Friday 3 July 2015

My reasons for choosing Home Education

Ohhhh this is a complex post.
Mainly because, as I've experienced, embarking on home ed is bloody terrifying when you have other peoples opinions thrust upon you. I have experienced both extremely positive and also very negative views on why I have chosen to remove Barnaby from school so I can preface this blog post by saying that you may not agree with what I am saying, you may not agree with the choice I have made but *I* have done what I believe is right for my little
family. And I'm not sorry.

I also ought to point out that a popular misconception is that because I chose to remove my Son from the education system I must now officially be Anti School.

Nonsense! Utter nonsense! School has it's place and it truly brilliant for some kids. They will thrive and excel within such structure. I don't think that because I home educate that you should do it too. I also have pink hair sometimes but don't look down on you because you don't, it's all much of a muchness and 'whatever suits you'. I came to the conclusion that Barnaby having some education other than in a school was right for us.


Here are some of my reasons why:

Lets start with Ken Robinson.
Really, the man is brilliant. I recommend you search You Tube and watch some of  his talks. He managed to verbalise all my jumbled thoughts perfectly and succinctly. Even if you would never ever contemplate home edding your children, these are worth your time because your kids are (probably) in the system he's talking about! He's not negative about schools, he just identifies some gaps and thinks about how we can plug them!
I recommend these two in particular:
Are schools killing creativity?


and Education Paradigms: 
They are thought provoking for me, and reiterated why I wanted to home ed.

Secondly, I don't particularly want to be negative about Barnabys school too much, but he had issues each year that were never dealt with despite lots of conversations. He was struggling because he couldn't do his work in a noisy classroom with 29 other kids; too much distraction left him losing his playtime and golden time so he could catch up. This made things worse because he felt more pressure that he couldn't cope with. You can read about his revelation about when he realised learning away from school worked better for him here: Connecting in the countryside

I felt the kids were being herded into the SATs and the pressure ramping up. It left him feeling 'thick', 'stupid' and 'useless'.  Those were his words. His thoughts. His beliefs. I was not tolerating that under any circumstance. 
The fact is he's not any of those things, he's actually 'average' ( I hate that word but can't think of anything more suitable right now!) but these days average is the worst place to be. You don't get extra help unlike those above being left behind and you don't get praised for being above and beyond. Nope, you sit quietly, in the middle causing no fuss, no bother and in turn becoming totally overlooked. He didn't feel he needed to stretch himself as he wasn't in the top group, yet he felt totally useless being in another group.
His self esteem was trashed.


On top of that, he's a boy that likes to know whether he is coming or going. He is emotionally sensitive (which is a great quality) but it means he works best with consistency and knowing what's expected of him. So, when you combine this with 4 different supply teachers a week for the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, he was getting upset in the mornings about going to school. He didn't know who he'd have on any given day and he didn't like that kind of boundary change. Some kids can handle it. Others, like mine don't like having a super strict teacher one day and the next day one who lets you play games and has no control over the class. Quite honestly I'd had about enough.

Stories of not being allowed to go to the toilet when he needs to go left me confused. As an adult you've learned to manage your bladder but at 7, it's all too easy to get engrossed in your work, or be too scared to ask to go til the last second. And then you *really* need to go. (hence frequent 'emergency countryside wees' on the way home when he can't hold it any longer. )

Half made models coming home because he wasn't allowed to finish it before the topic changed- I want him to finish doing something because he's finished not because the teacher says they have to move onto something else. I wanted him to feel like he'd achieved something. 

And finally, something I have thought for at least 20 years,  I don't believe school prepares you well enough for the outside world.
I bet if I asked you to look back at the GCSEs you sat, you'd have at least two you either hated, had no interest in, or haven't used to this day.  I don't understand the ethos of making a student waste time studying lessons  that are there just to fill a school timetable, and not because the child is interested, Why are they made to study something they don't want to?
On the flip side... 'how about 'every day' things that most of us need to actually know. Were you taught how a mortgage works, how APR applies to credit cards or the best way to invest money? What about budgeting household bills?
Were you taught about politics and elections and how the voting system works?
Did you leave school knowing how to prepare a weeks meals for a family of 4 healthily on a tight budget?

These days there is no guarantee of a job at the end of school, college or university.
It's claimed GCSEs are getting easier. Are they? Really? Or are the kids just better trained to pass them now? I daresay I wouldn't pass a maths GCSE paper today if you put it in front of me. Would you?

For every class that leaves school, there are 30 kids with almost A* grades. All of them the same. Perfectly manufactured clones, with similar knowledge because they have all been taught the same thing.
To  my mind what this does is make the exams a bit pointless. How does an employer choose a candidate when the 78 CVs he's been sent all match each other? Except for someone's hobbies..... 

And would you expect to be given the role *because* of your hobbies? Well, no. Because hobbies are not official qualifications.
I find that interesting because people have hobbies because they are interested in that thing. They are self motivated and passionate to learn. 
They do it because they enjoy it not because they need to. But you would never hear an MD say 'we are hiring Karen, she has no GCSEs but she's really committed in her training to be a black belt in karate so she'll be perfect '.

At the end of the day, some people are just better at studying and passing exams than others. This doesn't make them any better than anyone else. It just means that's something they can do. Like you can play the trombone and Carol down the road can play badminton well.

When you standardise testing for students you do every single one of them a disservice. A standardised test or exam will not show a kids personality, their passions, their strengths or their character. It'll just show someone who is good at being tested.  I am halfway through a post about the importance of GCSEs so I will expand my thoughts there instead.

These are a few of my reasons that made me decide to give it a go in the first place.

People all over the world Home Educate for many different reasons but the one thing we all have in common, like every other parent, is wanting what is right for our children.

4 comments:

  1. Brilliant, you are a warrior mum fighting you corner to do the best by your son, well done x

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is brilliant, thanks for writing this! Came across yr blog via Twitter - I follow someone who HE :) I am seriously considering home education for sept for my eldest currently in yr 1. It can be hard to verbalise my reasons for wanting to & I agree with everything you've written! My daughter is clever (actually average according to school) & very very creative, she loves music, art, drama, writing stories; she's passionate, feisty, opinionated, challenges decisions etc & I'm worried that she will have this stamped out of her by the school system which doesn't cater for individuality. At the moment, hubby doesn't agree that home ed is for us. I share blogs and articles with him : this one will be underlined and in bold for him!!! I'm on Twitter @lizzshaw01 if you want to chat!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is brilliant, thanks for writing this! Came across yr blog via Twitter - I follow someone who HE :) I am seriously considering home education for sept for my eldest currently in yr 1. It can be hard to verbalise my reasons for wanting to & I agree with everything you've written! My daughter is clever (actually average according to school) & very very creative, she loves music, art, drama, writing stories; she's passionate, feisty, opinionated, challenges decisions etc & I'm worried that she will have this stamped out of her by the school system which doesn't cater for individuality. At the moment, hubby doesn't agree that home ed is for us. I share blogs and articles with him : this one will be underlined and in bold for him!!! I'm on Twitter @lizzshaw01 if you want to chat!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Such a lovely blog post and very engaging. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete