Homeschool Thoughts from a Broad

I absolutely do not think anyone will ever read this (except you dear Husband, hello and greetings, so lovely to see you). And to be honest, if anyone does stumble upon these ramblings I’m not overly concerned what they think. I’ve never been one of those people requiring other’s approval or listening to their disapproval.. BUT, I would hate to think that there are teachers out there who see my ramblings as an attack on them. Far from it.  Teachers are amazing.  I love learning still today because of the very many inspiring teachers I have had over my lifetime and also, my husband is a teacher.  I see him and his colleagues working themselves to the bone, cutting short family time, working until the late hours of the evening to do their best by the kids entrusted to them.  But the thing is, these late hours, this family time cut short is inevitably because of targets, tests, inspections, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.  I see them getting frustrated because the things they really want to do with the kids they just don’t have time for, because Maths and English are king. They count (target and test wise).  I hear from friends, social media. the news, on the grapevine about kids being sent home from school because they are wearing the wrong tights and other truly ridiculous reasons for curbing a child’s education.  What message does that send to children? If we don’t value their education, why should we expect them to?  In my opinion, and it is only my opinion you are entitled to your own completely different one, I’m not judging you, our education system is broken. But that is not the fault of the people working in it.  They are doing the absolute best they can, fighting upstream against the tide of constant change and battery they receive almost daily. 

Also, home education is hard. It is not a perfect system and I am going to get things wrong.  I may end up sending my kids back into the system I disagree with if it ends up being the best of a bad lot, sometimes that is all we have and I will always do what I think is best for them. 

The next question to answer in the book is ‘why do you think this is the best way to educate them?’. I probably covered this a lot in the last question but hey, if something is worth saying then it is probably worth saying twice!

My personal experience of learning is that if I was interested in something I would enjoy it, if I enjoyed it I found it easy (even when it was difficult because I enjoyed the process of digging into the problem). I figured I couldn’t be the only one wired like that, turns out, everyone is wired like that.  We are all, according to ‘the experts’, natural born learners. Turns out it is being made to sit in class and learn about things we have no interest in that turns that off.  The metaphorical light we hear so much about. I loved the first four years of L’s life with me, watching her achieve so much seemingly effortlessly. The best feeling in the world is watching your kids try something until they achieve and then their little faces lighting up like they’ve just solved the answer to everything. There’s that light again. I mentioned in the last post that L’s light went out within the first few weeks of school. The questions stopped, the interest disappeared, the trying was no longer part of her. So, that way of educating obviously wasn’t working for her.  She wasn’t happy.  And at the end of all of this that is what I want. I obviously want her to be able to read, write, be interested in science, travel, history, the world and others.  But put simply, I want her to be happy. A big ask really, or is it? 

After reading an excerpt from 'A Call of the Wild and Free' on some strangers Facebook page, being instantly moved by the text and feeling a deep sense of relief that someone else was feeling the same as me, I was straight onto Amazon to purchase it. Two chapters in and it was definitely worth the £15 price tag at a time I'm supposed to be tightening the purse strings. 

Chapter 2 encourages you to put your reasons down for choosing to homeschool, along with some other related questions, and as I'm always losing paper and notebooks I figured this platform was the best way to make sure I can always come back to it when I'm rocking in the corner and googling local schools!!

So, Why do I want to homeschool my children?

I shipped my eldest off to school for the first time in September and on watching her disappear round the corner into the playground I felt like she wasn't just waving goodbye to me for the day, but forever. A tad overdramatic probably, but the fact remains that she was now out of my life for 6.5 hours a day, five days a week, 39 weeks of the year. Plus homework and after school clubs. She was four. Surely that is too young? I saw kids being dragged kicking and screaming into class, mums (always mums in my experience, I'm not saying at other schools dads weren't doing the school run), turning and walking away from their children screaming their hearts out, truly sobbing, with tears in their own eyes. Every morning. Because according to society school is the best place for them. The cynic in me thinks that our capitalist society just wants both parents back at work as quickly as possible, earning money to spend on things companies convince us we need and to pay more taxes for our government to mismanage with more rebranding schemes. But I digress. People told me they would 'get over it', they needed to 'build up some resilience'. And yeah, maybe they would, and maybe they did, but why should they have to. They are four years old. A lot of other European countries start their kids in formal full time education a lot later than ours and they are doing a lot better in the league tables. And their kids aren't as stressed or suffering as many mental health problems as ours. So why are we doing it? I understand why we did it over 100 years ago when the education act first declared that all children had the right to an education. Why we sat our kids in rows and drilled the three r's into their heads. I don't understand why we do it now. We all know it isn't the best way kids learn, the teachers know it isn't the best way they learn,  but to meet their targets it is the only way to get it done. 

Now, if L had loved school, had thrived and stayed the inquisitive, seeking, joyful child I sent to school that first day, I may have ignored my views on the above and continued to send her. Despite my rebel front I'm always worried about getting it wrong for my kids and I thrived in school so I know it can work for some kids. I would have let her stay, and if one day she comes back to me and begs to go back we will sit down and have that discussion. But for now, this is the right decision. 

This is what my heart knows, and why I homeschool;

* L used to love reading, asking questions and investigating everything. When she went to school, this stopped. Her light went out. The teachers couldn't tell me why, she was meeting all her targets... because that is what matters in school.

* L loves her sister and is a kind and generous girl. This stopped, her relationship with her sister changed overnight, and O couldn't understand what she had done wrong, it broke my heart to watch their relationship deteriorate so quickly. She stopped sharing, the tone with which she spoke to everyone changed and the language used also changed. 

* L matured quicker in those weeks than I had ever seen. I could literally see her childhood disappearing in front of me. And she was so unhappy. 

* I want my kids to be kids as long as possible. To see wonder in everything. To experience a love of learning and follow their passions wherever it takes them. I don't want them to be confined by what some civil servant tells them they need to learn and when they need to learn it. 

* I believe kids learning isn't to the purpose of being well equipped to enter the workplace. It isn't about targets and tests, wrong and right. It is being happy. Learning makes kids happy. But school, despite their best intentions and original purpose, takes that away. When was the last time you met a kid who loved school? Who loved maths? 

* I missed her. And I am sure when the other two kids would have made their way I would have missed them too. It is a privileged position I am in to be a stay at home mum. Most of my friends went back to work whether they wanted to or not. And it is now a very privileged position I hold to be a home educator. I get to watch my child learn, to thrive, to find their passion, to spend time with them, laugh and learn with them. For as long as i am able, this is what I want to do.