ones now. the logical extension of that is autonomous learning with a faciliator rather than 30:1 teaching environments.

incidentally home ed in my house today mostly looks like my son reading a joke book full of word play jokes and dialogue and then sharing them with me and explaining (in case i didn't get it) why the jokes are funny re: do-you-think-he-saw-us is actually spelt saw-us rather than saurus mummy), followed by using some random massive fallen tree (in my mind) to make into a dragon and do some strange role play enactment, followed by going out with binoculars to the field at the end of the road 'bird hunting' and watching a you tube video on fossils because he's really into geology (whether he'd call it that or not at the minute). in between me getting on with work, and chatting on here, we've played a word game that he enjoys and had a game of battle ships to check he still gets grid references but as far as he knows just for fun.

doesn't sound like learning? what do you think the 7 yos at the local school have learnt so far today? it's friday. he taught himself to play chess recently and learned all about the different fish you get in the red sea and is reading the 'how to train your dragon' series of books at night at bedtime. we're doing a lot of practical maths and we have a lot of philosophical conversations where he shows impressive skills of critical thinking and the ability to explore not only his own opinions but how other people who think differently to him might see things.

his ict skills fly along because he has access to a computer to himself rather than waiting for dodgy old laptops to get handed out around a classroom to be shared one between two or three if indeed they can be logged onto within the allocated time given to the 'ict' lesson.

i try to expose him to people of different cultures and religions and first languages. to travel regularly and go into all different contexts and settings to have wide view and experience of the world.

we haven't covered the battle of hastings but i doubt his life will be at any great loss for it or that what he has missed will take more than five minutes to catch up with if he has a desire to know about it (certainly it won't take more than five minutes to gain what any child remembers of it a year after learning about it endlessly for a whole term).

sorry long post but my point is when you think about home education don't compare to school and if you must compare then compare to the reality rather than the sound bites. it is a shrinkingly tiny amount they actually learn and shrinkingly tiny amount of that that they actually retain or make use of in their lives.

Interesting reading TheHoneyBadger. In my mind, I imagine Home Education as a couple of hours of 1:1 learning in the morning, then a day playing and doing everyday things. I take it that's wrong?!!

it's however it works for you and your children. some people recreate school at home, some people do no formal learning at all, many fall somewhere in between. some people use tutors, some follow a curriculum or online courses, some let children follow their own interests only etc etc.

many approaches.

when i say no formal learning i mean no sit down and be taught stuff btw - not that the children don't learn - it is literally impossible to learn nothing in a day at my age let alone as a child.

Thanks THB. That all sounds great!

I'm not really sure what approach/structure we will be using. It largely depends on whether they both decide to come out of school, or just one! I am not thinking of being entirely autonomous, but it won't be 'school at home' either.

My dad is struggling with our decision, he is very much in the school is everything mindset. Very academic and geeky like me, TBH I didn't really 'need' school (I was very precocious) so I think it's hard for him to see how it's affecting my DCs. He does support us (as will my teacher friend I'm sure) but it'll take him a while to accept that school is not the only way to learn, and in fact (what I've been focusing on when discussing it with him) the DCs will be able to learn more and push themselves more if they aren't in a class of 30 and constrained by timetables.

get him reading some john halt and gatto then - that might help. they were/are both very academic and both excelled as teachers before deciding that children would be better served by different approaches to learning and are able to present their reasoning in a very academic way. it might help your father to read their work.

Article yesterday in the London Evening Standard about rise in home schooling of the wealthier variety...

makes sense sig. 6k a term per child for private school or have 18k a year to spend on top private tuition?

what amazes me is that people will pay 9k a year for a library card and a couple of lectures a week - can you imagine the tutoring and mentoring you could buy from a genuine experts for £9,000? i was also wondering the other day given doctors, business professionals etc can come here from other countries and work presumably people can go to a cheaper country from here, do their degrees somewhere with lower fees and a much lower cost of living and then come back here and work? even if it requires a re-registration or quick conversion path.

i think home ed also becomes a pragmatic decision in the face of economics - re: education seems to all be about preparing you for the next qualification level re: gcse's just qualify you for a'levels, a'levels just mean you can get into uni, uni just means you can get the same job at costa you could have got if you'd bailed a level earlier without the 30k+ of debt.

so if it looks like you can't afford to send your children to university then you want their education to prepare them for something other than just university (and the feeling of being a failure if they don't go).

then you have to think about what the skills of tomorrow are that are going to be needed to thrive in this world out of that once was the magic key education system and how they can be provided, accept they can't be provided in school and look at alternatives.

that too is a large part of how i come to be home educating. a whole collective of issues including the state of education, the cost of university fees combined with the degrading worth of such degrees (re: as the 'lower' classes have achieved them they've just upped the bar so that it's a masters and the ability to do a years interning in the city that's required), the changing reality of work and industry, the closing of social mobility etc.

HoneyBadger yy re the 9k rip-off. I just had a rubbish year for (PGCE) chaotic and unprofessional, would definitely have been far better if it had been possible to have spent that on buying some time with some top teachers!

ah but chaotic and unprofessional will prepare you perfectly for school signoral

(if you threw in some anxiety attacks and depression you did perfect experiential learning )

good point!

I have some of those books (holt etc) lurking so I'll dig them out. I won't push it with dad, I think he will relax after a while but I'll definitely tell him about the books etc if he wants to read more.

We aren't going to do completely autonomous learning, there will be maths/reading etc regularly, so it won't be quite as much of a leap for him as it would if we were unschooling!

(Sorry am derailing again)