Is school really so awful?

[emmaagain]

In recent posts, I've written several things about school being a second-best to HE.

Here's exactly why.

From the age of about 2, perfect strangers will stop children in the street and say "Are you going to school yet? Oh, you'll LOVE school..."

From birth, parents' friends will say "What are the schools like in your area? Have you got him/her down for St Custard's yet? The waiting list is really long, you know, and you really need to get him/her into the pre-school to have a chance of a school place. And St Custard's is the best place to be."

The prevailing assumptions are

1. school is compulsory
   
2. children love school
   
3. schools are wonderful places.
   
4. school should start as soon as possible.
   
   And that's all fine, for the many children who do enjoy school and find their schools to be wonderful places.
   
   End of. I can't think why their mums would be fossicking around in the Home ed forum anyway (though it's lovely to have you here, of course, waves cheerily)
   
   But what happens when a three year old is bursting into tears every morning at the prospect of going in to preschool? What happens when a 7 year old is crying their way through the playground? What happens when every day a child says "I don't want to go to school?"
   
   For those families, the second and third prevailing assumptions are horrible lies. These children hate school. They are depressed, they are angry, they are maybe violent. They might be the bullied one, or they might have been classified by Mrs Miggins as "The naughty one" aged 4. They might be slower to read and write than the other kids and be "the stupid one". They might just be temperamentally unsuited for the culture of school - not everyone wants to spend all day in a large group engaging in activities decided by someone else on someone else's timetable.
   
   The really important thing, and especially in a Mumsnet forum with "Home ed" as the title, is that those families should learn
   
   
5. the first assmption is just wrong. School is not compulsory. Education is compulsory, but only from the age of 5 (so the fourth assumption was wrong too)
   
   
6. the second and third assumptions are not true for all families, but there are alternatives to gritting your teeth and bearing it. And those alternatives might mean economical downsizing, and career downsizing, and moving to a caravan on the edge of Bognor (no offence meant to all those gloriously happy Bognor dwellers - it's just that the name is so funny), but the alternatives would also mean having happy children and happy parents.
   
   
7. If you can't be happy and fulfilled in your childhood because, for whatever reason, school is hellish, whatever chance do you have of learning how to create and sustain a happy life in adulthood?
   
   This post is a bit of a muddle, but I wanted to explain why I went off one one a bit in the "Do you have to be a SAHM to HE" thread. It's a redressing of the balance. The prevailing assumption is that school is the best possible place for children to be, and that you have to be really something quite special to educate your children yourself. Neither of those things are necessarily true.

[ilove8pm]

I think those who post on the HE forum have provided me with a mental sanctuary in recent months, I have really benefitted from all the tips and experiences people have shared in their posts. It has given me back some confidence in making the best decisions for MY children re their education. I was very naive and expected my ds to love school and it turned out to be a very traumatic experience for a while when he actually hated it. REcently things have improved but my dh and I are researching HE so that we can decide over the summer what we want to do long term. I now understand that there are many equally valid but different ways to educate children, and I am very very grateful to all you HErs who openly share on here, and lead the way for other parents who may find school to be an upsetting place. I dont yet know where we will be this time next year but I am so glad we know about our options. Thanks to you all. I realise emmagain that this is perhaps not a direct response to your post but I thought it was an appropriate place to put this comment! (by the way can I share with you emmagain, some of the worries I have at the moment? - I promise I wont mention any words beginning in SO and ending in TION!!!!! mainly coz I am not at all anxious about that!!! ) my worries are: do i have enough resources within me to give my dcs the full attention they deserve? I know they will get more attention from me than they do at school, but what if I feel so emotionally drained after a few weeks months that I cannot manage? is this stupid? what if i really mess it up and miss something that i should share with my dcs, what if i fail them? what if they get utterly fed up of me and want something that i cannot manage to give them? realise to experienced HErs these may sound so silly but i am questionning my own abilities at the moment and i just want to get it right. on the other hand, every time I imagine HE (which is a lot at the moment, so you will see me on here all the time!!) it fills me with a feeling of great excitement and hope.

