So, what’s wrong with school?

 There are good reasons for sending your kids to school…so we are told!

I was always sceptical – there seemed to be far too many good reasons not to send them too. But they’re usually swept under the carpet along with children’s feelings.

So I’m thrilled that someone’s actually unearthed them and outlined them in a book.

‘So, what’s wrong with school? 125 reasons not to send your kids’ by Jessica Mwanzia is a fascinating, thought-provoking, but very readable book that slaps your consciousness with all the hidden truths about the schooling system which most people would rather not face up to.

I’m so excited by her work that I asked her if she’d like to tell us how it came about and a little more about it.

Below is what she says. But the book itself is even more fascinating – you so need to read it for yourselves! (There’s a link following). Here’s Jessica…

“I came upon home education as a last resort 14 years ago when my young son and school were incompatible. I had been institutionalised to believe school was a good thing. Aren’t they supposed to be the best years of your life?

I began reflecting on my own involvement in classrooms, from both sides of the desk and the observations I had made of my child’s experiences. I was shocked by the gap between what we are led to believe happens and what actually does.

So I gathered news items, jotted down my thoughts, observations and recollections, searched for statistics and read and read. Soon I could think of hundreds of reasons why school was a bad idea. It became a cathartic unpicking of my own prolonged involvement with the education system. And it became a book.

So, what’s wrong with school? 125 reasons not to send your kids is a resource to strengthen the resolve of home-educators in those dark moments many of us have when we wonder if we should stop fighting the world and just send our kids. I see it as a tool to convince the doubting with statistics and information for worried grandparents and partners who think our kids are missing out by being at home.

I asked myself many questions, which became the focus for the chapters in the book:

1. What do we learn and fail to learn in school? The overt and covert messages shape a lifetime of thinking and non-thinking, obedience or rebellion, of belief in ourselves as failures or failures-in-waiting.
2. What are the many schisms that school creates? Separation from our own needs, goals, feeling and desires sets up fragmented lives. By taking children away from parents and adults other than teachers and by age-segregating, schools ensure we stand alone.
3. What impact does the culture of school have on children and wider society?  From bullying to injustice, dishonesty to deferred gratification the myths and environment of school create many distortions.
4. What about the teachers? Undermined and overwhelmed, sick and stressed, the strangers we hand our kids over to are not in the best of health. Some are bullies and many want to leave teaching if only they could find other work.
5. What is the impact of continually measuring and labelling children with a number or a grade? The numbers harm and deceive, while disregarding those things we cannot measure.
6. How does school affect the health of pupils? Lack of exercise combines with sick buildings and unhygienic toilets and kitchens to make schools unhealthy places for the inmates.
7. What about their mental health? Schools play a role in creating depression and anxiety, damaging self-image and forcing youngsters to do too much too young. The increase in pharmaceuticals to drug bored and stressed children is also examined.
8. Are particular groups more at risk of harm in the school system? Boys have a tough time, “under-performing”, labelled with special needs and existing in an environment that shapes a particular brand of masculinity. Girls fare no better in the sexually charged environment. Many subgroups in society fare badly: the poor, the summer born, those with SEN, ethnic minorities.
9. What is the true cost of school to individuals, society and the planet? I argue that schools are expensive, damaging the environment, individuals and societies the world over.

I conclude the book with a look at ways forward, with many links to organisations and further reading. My website  http://sowhatswrongwithschool.wordpress.com/  aims to gather more examples under the Discussion – The way forward page. On the website there is a complete list of contents – all 125 reasons – and extracts from the book. For those inspired to buy it, simply click on the book cover for a paperback via lulu, or use the contact form for a PDF copy. (Can be converted to Kindle for free once you have received it.)”

Is education only ever about scores?

“O that’s a shame!” was the response to my first child’s birth date.

It was on the first of September you see. The cut off date by which the system decides a child is of suitable age to start their education – or rather start school which is another matter all together.

Her birth date would mean that she would always be the eldest in the class. But also meant that she would have to ‘wait’ a whole year longer to begin this educating process than my friend’s child who was born in August. He was always the youngest. And instead of ‘waiting’ as everyone put it, was never ready for the stages he was propelled towards.

