Those who home educate will probably get where Wolff is coming from.  Home educators are the ones who have experienced first hand how remarkable it is the way in which children can learn and develop their intelligence and education from a much less academic approach, one that incorporates plenty of activities like drama, design and daydreaming. I guess we had some of each  in our lives every day when we were home educating, although admittedly much of the drama was probably from their mother!

But home schooling aside, it would be lovely to see other parents and educationalists begin to understand that it is not ramming academics down kids’ throats that makes them educated. It is the care and attention, respect and encouragement shown to them whilst they grow.

What they learn is almost secondary to the importance of the ethos of learning itself; the importance of nurturing the skills that make caring, respectful and responsible citizens who enjoy the experience of learning so much they want to continue with it for life.

If they feel that, the rest of the skills and academics will fall into place naturally.

The problem is that ministers responsible for writing language curriculum are as far removed from what real children in real schools need as I am from training elephants. They sit in their concrete towers trying to make themselves look good by blinding folks with pointless academics the rest of us don’t understand, thinking it’s the answer to children’s literacy and that it’ll make our kids more intelligent and educated.

But it won’t. Because what really makes our kids intelligent and educated – if indeed you can ‘make’ them so – is not so much about what they learn as the experience of learning it. The irrelevance of learning this type of grammar too young is making our children switch off to the experience of learning altogether.

You continue to learn throughout your life. The more you learn the more you grow. Growth and development keeps our lives fresh and fulfilling. That’s if you’re not put off by thinking learning is something dull and difficult and hard to do because of idiots forcing you to learn stuff like this and calling it education. Children would be far better just being engaged with the value and beauty of language and the experience of using it in their daily lives than dissecting it till they’re numb. I use language daily – I do not need to know the names of its parts in order to use it well.

But this happens continuously in schools. The whole schooling/teaching experience focuses far too intensely on learning far too many ridiculous and unnecessary facts, when it is the experience of learning – the nurture and development of a desire to learn – that is valuable.

Young children already have an innate desire to learn. But being subjected to this mind numbing content destroys that desire, often to the point where they turn their back on learning completely.

Of course, kids aside, there is a political agenda here. The more complicated the stuff they push on kids, the more it will ‘seem’ that ministers are making the right policies about educating them. The more they push for more grades, the more parents will be pleased and the more votes politicians will win.

But the fallout from this is that, apart from a lucky minority, the majority of kids’ educative experience is totally wasted. Worse than wasted because it puts some of them off learning forever after. They leave school disenchanted with learning instead of understanding that learning is something that enhances your life. And worse still, many of them end their education (when in reality there is no end) without the skills to lead a life. For example, they’ve been so busy trying to get their heads round parts of language, they don’t understand language well enough to even write a letter of application.

And the worst of it all is that so many of them leave school thinking education is not for them; they’re not up to it, and they’re not worth it.

There’s a quote I keep coming across by Einstein; ‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid’.

He may not be right in saying we are all geniuses. But he is certainly right about the danger of making kids feel they are stupid.

Few kids – if any – are really stupid. Most can learn with the right learning experience. Most have the potential to succeed, develop and move into a productive life.

I don’t think I’m stupid, but I have lived my life not knowing what a Definite Participle is. For the sake of the experience I have now found out what it is. I don’t think it’s going to make one bit of difference to my writing or my life knowing that.

What possible value could it, and other subjects like it, be to a kid of ten? Except to make him feel stupid of course.

Whilst ministers are mind boggling kids with their curriculum obsessions they are prostituting the quality of children’s experience of education. And wasting children’s lives.

If ever there was a reason to seriously consider home education it is this; to prevent your child from becoming one the kids whose lives are wasted and who leave feeling they are stupid.

Now, though, there is hardly any wood in the tideline. It is all plastic.

Plastic bottles, plastic tubs, plastic cartons, plastic bags, some with dog poo or nappies in them, plastic beach toys, plastic rings from round a four-pack but now round the beak of a dead sea bird and occasionally the odd plastic chair.

Looks lovely doesn’t it? (Joking, of course)

What astounds me is that folks actually place the dog poo in a bag in the first place before they toss it in the river. It would be more ecologically sound to have tossed it without the plastic. And what also astounds me is that people can so mindlessly abandon their rubbish with such disregard for the consequences; how people can be so irresponsible.

