Annpan wrote:That's why I am planning to home-educate E ..... or I am probably already doing it I guess.... she is only 2.5. She can go to school when she wants to, but by then I hope I will have given her a better grounding than a nursery or infant dept. would, at the very least.
Me too. I home-ed Katie and will continue to do so when she reaches school age. One of the biggest mistakes of my life was sending my older two to schools. Now they're not interested in education, or not what they think is education.
Sometimes it spooks me how much we have in common (though I don't have older kids) I see that attitude to 'education' in my nephews and niece, and in myself to be honest.
Ann Pan
"Some days you're the dog,
some days you're the lamp-post"
We home educated both of our daughters for various bits of their lives.
Our eldest went to primary school but we took her out when she was in a class of 62 kids with just one full time & one part time teacher! (I don't blame the teachers for her situation, they were lovely, hardworking people being handicapped at every turn.) She did a City & Guilds in computing by correspondance and passed with flying colours at just 15.
Our youngest is dyslexic, so we decided to home educate from the start with her. She chose to go to secondary school but now says it handicapped her as she does her AS levels. She is doing a lot of catch-up reading on various subjects & says she's streets ahead of her classmates at self-reliance & self-discipline in her studies.
Do what you can, learn what you can and teach what you can until you cant. when you cant, have a drink and a song because if it gets that bad it is better to fiddle and dance merrily into the night.
I was largely home schooled untill college and it put be way ahead of my peers. I am now in teacher training as i want every kid in the state system to be inspired to want to learn as i was.
blessed be.
Jeremy Daniel Meadows. (Jed).
Those who walk in truth and love grow in honour and strength
Let us be lovely
And let us be kind
Let us be silly and free
It won't make us famous
It won't make us rich
But damn it how happy we'll be!
Edward Monkton
Member of the Ish Weight Loss Club since 10/1/11 Started at 12st 8 and have lost 8lb so far!
frozenthunderbolt wrote:Do what you can, learn what you can and teach what you can until you cant. when you cant, have a drink and a song because if it gets that bad it is better to fiddle and dance merrily into the night.
I love that advice!
No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery
Fantastic book Candide. I particularly appreciate Voltaire's definition of the three greatest evils of the world as being vice, boredom and necessity.
Anyway, I think we can safely forget any idea about widespread teaching of Manderin: we have enough trouble with closely related European languages, let alone something that lacks a proper alphabet and has a grammer and pronounciation that is incomprehensible to westerners.
I personally don't believe that our future salvation lies with an increased aptitude for globalisation. I think we will do better with a more localised view of our world, though that is a view that is often derided (by those with a vested interest) as being protectionist.
Globalisation depended on lashings of cheap oil. Prices may be low at the moment, but how likely is that to last I wonder. We need to live within our means and that entails our making better use of such resources as we have available close to hand.
I oscillate between pessimism and slightly less pessimism about the future. I tend to agree that our energy supply is too much at the mercy of oil prices and gas supplies and how Putin feels when he wakes up in the morning. Our food supply is too much at the mercy of supermarkets and, worse, of the global suppliers of seed (and fertiliser, pesticide, blah) to farmers which I suspect is concentrated in 2 or 3 multinationals.
My response tends to be that I want as far as possible to diversify my dependencies - I'd like to be able to heat the house/cook on at least two sources of energy which I can't currently achieve but is my long term goal. I get food through veg boxes, from supermarkets and (gradually) through growing my own - I'm pragmatic enough to see that I can't hold down a full time job and be self-sufficient.
With regard to my 1.8 children, part of the reason I am going down the somewhat unfashionable route (occasional celebrity chefs aside) of trying for self sufficiency(ish) is that I think that their world will be much harder than ours for most of the reasons that started this thread, and that of their children will be harder still. I'd like them to know which side of a carrot is which, and how to practically live without dependence on others.
Having said that, my parents have grown vegetables for years and I managed to learn absolutely nothing from them - I don't know how much is how they taught and how much is how I learn and how much was my burden of homework from school. I find it ironic that I learnt about crop rotation in history at school, but ignored it happening literally in my own back garden and now have to re-learn it from this forum!
Well that was rambly. Somewhere in my head there's a big and well thought out political polemic about this whole thing, but I'm not sure it's ready to come out yet. I was explaining to one of my colleagues today about why I order open pollinated seeds rather than buying F1s off the EU approved list and he said 'wow, I didn't realise gardening was so political'. Yes indeed, I think it's probably one of the most important, grass-roots (geddit?) political movements around, and I think it's set to grow. Enough with the puns, I'm going to go and have lunch!
"If you want to catch a loon, you have to think like a loon"
I find it ironic that I learnt about crop rotation in history at school, but ignored it happening literally in my own back garden and now have to re-learn it from this forum!
.....
*nods vigorously*
That sums up so much of what (imho) has gone wrong...
They're not weeds - that's a habitat for wildlife, don't you know?