I was thrilled we had our child at home another year. It meant she was more mature, more confident, more able to cope with the dross schools throws at kids. In the end of course we decided it wasn’t worth the dross and home educated and continued with the learning kind of life we’d given her before. In other words gave our kids activities appropriate to their ability, needs and interests with no relation to scores.

Tests and scores never had anything to do with it our children’s education. As they shouldn’t. But sadly, it seems scores are more important than needs which then requires all kinds of crazy strategies just so kids can be made to fit…see this article from the BBC News:

Summer-born pupils ‘should have exam scores boosted’

It is a massive problem and fault with the system.

There is a huge gap between the development of a child like mine who had a whole extra year to mature and build confidence and understanding, and a child like my friend’s who was that year younger.

But maybe if we educated differently, looked at education differently and took the emphasis off results and educated for personal development’s sake – without testing – the problem wouldn’t arise. For it is only a problem in school with the ridiculous way they test and score kids throughout their lives.

In the home education community, where children are educated as individuals, some never being tested at all even though they may be keeping a parallel with the work their school peers are doing, the problem doesn’t exist. Children are educated to their needs and ability at the time – not their age.

Ironically, what usually happens is they all end up at the same place academically at roughly the same age as school kids anyway – without the stress of having been constantly measured by all those tests and scores throughout their education.

Which just goes to show how little we need them.

And another good reason to home educate!

Awe-filled way to educate…

Dandelion out of concrete!

Awe in the world – I reckon that’s the best thing about being with little kids. Sharing their awe in the world, a world which is new to them of course.

Bit of a pain when you can’t get anywhere quickly because everything has to be examined; the bug on the pavement, the cat on the car bonnet, the dandelion growing out of concrete, the seeds from the sycamore, or even the odd dried dog poo. And they find endless delight in the clusters of city pigeons that strut around the benches in the precinct. They even find awe in their own feet sometimes.

Boring to us it may be, yet it’s all new stuff to learn about when you’re new to the world yourself!

Sometimes having small kids can even reignite your own awe in the everyday things we adults take for granted. That’s one of the wonderful things about having your kids around you – they make even you take notice of the little things. When you really examine the colours on a pigeon you find the most extraordinary iridescence.

If we’re not careful we can take this for granted. And overlook the essential part all this plays in our children’s education.

For this observation is a basis for educating – observational skills are valuable learning skills. Observation helps build knowledge of the world. Observational skills are as essential as all those other skills you equate with education like reading, writing and sums, which are really only a small part of the whole range of skills a person needs to become educated.

To become educated, and to fulfil the whole reason for education if you look at it beyond just gaining grades, children need to be equipped with the skills they need to live in that world. They need to look at it to learn about it, understand it, interact with it, care for it, take responsibility for it – starting with oneself, and work out how to make a contribution.

And all this starts with observation. It starts right back with you taking ages to get to the shop because you have to examine all these tiny parts of their world on your journey. Talk about them, point things out, answer questions about them.

Giving time to doing that helps encourage their awe in their world, helps keep it fresh, helps keep them interested and if they’re interested they’re learning.

It’s worth giving the time to what you think are irritating insignificances because while you’re being irritated by the constant stopping and observing, your child is learning and adding to their understanding and therefore their education.

That takes time.

It only takes ten minutes or so for them to learn how to add up. A complete and valid education takes a lifetime – a lifetime of awe in their world. Just like Newton was awed by the fact the apple fell down not up. What discoveries might your child make just through their observations of the world around them?

So, slow down, take as many moments as you can to foster and nurture that awe and observe the world. Who knows what it might lead to!

Sophia’s Choice

To read my post today I’m redirecting you to the brilliant website ‘Sophia’s Choice’ managed by the lovely Charlie Hughes.

She writes about natural, organic ideas and choices for parents and families and she invited me to write a guest post for her site about home educating and how parents of school-going children can learn from our approaches too!