Irresponsibility scares me witless. Of all the less attractive traits of human nature irresponsibility must be the one that does the most damage to a fellow human being and to the planet – which ultimately will mean the same thing. And the second thing that scares me is our irresponsibility with plastic.

We thought plastic was so progressive, modern, exciting. It was, it is, but it also the opposite, it is destructive and unless we take better responsibility for our use of it, we may one day think it was the worst thing ever invented. There’s no doubt it has its uses but I do not need my pears wrapped in a plastic pear-shaped carton, inside plastic film and inside a plastic bag. I do not need another plastic bag every time I go in a shop (I sometimes have to fight the shop assistants to stop them giving me one). And we should all be more responsible about re-use rather than re-buy.

We must stop producing plastic at the rate we are and to make that happen it’s up to us to minimalise our use and purchase of it and wean ourselves off dependency on it. Or it will not just be the tideline that’s full of it. It will be the whole planet.

I’ve no love of Margaret Thatcher but disregarding the politics you have to hand it to her; she had one hell of a battle on her hands as the film shows and you can’t help but admire her courage.

Anyone who has swum against a tide of conventionalism, as all home schoolers do, will know the kind of courage I’m talking about. To stand by what you believe is right in the face of  bigoted traditionalism is no small task. The isolation you face.  The risks you take. The doubt and indecision that plagues you. The personal attacks. Both ‘MT’ as Denis called her and parents who are home educating climb similar mountains. Yea – I can have a lot of empathy.

But we shouldn’t let challenges stop us trying to make changes. If enough parents challenge a system that is letting so many children down, if enough parents uphold that their children’s well-being is as important (more important actually) than tests or grades or league tables, if enough parents bother to speak out like MT did, then eventually things will change.

Home schoolers are true pioneers of that change and a demonstration of the fact that there are alternative ways to educate children besides the traditional ways. Maggie Thatcher didn’t let traditional male environs stop her. Parents shouldn’t let the conditioning of traditional schooling stop them from believing that there are different ways to educate, ways that can provide a happy and fulfilling style of education that leads to a happy and fulfilled life. Thousands of home educating families are now proof of it.

As I turn the telly up a bit the cat creeps onto my knee with his paws over his ears. But I feel more for the angst of the teenager upstairs than irritated by the noise so I’m not going to add to it by yelling ‘turn the bloody thing down’.

In fact I feel for all teenagers. Their rapid fluctuation in hormones is hell to cope with. On top of that it must be excruciating being shut in institutions all day long with adults expecting you not to be teenagers and to be able to do something about controlling your jangling emotions. There’s as much chance of that as controlling wasps in a jam jar.

I remember thinking about this when ours were home educated and had much more time and space for personal release, active and creative activities, and opportunities to discharge. Whereas many of their contemporaries in schools seemed to have nothing for physical release, or emotional either, relying on computer games for distraction – some as likely to wind them up as calm them down. Or they had the constant rap of screaming singers in their earpieces. Or used drugs of course.

Everything I read about calm and wellbeing suggests we need the opposite; we need quiet, space, green exercise to de-stress us. When do you see a young teenager doing that? On top of that the pressure in schools is so immense I don’t know how most of them stand it.

I was trying to remember what we did as teens. Probably nothing more harmful than rang door bells and legged it. We had lots of time outside. But maybe we weren’t so pressured.

We had pressure. But it didn’t seem quite so heavy as it is now. There were demands to do chores but less demand to get through endless exams. More demand to look tidy but less to have the right labels and the latest expensive technology. And less pressure to fit so tightly into specific groups.

I remember drifting through college just trying to pass whereas now drifting’s been replaced by stress and beta-blockers – or unprescribed drugs and alcoholism, just to help them feel a bit better about themselves.

Teenagehood is a tricky time for our youngsters. Anyone who has lived with one knows it can be a tricky time in the household too. A time of negotiation, tolerance, give and take (okay – mostly give). A time when we as parents need to step back and let go as much as we can and do our utmost not to have a tantrum ourselves. Find out what we can and have a bit of understanding. Try not to add to the frustration they already feel from school and peer demands, and be as passive as we can till the trickiness passes.

If we can do that we can hopefully preserve some rapport until the new adult that is growing within the chrysalis of hormonal charges emerges like a butterfly.

Meanwhile, where did I put my earphones?

