A Suitable Education

This got me thinking…

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Education-Leeds-set-for-axe.6122782.jp

just what is deemed a suitable education? There’s plenty of other issues in there, not least the blind misuse of figures, but the suitable education thing has always been a huge concern of mine since all of this started. And the LA training, something I’ve often waffled about before, so I don’t want to get bogged down in that again… so, a suitable education.

Home education isn’t understood, we already know this, in fact how many of us home educators fully understand how our children’s brains take in so much information just by experiences and letting them be? I mean, we know it works, but how? Educational psychologists have tried looking into it for years and they come to the same conclusions. Its so very successful but we may never fully understand the reasons why.

The government knows this and they don’t like it. After all people will always fear what they don’t understand. So how are they going to define what a suitable education is when the LA comes marching into our homes?

Will they have a check list? Will they require evidence of written work? Evidence that it occurs every day? Are we to be timetabled? Will we have to sit and ‘work’ for so many hours a week? Will our children be tested? Well, they can try that last one but since I find the idea of testing children, particularly young children, abhorrent they’ll have to fight their way through me first! And I’m a big lass so I’d like to see them try!

And who will put this criteria together? How are they going to put it all together? If, as is the case for many many families, the education relies on the self motivation, imagination, exciting investigation, engaged discussion of each individual child (and that’s a heck of a lot of HE children!) how on earth are they going to know where to start, let alone pop it all on some kind of sliding scale?

So, focusing on the learning being child led… the government is using all this nicey nicey talk about soft touch and ‘nothings going to change’, we’ll still have the freedom to educate our children how we like, it just needs checking. But the two simply don’t mix. How stupid are they to think that they can come up with a way of finding out how unschooled, child led, autonomous, call it what you will, learning can be monitored effectively without it having an impact on the very successful way these children learn?

If us parents have to worry, no, fear that we have to present substantial evidence or else our children will be removed from the HE register and forced into school then this will begin to chip away what makes a child led education beautiful and such a joy to be involved in and facilitate.

For example, we’re a bunch of poorly little sausages at the moment… but yesterday we learned and talked about Hawaii courtesy of Lilo and Stitch oh, and the concept of alien lifeforms. A spin off Little Mermaid film, grief over the death of a loved one, music, the original Little Mermaid story and what are fairy tales and the cultural importance of folk stories. Nothing was written down, what shall I do? Get the LA officer to sit down and watch Disney Cinemagic? Mind you if I had their job and someone got me to do that I’d be quite chuffed at how the day was turning out! But then I’m mad as a badger and I doubt they’d let me near a position of that kind!

We almost finished our rag dolly and now Niamh wants to make one all on her own without my help and she also knitted her first 3 stitches. Considering the amount of ‘academic’ (for want of a better word) learning and ‘life skills’ the children got through yesterday when they we’re sick I’m pretty impressed! But would this be considered a suitable education? It is by me, but then my opinion doesn’t count, does it?!!! (remember, mad as a button!)

And as soon as we’re better there’s so much to organise! Spring is coming, so the nature walks will double in length and frequency, we have friends to see and new families to meet, outings and activities to plan, spontaneous trips to museums, jaunts on the train to think about and save up our pennies for! Should I keep all of my receipts? Not join in with my children, just stand on the periphery of their learning and take pictures? Should I get signed statements from my friends to verify where we’ve been and what we’ve done? That may seem extreme and more than a tad paranoid, but what? How are we meant to comply with the state? They’ve never made it clear what they think a suitable home education is, because they don’t know! *rolls eyes*

I think this point doesn’t sit well with me because I’m not too good with not knowing something, I want to know what they want from me!!!! Not so that I can comply, I just don’t get it, I don’t understand, I just want to know what I should be fearing, what I’ll need to be fighting against to preserve the way my children learn… after all, we always fear what we don’t understand.

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