[SueBaroo]

thankyou emmaagain, those are well made points. I always find it mildly on a HE forum, that so many threads are forced to have the caveat 'of course, school is a great place yada yada yada'.

It isn't always so, some HE people are of the opinion that actually, it isn't half as good as it's made out to be, and I don't see why there has to be an apologetic for mainstream education on a HE forum.

[LadyMuck]

I think that it is also the nature of the format of Mumsnet. This isn't a cosy isolated Home Ed forum, though those exist elsewhere. Unless posters make a conscious decision to block Home Ed, then every post will appear in Active Conversation or in "threads in the last...". And often people will respond without even realising that the post was in a Home Ed category.

[discoverlife]

The one sentance I really hate hearing at the end of every holiday is.
"I'll be glad to shove them in school next week" . Why do people have children if they can't wait to 'get rid' of them in the school system. I have only just de-registered my DS and am loving it. I hated it when he had to go back to school, I enjoy his company.

[MicrowaveOnly]

Before reading a LOT of the mails in this topic (on my eternal search for enlightenment thru mumsnet!) I'll be honest my initial feeling about home ed was that I was coming into a room full of lefty/religious/anarchic or plain scary mothers, saying how evil schools are and how they want to keep their precious children away from all those nasty, bullying school children.(i.e. mine!).

NOw before you gang up on me , that's just an impression that most people have. Its not really personal cos non HEs probably haven't met a real life HE child. And have never read about their view of it at all. SO my point is, by letting us come on this forum and defending yourselves we all get to see how it really is and form a far more educated view.

and some of you might say you're not here to 'educate' us. But really when you think about it, we're all on mumsnet trying to get some sort of view across, wether its tips on breast feeding or discussing the news. We all need to get out of our comfort zone.

So am looking forward to continue visiting this site and will remove my hemp disguise!!!

[SueBaroo]

But I am a scary religious mother. stamps foot

lol @ the idea of a 'comfort zone' on MN.

[emmaagain]

MO that's really funny

Glad to have you reading in the scary zone (I'm not religious or lefty, but I'm a bit of a soft libertarian - is that frightening enough for ya? )

Yes, it's really good for us to defend ourselves. As well as maybe being a bit evangelical, it also helps us refine our ideas, revise our ideas, see our mistakes and misconceptions. Glad to be having the conversation.

[CharlieAndLolasMummy]

good thread, emma

we used to have a general HE chat thread going in the olden days (last year), might be worth resurecting it

Re educating the masses. I dunno. There aren't many of us and we do an awful lot of educating. And it is bloody tiring to have people again and again generously enlightening us with the same old stuff re socialisation, gcses (HErs can't do gcses, you know . I think the deal is kind of, skeptics, come in, chat, but be respectful. We are not idiots, we do this day in day out, we actually know more about how HE works than someone who has NEVER done it.

I don't WANT to be justifying it again and again. It is making me fierce.

[MicrowaveOnly]

C and L could you bear to answer a quick question that bugs me...

I'm a physics teacher and it is a bloody hard subject. Every teacher has to be educated up to degree level. How do HEs teach their kids to A level in physics say, its not something you can just swot up on the night before??
serious questio..cos I couldn't cover another teachers subject atschool to GCSE level (and would never be asked to)let alone A level - so how do you do it?

[FlllightAttendant]

Emmaagain, I think I love you. I have thought it for some time

[Ubergeekian]

MicrowaveOnly: "How do HEs teach their kids to A level in physics say, its not something you can just swot up on the night before??"

I normally hate this phrase, but I think it;s a case of facilitating learning rather than teaching. You don't have to be an expert in a subject in order to help a learner make good use of available resources - books, internet, courses and so on. Schools have traditionally conflated the two roles: teachers pass on information and help pupils assimilate it, but it doesn't have to be like that.

The OU has always distinguished between teaching (which is done through course units, DVD's, t'net and so on) and facilitation (which is done by tutors).

It's even possible to argue - and I know mathematicians who do so - that it's much more important to have good graduate mathematicans teaching at primary school, where children are learning about the existence and nature of numbers and algebras, than a secondary school where it's a lot more about mechanical manipulation of symbols.