So do pop across and have a read;

http://sophiaschoiceuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/ever-thought-about-home-education-ross.html

Educating the elite and doing sod all for the rest…

I’ve been in contact with a few home educating friends lately who have teens doing such entrepreneurial projects. Projects that give them purpose, that inspire and motivate them, with possibilities they could take forward in the future. Like little business. Writing and networking on the Web. As well as pulling in a few qualifications alongside.

And I can’t help thinking that these kids will make a success of their lives because they have so many diverse ideas and valuable skills gained from being in a home educating environment. Because while you’re at home you’re living life and living life gives you life skills and that’s what they’ll need for their future in today’s economic climate.

Schools aren’t big on ideas and life skills – not if they can’t be tested. Schools have become just too outdated in the way they educate; they’re still educating like they did when schooling began.

When schooling began, and information was scarce and academic skills were confined to an elite few, school was a place where you could transform your life with knowledge and ideas.

Now it seems a place that conforms your life into a no-ideas mediocrity. Except for the privileged few of course.

In this new age of no jobs I’m not sure how this is going to help.

Kids are going to have to rise above mediocrity. They’re going to have to have ideas in order to generate an income. They are going to have to think beyond the standardised boxes schools try to keep them in through grade obsession. Think flexibly and be adaptable, not stay in one tight and narrow framework like schools con them to do.

What we need to do is stop mass producing kids towards one outcome – mostly political i.e. for grades and league tables. And start thinking about how best to educate them to be able to live their lives in thoughtful, purposeful and independent ways, whatever form, that will enable them to support themselves, maybe create businesses, find incomes through a diversity of routes rather than a single track. Because the single track to single job prospect looks a bit bleak.

Politicians don’t seem to get the fact that they are just an elite few with elite lives. Yet they’re still making educational policies which make them even more elite whilst doing sod all for the rest.

The MAJORITY of the population leads lives that are very, very different from elite, which are full of challenges and mountainous obstacles and for some enormous poverty and non-employment.

What’s the good of more grades in that scenario?

Schools need to stop selling grades like they were a magic bullet. And start educating for life skills and ideas.

We once needed grades to prove we had knowledge and get us a job. Now kids need ideas to help them overcome the biggest challenge they’ll ever have to face; possibly no job!

What’s the best way to educate for that?

Home Education – from someone who knows….

Yay! She did it! So pleased…

You see, I enlisted the help of my lovely daughter to present a little film I scripted.

I’ve wanted to do one for ages. Just to help increase understanding of home education. To try and trample on those grimy myths, misconceptions and judgements from people who really don’t know anything about it, never have experienced it, yet are so quick to criticise.

And to allow the public to ‘meet’ a now-adult who was home educated in the virtual flesh. Because when thinking about home schooling folks only ever seem to think about children and seldom imagine they turn into ‘normal’, well-adjusted, working adults who contribute as much as anyone else.

See what you think.

Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eej9PxRw_P0

If you’ve got people in your life quick to judge, or you’re just thinking about home schooling your child and you want to ‘meet’ one perhaps you might find this helpful.

You can help too, by passing it on, ‘Liking’ and posting it on Facebook, or mums’ and parents’ networks regularly and extend understanding beyond the home education community.

Thank you!

Holiday rebellion!

…a walk by a river…

Start a rebellion. Take your kids on holiday in term time.

After my little holiday without them, I’m put in mind of all the times we took the kids away – usually only for little inexpensive jaunts – and how educational it was. And it makes me think parents should rebel because it’s as educational being on holiday as it is sitting doing stuff in a classroom.

Not that the schools or politicians would want you to know this. They’d rather keep your kids in schools with heads down taking tests so that they can collate results and put them in statistics and con us that the results show that kids are being well educated so we should vote for them!

They’re not being well educated. They’re just being well tested which doesn’t do a lot for the kids’ education at all.

Of course, it depends on your definition of education.

If your definition of education is to develop in your child the knowledge and skills needed to live a life out in the world beyond school then nothing could be more educative than getting them out and showing them that world.

If your definition of education is one that’s only measured by scores then I guess you won’t get what I’m on about.

Let’s face facts; scores are only scores on paper. Skills and understanding are what’s needed to lead life, not scores.