It’s well worth investing in a copy as it contains lots of useful articles covering subjects like work and home educating, home education on a budget, science at home, plus activities and projects to do with the children.

Right at the end of this issue there are some inspiring quotes about education including one of my favourites from George Bernard Shaw:

‘What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child’.

I think that sums up quite succinctly one of the differences between the education of children in schools and those who are home educated!

I’ve realised that home educating is just the same as any type of working at home. People tend to think that you, or the kids, are having an easy life, sitting comfortably drinking tea, baking biscuits and hiding away from the tough touch of a real world.

Yet it’s the opposite that’s really true. It’s bloody tough – tough because everything; motivation, drive, energy, inspiration, has to come from you. There’s no boss or teacher whose eagle eye is keeping you motivated, no colleagues or peers to give you a cheery good morning and pull you round. Sometimes not even any pay or payback to make it worth it!

Anyone who has worked at home or home schooled will understand how extremely hard it is cranking up again after time off. Forging your own route is akin to forging metal; it takes a lot of energy to stoke the hot fire of motivation and a lot of hard work hammering things into shape.

When we were home schooling, cranking up the children’s motivation after Christmas felt like cycling a rusty bike through deep mud sometimes. We had to be inventive. But there’s nothing like a new year to set intentions.

Intentions for the day really helped. It brought focus. It gave something to work towards. And a sense of achievement afterwards. And some of the strategies I used for the kids still work for me now, working at home, and I see the children using them for themselves now they’ve grown beyond home education and lead their own lives.

We used to discuss intentions for the day, made lists and set targets. ‘Targets’ is a horrible word because of the destructive associations with school, but don’t let that put you off, they’re a really useful concept. We’d maybe set a work target to achieve then plan a swimming trip afterwards. A work task completed could earn some gaming time later perhaps.

Small tasks that are achievable give children a sense of success and of being in charge. A specific target to complete motivates better than setting a time target (say an hour’s maths) because kids can so easily procrastinate and waste it and don’t see what they’ve accomplished so easily. Their accomplishments are their payback.

It also helped to make the activities variable. A sedentary task follow a more active one. Study followed by a practical activity. Or working on our own followed by a social activity. Contrast helped to keep the children fresh and active pursuits stimulate them much more than academic ones. It helped to keep me fresh too. Contrast is the spice of a day. I still practise that now and so do the children. Holidays wouldn’t be nearly so nice without the contrast of work in between.

So, having sat writing this indoors in the warm I’m now going to add some spice to my day and take a break by going for a walk in the freezing gales just like I made the kids do too. They really appreciated it once they got back!

What do you do to spice up your motivation and get back into work mode again? Perhaps you’d like to leave a comment with your tips for others.

Makes for such a cleansing and inspiring start to the new year. May yours be a happy one!

To fight off the dog, cat, teenager, from the best position in front of it and kneel down in front of it myself. Telly off, lights off, Christmas lights on, flickering firelight to drink tea beside, hot cheeks, thawing fingers. Whilst beyond the steamy windows the frosty sky moves from ice blue to gold to dark.

Inside the room is living with flame, reflected in all the tinsel and gaudier cards, the sound of it as comforting as water over pebbles or breeze through branches. It crackles and flickers with a music as evocative of Christmas as sizzling turkey or a chorus of carols.

Christmas luxury. Happy Christmas!

The only things that are visible in the teary distance are the fluorescent orange jackets of the field workers. The men and women harvesting the sprouts and cutting cabbage by hand. They are merely luminous blobs in the half light, bent double, toiling their way up and down the soggy rows behind the tractors.

While I wait for it to pass, there’s no let up for them because of the driving weather; they have to keep going. I can imagine the wet running down their faces and seeping round necklines . The heavy weight of the mud sticking to their boots making moving laborious work as if their job wasn’t laborious enough. They’ll feel the slash of sleet across the eyes and soreness of backs aching with bending. The beating steel is relentless. The bash of the storm gale force.

I wait a bit. When I go out the sleet has stopped but the cold is enough to cut noses. Even the dog turns her face from the merciless attack of the elements. These people work out in it from six until six, see the light come and go, feel a brief interlude of wintry sun before the next onslaught of driving wet when I am intensely grateful to be back inside.

So when you tuck into those fresh veg this Christmas spare a thought for the toil of those who made it possible!