[CharlieAndLolasMummy]

lol MO, am doing a chemistry degree atm through the OU so this is a rather good question for me

The simple answer is that if you are the sort of person who really likes to be taught, there are lots of options out there. There are correspondance courses, but also, HErs do routinely go to night classes etc. By the time that they are teenagers, HE'd kids do tend to know how they learn best, so its just a case of finding something that fits their learning style.

Certainly, the vast majority of HErs are very pragmatic and will jump through academic hoops. If a child wanted to be, say, a doctor, then they just would go and do the A levels required, and if this did actually require, say, marking of coursework, then I imagine that they would enroll at the local FE college, that is what most of the HE'd kids I know have done.

Here is the more waffly answer:

I honestly think that the OU can be an excellent example of how self-motivated learning can work. It is so incredibly different to doing a degree at a "regular" university (I did my first degree at Edinburgh, for comparison's sake). Note I am talking here about a science degree, with a certain minimum lab work requirement.

Bascially, the resources are there to help you learn, but you have to a. motivate yourself and b. a lot of the time, work out that you need the help and, to an extent, make the first move in asking for it.

The result of this is firstly that people on OU courses tend to really love their subject and spend lots of time on the forums talking about, say, unification theories. Second they tend to be very good at learning, at idenfitying gaps in their knowlege and working out what to do about them. Third they are really incredibly motivated and interested.

On an entry level course like S103/4, which is probably about A level standard, most students are reading, and engaging, with stuff like New Scientist. I don't remember many of the physics students at school doing this, really-I am sure that they were capable of it in terms of knowlege, but they didn't especially have the motivation to buy it and read it in the bath, and then be sufficiently enthused to go on the internet and find out exactly what dark matter might be.

Oh and S103/4 is accepted in place of 3 science A levels at universities-I know that there is at least one medicine course which accepts it, for example.

Right I am sorry that is so waffly, have no time to edit. HTH.

[ShrinkingViolet]

I aree - I don't actually teach my two anything - I help them learn it. DD3 is learnign to read atm, so as an example out of the book we're currently using, there's a picture of a man with the word written next to him, underneath is a lion with the word "mane" underneath the word "man". So we talk about "magic e" and then move on to the next pair of pictures (two girls called Jan and Jane) and she uses her new knowledge to work out herself what changes "magic e" makes. I don't see that the process woudl be much different for GCSEs, A levels and beyond. Teaching (in the sense of standing in front of a group of students and telling them what they need to know) is only really necessary where you have a group of students and only one adult standing in front telling them what they need to know . If you want to learn about something, you'll go and find out about it. Similarly if you need particualr qualifications to do something, you'll do what is needed to get those qualifications. It's only when you don't see the point of it (like DD1 and the ridiculous Science for the 21st Century GCSEs) that it becomes a problem, both with being taught and learning.

[emmaagain]

Phew, Ubergeekian and CALM answered the physics one while I was at the zoo...

Cool thing about HE - you can do biology practicals with real live animals any day you want to, and the zoo is almost empty. Wonderful close encounter with seals today, and watching the rain drops falling onto the surface of the water, and then looking lower through the glass and watching what a raindrop looks like falling on water FROM UNDER THE WATER. I have never seen that before. I had to be dragged away kicking and screaming with alternate threats and bribery

Oh, and flllightattendant.

[SueAndHerAmazingWobbles]

Well, yes, my 6 year old is currently interested in human biology, and has decided to investigate the human head, inside and out. She's been printing off diagrams working out the relationships between what she can see on her own head and what is inside it.

If we all had to be taught by people who knew more than we did, there'd be no progress at all, would there?

[discoverlife]

I have already found out that a childs study potential, do not bear any resemblence to their school equivalents. In the last two days my DS yo10 (who is SEN) has been learning his 3 times tables, is interested in volcano's and plate techtonics and has experimented today with electrical circuits (batteries, wires, light bulb).
So his maths is waaaaay behind. Volcano's and plate techtonics are secondary school and the electrical circuits were never in my physics practical at 'O' level. And I am learning as well.