Going places, seeing different cultures, experiencing a diversity of lives, places, people, ideas, foods, dwellings, projects, conversations, languages, habitats, terrain, environments … these are the experiences that show kids the real world, that develops intellect and gives them a broader view of the world and how they might work within it, more than that just getting scores.

But they have to get scores – or pass exams, I hear you say in panic.

But do they? How many? And how much do they need to be in school to do that?

Most home educated kids spend most of their time engaged in the kinds of experiences described above and a much smaller proportion of their time doing stuff for GCSEs yet still pass them. Some don’t do GCSEs at all and still go on to Uni or work and productive and fulfilled lives.

And what’s even better they seem to understand what they want to do, how to fit what they want within the working world, and are therefore motivated to go for it.

And they find this from simply being out in the world rather than shut away from it. They’ve seen lives and have been educated to lead lives. That’s how it works.

So far from stopping parents taking kids away on holiday – whatever time of year – schools should be actively encouraging it. And stop paying lip service to this ridiculous obsession the government has with scores. And parents need to look beyond scores when they consider schools to whether the kids are happy there – if they’re happy, they’ll be learning.

Take them away as much as you can, there’s so much to see and do and it doesn’t have to cost a lot. A day in a wood, on a beach, on a farm, in a city museum, by a river – most are free – and they learn from the experience.

So I should start a holiday rebellion!

Raising kids via the three Cs…

 ”It’s the three Rs that are important,” I was told when I was a fresh young student keen to teach. “Reading Writing and Arithmetic.”

Despite the fact that whoever thought that one up couldn’t spell and times have moved on – supposedly – I think we still have a legacy from it, judging by the heavy emphasis on academic curriculum that’s being bandied about politics right now.

But I reckon that’s always been wrong. There are other things which are of more value to leading life – the three Cs:

CARE, CONNECTION, CONTRIBUTION.

It works like this:

Without caring what you do with them, qualifications are nothing. Without connecting with others, curriculum and everything you learn as a result of it is pointless. And without making a contribution, however small, you might as well not be educated.

It is care that make lives rich, connecting with others who care that makes life happy, and making a contribution to the world that makes life worth it.

I think we’d do better by our kids to raise them to understand the value of the three Cs however old they are and however they are educated!

Gove’s ghastly discrimination against non-academics

If Gove can disregard professionals telling him that he’s making a big mistake with the curriculum, what the hell effect can I have? (see this article)

But I can’t be silent; his blinkered approach to what’s needed in education is too dangerous to ignore.

When he says that kids need more academia – which kids is he talking about? The kids of the elitist upper classes like him or the rest of our children?

We used to need academia. Back in the dark ages when peasants couldn’t read, write or understand numbers beyond bartering.

But we have a different culture – with Internet now – has he noticed? Has he noticed that the destructively prescriptive curriculum is the very reason that thousands of parents, teachers, other professionals and children, are leaving the system?

And he thinks making it more prescriptive is going to help? Ask any teacher – he’s got it so wrong.

By forcing more academia on kids we are failing to address their wider needs as real people, not elite people. The world is full of very real and ordinary people making extremely valuable contributions, living their lives in hard working, moral and principled ways, managing to be independent, house and feed their families on an income too small for politicians to even imagine. For many of them, academia played no part and their children are probably not interested; more of it will drive more from education and we’ve enough disenchanted youngsters already.

And anyway is education only about academia? Because if it is, then it’s extremely narrow and disrespects and even discriminates against all those who lead lives through other approaches.

Not everyone needs academia to go forward to a fulfilled and productive life. But of course, that depends on your definition of a fulfilled and productive life. Is the only life Gove sees as worthwhile the sort of elitist, academic life that he leads?

There are youngsters who go on to lead fulfilled, productive, wage earning lives that are equally valuable and contribute something without academia. Who live these valuable lives without being posh, rich, academic or political.

Did the people who do valuable work like emptying Gove’s dustbins need academia? Because they are doing relevant and important jobs without it. Did the people who care for the elderly, clean hospitals, build roads, produce our food, cut cabbages in all weathers, work on production lines – did they need academia? Or those creative people who build new businesses? Not everyone needs or wants academia to lead valid and fulfilling lives.

