BS: Home Education UK

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 08:11 AM

That really is a good post, Lizzie. Factual, accurate and verifiable. Objective rather than subjective, calm , collected and none of the generalisations or implications of some of your earlier ones. No-one can dispute that post and surely you can see that when you make unverifiable and incorrect assetions, as you have, they will dispute them. Nothing to do with you as a person. Just some of your poorer thought out arguments. Your last post, like the thread about the bath handles, shows just what you are capable of and I know I open myself up to allegations of trying to control things whan I say this but, honestly, I am not. Can you not just think before you post? Maybe type it up in Word or notepad and post it two hours later? It could save you a lot of wrangling in future! Keep the passion - drop the crap:-)

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: jeddy
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 08:45 AM

i couldn't agree more with the post above!!!

i don't blame you for taking him to task, for breaking his word when you have gone out of your way to ask them to take him in later, or for him using your son as a scare tactic for getting more funding.

i want to ask you questions without you going off at me.

was there no other school he could have gone to in the area?

when you did move, did he go to school and thats when he had problems?

if he was having problems, say with bullies, how long did you leave it before taking him out of school?

as for the freedoms of thought, i still haven't had any brainwaves as to what is acceptable to teach children and what is not.
maybe this is why school is such a good mixing pot as teachers and parents are on the board and both work out how to tackle this issue.

have a great day everyone

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 09:01 AM

Wow. That headmaster had to have been on very shaky legal grounds. Did he even have the right to discuss your son's progress with anyone other than you and his teachers? Ethically it was just wrong and more than a bit cruel.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 01:33 PM

If parent anger with teachers, principals, and headmasters is such a chronic problem, I would say that taking a good hard look at the teachers, principals, and headmasters is needed, and/or taking a good hard look at the system that gives them their marching orders. If the system was working, they would not have this problem.

The fact that this problem is such a big one and is so endemic is an indictment of the system itself.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 01:59 PM

Here is an example of one school system that is doing precisely that, and is getting good results even in terms of parental involvement...

http://fora.tv/2009/07/05/Transforming_the_System_An_Interview_with_Michelle_Rhee#fullprogram

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: paula t
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 02:43 PM

Lizzie,
I don't blame you for being angry about the attitude at that school.as a teacher,I can't believe that primary school children were left to use a public service bus when "learning the ropes" for secondary school.Our year 6 children have 4 days at their new school in summer term 2. They go on the school bus which is provided for our village secondary school children. This is part of the "rehearsal" and therefore a necessary part of the week. However, this bus takes them right into the school grounds and is not used by the general public.

If travelling on public transport was the recognised way to get to that school, then I believe a member of staff should have wished to accompany them to school to ensure they knew what to do and were safe.

I taught at another village primary school which fed into a secondary school where the children travelled between sites at breaktime.Every year we took the year 6 pupils to the town and showed them where and how to cross the roads safely. We could not have felt happy if we had not prepared our children in this way.

Please don't let this awful experience colour your view of all schools . The vast majority of us take our responsibilities for "Our children"(yes, they really do feel like our own children) very seriously indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Emma B
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 02:49 PM

The problem is indeed a real one Carol although probably not 'endemic'

The UK, a generation ago, went through a socio-political period often referred to as the 'me generation' in which it was advocated 'there was no such thing as society' 'There are individual men and women, and there are families' which was generally interpreted as people should look to their own interests and those of their family
first

Others have described other characteristics including -

'Generation It's-Not-My-Fault – This starts early when GenMe kids discover how often their shortcomings in school are blamed on their teachers.'

Some very real examples of this were provided by Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers
She cites one mother who blamed staff when her 14-year-old daughter became pregnant and another when she discovered that her 16-year-old son Jack was smoking cannabis
'Their distress causes them to hit out. Jack has been led astray by his school friends.
More should have been done to educate him about the dangers of drug abuse.
They threaten to go to the local press to tell their story.'

Teachers are becoming increasingly concerned that they are being held responsible for aspects of children and young people's lives which are completely beyond their control she said.

"One of the key reasons for the standstill, the inspectors concluded, is that children are coming to school with poor skills in speaking and listening. The inspectors exhort schools to do more to improve their pupils' oral skills, but do not question why it is that pupils are starting school unable to converse and to listen effectively.

Just what is happening in the homes of these children? Why are they coming to school developmentally delayed?
Children learn how to take turns in a conversation, how to ask questions, how to react to what others say, how to follow instructions, how to tell jokes through doing all these things.
They will not learn how to behave as social beings if they are stuck in front of the TV for hours every day. They need their parents to show an interest in them and to spend time with them, helping them to play with their peers and to learn the rules of social behaviour.

Too many children start school without the social and verbal skills to be able to take part in lessons and to behave well.

Too many are starting school unable to hold a knife and fork, unused to eating at a table, unable to use the lavatory properly.

These children will not be living in absolute poverty.
The majority will be living in homes with televisions, computers and PlayStations.
What too many of them do not have are adults who are prepared to give their time and energy doing that difficult, but most essential of jobs: raising their children properly.

