Selfsufficientish.com

Hi,

I am writing an essay for a masters in teaching and learning and was wondering if the home educators out there could tell me their reasons for choosing to home educate?

I will can then put some figures into my essay.

Thanks,
Helen

I home educate, and mostly because my son has special educational needs, and although the school did put a support package in place, at the end of the day I decided that the one to one attention he could get at home, the plan being specifically designed for only him was the best solution. I'll pm with more info

I plan on home-educating because the education system did not work for me, I have the option to keep E at home with me and I plan to. If I have any other children I plan the same.

Organised education insists a child must fill certain criteria, or fit in a certain box. I did not and I have seen many nice normal children upset by how they are treated in school - This isn't always the teachers fault... how you could educate 30 children to a reasonable standard is beyond me.
The top of the class get attention because they are at the top, the bottom get attention because they need the extra help, and the 24 kids in between are left to fend for themselves in a scary 'Lord of the Flies'-esque world.

It will suit our life style.... while OH has a much more structured work ethic.... I don't, E and I have long lies and 2 hour long breakfasts... we play in the garden, doing nothing in particular and daydream many hours away - and long may that continue.

In Britain, we send our children to school at a ridiculously young age, and therefore we are training them (via pre-school) at least a year earlier. I was having a conversation today, apparently it is the time of year to register your 2 year old to start nursery next January (2010) They are still babies and we have to get them entered into the system..... that's just not right.

So reading over what I have just written I guess I think that the education system makes children grow up to fast and it is not achieving it's goal of actually educating children.

Thankyou for the responses so far, this is very helpful, I have head similar reasons to this before.
AnnPan I totally agree with you about the class sizes, if there was one thing that state schools need to learn from home educators it is to dramatically reduce class size.

Helsbells wrote: AnnPan I totally agree with you about the class sizes, if there was one thing that state schools need to learn from home educators it is to dramatically reduce class size.

Sad though, my sister is currently in her probationary year of teacher training* she has 25 children in a composite class..... that is a composite 1,2,3,4 class.... children ranging from 4 to 9. She is frazzled

I think that a mixed class size of 10 would get similar results as home ed but I also think that in that system all classes ought to be mixed, and targets need to be dropped.

Of course that would be a HUGE financial burden on the tax system so can't be done.

*first year taking a class full time AND reporting back to mentors AND writing reports to get her final qualification....

We're going to be home educating our son.

Annpan said everything that I've been thinking and I don't need to add anymore to it!

Helsbells wrote: I think that a mixed class size of 10 would get similar results as home ed

We don't home educate, but only because my husband feels school is best for our daughter (I'm not going into all that, he isn't an ogre, genuinely believes it's right for her, lovely man, school nice, daughter not traumatised, doing well!). I would home ed given the choice, however, our daughter is in exactly the mixed class of 10 mentioned above, at a lovely small rural village school, and I think that makes all the difference. The children are known and understood as individuals which I think is so often, inevitably, missing in larger schools and classes and is one huge advantage of home ed.

Something that appeals to me very much about home ed is the ability to follow your nose - if a child is fascinated by x or y this week you can spend the whole week/month investigating it in your own way. DD's school can't do this, but they teach in long blocks of literacy/numeracy/art etc so the children have the whole morning immersed in something. Huge contrast to my skids' high school where it's 50 mins of this then all change and 50 mins of that.

We're lucky in that DD's school is very encouraging of music (DD, at 6 1/2, frequently plays her violin in assembly and she and two others in her class had a big fuss made of them recently for doing their Grade 1 violin exam), art, drama, community projects etc, so I feel she's getting a well-rounded education, far more so than I could give her at home esp as we live very rurally and all my investigations into home ed groups in the country reveal no-one anywhere near us and the county centre for home ed is a very long way away. On balance I think DD is best off where she is, but only because it's a lovely, small school with high standards (sorry if some people don't like that, nowt wrong with standards IMHO, but league tables/SATS not good) that gets to know its children and genuinely invests in them. If our only option was a less desirable school I know DH would be considering home ed!

Sorry - edited to add couldn't agree more that children start too early, I think the starting age should be raised to 6 or 7, though the Scandinavian model does involve children having lots of childcare prior to that where they learn to read and write, which must made a difference to how swiftly they get the hang of things at school.