[Runnerbean]

Just had a little chortle reading the:
Upset about being told off by Ds's teacher, my four year old does not want to learn 'Sounds write
thread.
There are some classic quotes on there.
I was oh so tempted to throw my fourpeneth worth in, but as it is a 'primary' forum I thought I'd sneak off.

[SueAndHerAmazingWobbles]

just read it. Was totally at some of the things said. Have now realized what a terrible life I have condemned my children to...

[Twiglett]

many parents cannot stomach the thought of HE because they would be so shite at it

school is not awful at all for a lot of children .. including mine

why is it us or them on here?

[Blandmum]

'Teaching' isn't just 'telling' kids stuff you know. Even in one of those horrible classrooms!

We actually encourge indepenent work too.

But there comes a point when having someone in the room to help unpick misunderstandings can be helpful.

[SueAndHerAmazingWobbles]

Twiglett, it sadly tends to be 'us and them' because of the prevailing assumption emmaagain mentioned in her first post.

^The prevailing assumption is that school is the best possible place for children to be, and that you have to be really something quite special to educate your children yourself. Neither of those things are necessarily true.^

I've lost count of the amount of times I've had people assume that I HE because the schools are really baaaad schools, or because of bullying etc. The assumption is that you HE as a second option after 'school' doesn't work out. HEers are always having to work to explain that they're doing it because they want to, as a positive choice.

I agree there is far too much defensiveness among HEers often, but then, I've been on the receiving end of some very choice critique myself, so I can understand why it happens.

[Blandmum]

If it helps any, we teachers are also on the recieving end quite often

The education of children, by whatever method, is so important that it is bound to be emotive.

FWIW I find the assumption in some HE posts that school teachers activly prevent independent learning midly insulting. Or that we simply 'talk' to the kids. Teachng in my lab is not talking, it is a whole range of different things.

Now while I will admit that some teachers are like this, and are crap, I am not.

And I know that many, many HE, including all those on MN I'm sure, do an excellent job. But I also know that there are some HEdders who do not do an excellent job. It is the nature of the human beast.

[TellusMater]

I know 4 families in RL who HE. One is proactive, in that they made the decision to do so based on their beliefs and principles about education. Three are reactive, having removed their children from school due to unresolved social issues. Two have one child HE'ing and one or more others in school. I'm sure the balance of my acquaintance is not representative, but rather due to the social circles of the families involved (I'm more likely to know people who have children in school than not). But it may explain the perception of HE that Sue refers to.

[Saturn74]

"why is it us or them on here?"

Actually Twig, I think the majority of HE posters are remarkably restrained in the face of some fairly constant criticism.

I have often been amazed by the calm nature of the responses from posters such as juuule, and have often rethought some of my own posts (and pressed the delete button on many occasions, as I am less inclined to be so charitable. )

I am quite happy to have a debate about HE, or to provide my point of view, or offer advice if requested.

But I don't see why, whenever we seem to get a rollicking debate going, it seems to get ruined by one or more posters, who have little or no experience of HE, telling me I'm ruining the lives of my children, and I should be doing things in this way, or that way.

And when we defend ourselves, we get accused of 'school bashing'.

I don't think schools are bad places for a lot of children.

But I do know that it was VERY bad place for mine.

I also know lots of fantastic teachers - sadly none of them taught my children.

I don't school bash, and I don't teacher bash.

And I don't mind if people think our choice to HE was something that they would never take in a million years.

But I will respond to thinly veiled hostility and contempt (as seen on other threads) by describing my own experiences - which include some dreadful treatment of my children by the teachers, LEA and others.

[filthymindedvixen]

I would just like to say I would give anything to be able to home ed one of my sons. For him school is just unremitting misery and has been since the beginning...
I was at home for 5 years with my children, thinking that those early years were important for me to be with them, never thinking for a second that schoiol would be a problem. Now, because of those 5 years, we are totally skint and there is no chance for my poor boy.
you go, Home Edders!... more power to your elbows.

Humph - please come and scoop my boy off with yours, you'll hardly notice one more eh??