I've been accused of wanting to ban television in children's bedrooms, when for many parents a television in every room is the marker that they have made it and that they have provided well for their children. It comes to something, I think, when the mark of good parenting is the provision of a television which, in too many cases, becomes a substitute for parenting - a constant pacifier which suppresses interaction in the family.

We are in danger of becoming a nation of families living separate lives under one roof. The bedroom, once a place to sleep, has become the living space for the young. Spending hours in front of computer screens, on social networking sites or immersed in computer games, children and young people spend little time with their parents and their siblings.
Parents are unable to monitor just what their children are watching. Teachers report that many pupils are exhausted at the start of the school day, tired out from viewing unsuitable programmes or sitting in front of the computer screen until late into the night or the early hours of the morning."

I have certainly seen this example of 'family life' and worse in the homes of aquaintances and could just as easily quote appalling examples of parenting as Lizzie quotes an example of a primary school failing in its duty to organize private transport for their school leavers.

(e.g. a parent ringing a school in front of a child to claim he was sick because she couldn't get him out of bed after being up all night watching videos in his locked bedroom where he demanded his meals to be served)

Parents and teachers need to work together.
Parents are responsible for setting boundaries for their children's behaviour and sticking to those boundaries when the going gets tough.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 03:10 PM

Spot on, Em.

When I walk my son to school I see daily examples of parental irresponsibility and "me first, sod the rest of you" behaviour (e.g. the parents who drive their kids the few hundred yards to school and insist in parking in the no parking zone in front of the gates, putting other kids in danger). In his recent book "Adventures on the High Teas", broadcaster and journalist Stuart Maconie argued that when Princess Diana died a cork came out of the bottle and we haven't figured a way of putting it back in yet. This coupled with the legacy of the anti-society ideology of the Thatcher years, which Labour did too little to counter, has left us with a whole raft of society who don't seem to understand the value of community, which has been replaced with officially sanctioned outbreaks of mass emoting...

Thread drift, I know.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 03:11 PM

But we have been told that people who are educated in the schools are more socially and emotionally balanced than people who are home schooled. Those parents are the products of the school system themselves. So which one is it? Do the schools do a better job of socializing people or don't they? Because the behavior of those parents certainly doesn't support that argument.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 03:16 PM

Carol, do you believe people are how they are purely because of school? Do family, politics, ideology, the media, peers, the societal norms they absorb, etc not also have a bearing?

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 03:18 PM

Yes, to all Emma's post above.

"Too many are starting school unable to hold a knife and fork, unused to eating at a table, unable to use the lavatory properly.
These children will not be living in absolute poverty.
The majority will be living in homes with televisions, computers and PlayStations."

And there's the rub. It's genuinely not 'poverty' that generates this, it's a form of neglect, born of willful apathy, or willful ignorance. I tend to blame the State for inducing it, in as much as the State has become Uber-Parent and therefore directly responsible for you failing to wipe your own fucking arse! IMO this country could probably suffer a wee bit more Anarchy for healthy balance (I will for now withhold my control-state conspiricy theories..*smile*).

Anyhoo, asides apart.. Maybe FolkieDave will resign my direct personal experience to 'mere anecdotes', but having grown-up in the Seventies on a rough council housing estate, where the 'scummy mummy' (gotta love the vernacular!) was already prevalent even then, and having immediate family still just down the road myself who now live quite surrounded by these kinds of 'non-parenting' families, it is a very real problem in the UK today.

According to R4's Women's Hour (a highly sane and moderate voice in the UK media - at least I tend to think so), there are now increasing numbers of children who are going to school who are literally incapable of controlling their own bodily functions because their parents have failed to even teach them how to use the loo (meaning they never bothered taking them out of nappies), has now become a problem for teachers. That's just far, far too much for teachers to be expected to take on.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 03:20 PM

I'm not the one who said that schools produce people who are more socially balanced than home schools. It seems to me that people want to have it both ways. They want to say that the schools are doing a better job than home schooling environments can, even while they are complaining about the results of the environment they say is better. They can't have it both ways. Either it's better or it's not.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:05 PM

You see, I think you're misrepresenting people's views. For example, I haven't argued against home schooling, but at least one poster (and I don't mean you, Carol) takes every opportunity she gets to slag off school education (whilst then protesting that she doesn't!). This means when people challenge her views, the assumption is made that the same people are also anti-home schooling. School is only part of what makes us what we are - home and all the other stuff we are bombarded with daily also shapes us. I guess if home is also school it narrows down the range of influences and ideas that shape our adult selves. If the parents have a decent value base and are good teachers/mentors the kids have a good start. If they are using their kids as guinea pigs in a social experiment around extreme religious, political or social views or if they don't have the ability to pass on knowledge and skills, the end result will be very different. So - depending on parents' value base and teaching skills - home schooling can be a wonderful opportunity, neglect, systematic brainwashing, or none of the above. Likewise, school experiences can vary hugely depending on the culture of the school, the competency of the teachers and how far the parents and the school are willing to work together for the benefit of the child. However, no school exists in a vacuum. This, I feel, is generally a good thing.