MrsD'ville mkII wrote: Something that appeals to me very much about home ed is the ability to follow your nose - if a child is fascinated by x or y this week you can spend the whole week/month investigating it in your own way. DD's school can't do this, but they teach in long blocks of literacy/numeracy/art etc so the children have the whole morning immersed in something. Huge contrast to my skids' high school where it's 50 mins of this then all change and 50 mins of that.

Yes! - although I started home ed for the reasons given in my earlier post, now that I have seen how it can work, with hindsight I would do it anyway. Life is just not separated into individiual subjects as they do in school, there is numeracy in cooking, history found on a walk, and so on
we are currently reading 'a christmas carol' again - as we do this time every year, and there is so much to expand upon, such as what they did and did not have in the 'olden days', we had to look up some of the foods that were mentioned, as we did not know what they were etc.
We can dwell on the subjects taht he finds hard, and take new approaches etc until he gets it, and we can rush through things that just click, without stopping to get bored.

But Mrs D - it sounds like your chiild is in a great little school and it is working out good for her - and thats all that matters - what is right for each individual child. And home ed is still there as an option all the way through the school years.

We took our eldest daughter out of "the system" in year 5. She was in a class of 65 kids with one full time teacher, one part-time teacher & two classroom assistants. The staff were doing their very best & we had no critism of them, but we just felt we could offer her a better education & the Headteacher agreed and gave us his blessing!

She took a City & Guilds by correspondance at 14 and worked as a leagle exec from 18. She is now working in Events managment

We educated our younger daughter at home durring her primary years but she deciced she'd like to go to school for her secondary education. She's just about to do AS levels in Geology, Chemistry, Maths & Physics. Not bad for a severe dyslectic!

They both learnt to be more independant and neither of them have ever held the belief that friends could only be around your own age. Both of them are very self-diciplined and understand the value of study. Niether of them were ever made to study subjects the didn't want to (by us, school was a different matter). There is a five year age gap, but they often studied together, each gaining from the other's perspective.

They are typical girls, at each other's troats at times & best mates ten minutes later. Both joined various groups to make friends & both have huge circles of friends.

Needless to say we're very proud of both our girls.

MW

MuddyWitch wrote: Needless to say we're very proud of both our girls.

MW

sounds like you have every right to be proud

I home educate because I don't agree with the one-size fits all education system. I get a lot of earache from my sister (ex-teacher) who is always banging on about how I should follow the national curriculum so he doesn't get left behind. I'm pleased with how my son is doing after all, how many other 5 year olds can read a map? He taught himself from watching the satnav and playing around with Google Earth. It was pretty amazing when he called me over to the computer and showed me how he'd found his way to all our friends homes.

If you need any more info, just ask. We belong to a quite large home ed group and I'm willing to get their views too, if you need them.

Thanks Wigan Pixie, I may take you up on that.
I am thinking that this essay may have to go on hold for a while as I am so busy with school work but I still want to coontinue researching and hopefully I can the put it all together at some point in the future.

Since the very early days of formal education it was believed that children should be educated on an individual level. However in spite of all the talk no one has ever acutally come up with an effective way of giving each child an individual education (in school).

i agree with everything that's already been said, plus in schools our children are not taught essential skills such as how to be self-sufficient(ish)! i just don't understand why school children couldn't be using school grounds, or nearby allotments, or even container gardening, to grow at least some of the food for their lunches ???

our dd was in school for 2 years and in that time I watched my child's self confidence being eroded. She also picked up some really bad habits from other kids, such as sassy behaviour that she didn't even understand.

I felt that her schooling consisted of learning how to be a bully or how to be bullied and it was so competitive.

We took her out at the beginning of year 2 and now she is thriving. She's not doing brilliant academically, but she knows how to grow things, cook and takes care of the birds in the garden. The other month she made herself a seat in our magnolia tree and spends hours out there. I'm so happy she is having a CHILDHOOD! She has a dream of becoming a farmer - how proud am I?

If she wants to learn academic things, she can learn at any time. But she can never get her childhood back.

Good luck with your essay, Helen