Not everyone needs curriculum either.

So what do youngsters need?

They need experiences. They need to be inspired.

They need to feel what it is to be motivated. They need to understand that their world is such a rich and wonderful place it is inspirational to learn about.

Do they feel that now? Is more academia going to help? Doubt it.

They need to experience what it’s like to be fulfilled by what they do. They need to feel what it’s like to create life by their own hands and their own work. They need to find their strengths through a broad range of experiences that give them confidence, courage and self esteem. They need to understand how vital are good connections with others.

You don’t get any of that through contrived and disempowering curriculum.

Our young people need respecting for not wanting to be academic if they choose. Through respect they learn respect. Not through a curriculum that disrespects the fact that we are all different and makes failures out of those who don’t fit.

Academia as a basis for education is past its sell by date. What we need for our kids now is to ignite them and show them how they can make a valid, productive and rewarding contribution, whoever they are, academic or not.

The point is proved by the thousands and thousands of families now opting to educate their children outside of schooling and some without curriculum too. Very, very successfully. And many teachers are home educating too, not because as teachers they can teach – as teaching isn’t always required really. It’s because these teachers have seen what damage an overly prescriptive curriculum does to kids – it switches them off to learning.

Education will continue to be poor as long as it is governed by politics and politicians far more concerned with winning votes, and using children as pawns to do so, than the development of the young.

Until we make education politics-free and bring it back to a humane level – i.e. the development and nurture of human beings and all their idiosyncrasies and needs – it will continue to worsen until we have squeezed all the good professionals out of it and squeezed the last droplet of enthusiasm for learning out of our children.

It’s time to stop using education as a means to produce vote fodder through a prescriptive process akin to factory farming. And start educating in a broad experiential way that heralds what it is to be diversely human, academia being only a very small part.

Back to giggling…

“I’m not your waitress!” I said, grinning at my youngest and handing her the drink. She does the cheeky grin. I love it.

And love having her back in the house for a term break from Uni.

We fall back into that old way of giggling and raising eyebrows at each other round charity shops and she falls back into that old way of getting me to wait on her. I fall back into doing it.

I’ve noticed though that she doesn’t say that to me as I get her to return the favour and bring me a cuppa – perhaps she’s more gracious than I am. Or perhaps it’s because she hasn’t had nineteen years of doing it! Mainly, though, we just have easy fun times together really. No resentments. No deceits. Continuing as we always did to be honest and open.

I used to worry that home educating might make the kids even more sick of their parents than young people tend to be. But I think it’s had the opposite effect. There is more communication. More teamwork. More friendship and more rapport than I could have ever wished. I’m their best friend they tell me. Aw!

It did take work.

To achieve continued communication it is necessary to practice the opposite; shutting up and backing off some of the time…much of the time actually. To be mindful of when to butt out, when to leave them to find out for themselves, when to make a decision about not imparting advice even though you know something and they don’t and are going to make mistakes because of it. Unless it’s life threatening those mistakes don’t matter and anyway, they want to make them as part of wanting to find things out for themselves and not be told. Wanting to be independent, learn independently.

I can remember feeling just the same. It does us good to remind ourselves about the things we didn’t like in the way we were parented or educated, and omit them from our own parenting, rather than slipping into old but familiar acts.

I still have to remember to do that now.

When our kids are small we are in charge of everything. As they grow you have to leave go that charge and allow them to graduate to their own learningful independence.

Not easy.

I think the biggest thing that helped our relationships was to always maintain that we were a team; family-wise and educationally. And as a team there was no need for bossing – encouragement definitely, but that’s different from bossing. We were all on the same side, working towards the same aim. Schooling sometimes interferes with that sense of pulling together and there’s little opportunity for independent learning.

We’re still a loving team despite all those years of home educating – it didn’t ruin it. We still have that sense of pulling together and always being on the same side. Even if waitressing does sometimes slip into the equation. But as long as it remains mutual it’s fine by me.

Now, where’s she gone; I need a cup of tea!