I'd also add, as a parent of a child in a state school whose needs aren't being met as well as they might be, that I am by no means a slavish supporter of everything a school does. I strongly believe that parents should have an advocacy role. I also strongly believe that how they exercise this role should be exemplary and I would support any measures to protect teachers from violence or aggression by out-of-control parents.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:13 PM

Some people in the thread are saying that the home schooling environment cannot do as good of a job of socializing kids as schools outside the home can. The behavior of these parents undermines their arguments in that regard.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:17 PM

And I say that because home schooling environments can and have produced people who are far more socially ept and balanced than the parents who are being described in this thread. So we can say with confidence that both environments are capable of producing people who are well balanced, socially, and that whether or not this will be the result will depend on the quality of the school and home schooling environment. Which makes neither environment automatically any better than the other.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: jeddy
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:19 PM

emma and crow sister have it spot on!!!

i can tell you that my nephews are part of this problem.
it is now nanny and grandad who are teaching them to sit down to eat, ater 5 years of trying that is.
these kids don't have a bed time, they have a time where they are sent upstairs.
when the boys were born, they were farmed out to pretty much anyone. they still smoked in the house.
then my neice was born, no one was allowed near her and they only smoked by the back door.
now she has grown up abit, she is as farmable as the two boys.

none of them say please and thankyou, they have no respect for their house, or anyone elses.
all they really want to do is sit in front of their games consoles, which is ok for me as i am a sort of grown up.

i have to admit their parents are getting better now, because they take them swimming and football and cricket, but when at home, they are pretty much left to it.

they hardly ever get taken out for the day by their parents, thats nanny and grandads job.
even when they take them to petting farms, they get bored, because anyone who has ever played x box, will understand games move alot faster than real life.

even when they were younger, we couldn't buy them board games or things appropraite for their age as they had out grown them.

sorry if no one finds this relevent, but it has bugged us for years, what they are doing to these kids.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Emma B
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:29 PM

I haven't argued against home schooling either, just the need for introducing registration in order that no child is 'under the radar' and a leval of monitoring that the child is, in fact, receiving the basic standard of education and that the parent does have the knowledge and skills required for the task - as is the practice in most other 'devoloped' countries.

Like other posters however I do have some reservations that home schooling can restrict a child's social contacts and focus their socialization into very narrow channels to reflect the parents own 'extreme religious, political or social views' in some instances.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Folkiedave
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 05:00 PM

We have as a family owned a TV set.

"Does that mean you don't have a video either?" a student once said to me!!

I suppose it would be a DVD nowadays!

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Peace
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 02:21 PM

The role of schools in the socialization of children is a bit glamorized in this thread, imo. Fact is, schools are meant to control populations. "In time the savage beast doth bear the yoke."

Having read, researched and written about Canada's 'history of education', one thing is clear: the purpose of public education is to control the masses. That means us.

Public schools over the past few years have begun again to play the National Anthem each day, and the Catholic system in Alberta has brought in "The Lord's Prayer" each day, too. (Note: in Alberta the two tines of the Public System are Public and Separate. School Districts that have a majority of Catholic voters in them will subsequently be called the Public Board. If a School District has a majority of non-Catholics, the Catholic Board will be called the Separate School and the other the Public. Both Public and Separate are funded with public money.)

I have seen more effective socialization happening at recess than usually happens in the classroom.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 08:05 AM

And with those wise words above this post, from a Wise Ol' 'Natural' Teacher, for whom I have the **utmost** respect, I think this thread should now draw to a close.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 08:13 AM

LOLLERS Lizzie - it had already done so, at least until you just went and freshed it back up to the top... ;-D

Otherwise, gotta second exactly Em's sentiments in her last post.

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: jeddy
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 08:19 AM

peace, kids wouldn't have recess or playtime, if they were not in school. they would be able to play with the kids that live near them yes, but is that enough?

folk festivals over here are a prime example of what intergration can do.
we would not have met the wonderful people we have if we stayed close to home. not that i am knocking the locals round here.

would home schooling encourage kids to explore further afield, if they did not have to travel to see their friends?

would they see different ways of family life if they did not go to each others houses?

school is definately not just for education, it is about finding out who you are around others.

TCA

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: Home Education UK
From: CarolC
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 01:51 PM

As the example of the folk festival shows, schools are hardly the only way for children to have experiences of socializing in the wider world. And as has been pointed out several times already, home schooling parents seek out opportunities for their kids to socialize in other contexts. For instance, the many home schooling associations in which many home schooling families get together collectively so that their children can socialize with many other home schooling children. And there are also many opportunities outside of the schooling environment, such as swim clubs, little league baseball, soccer leagues, boy scouts and girl scouts, and church/synagogue/mosque environments.

It's a non-argument and will remain a non-argument, no matter how many times people bring it up.