Sunday 18 October 2009

We have to be better than all the rest

Don't know about you, but I see a pattern developing in the Home Education Review Select Committee commentary.

I see the same old problem pattern. It's one we women should be draggingly familiar with. One we've been raised with, our mothers and grandmothers have struggled to correct, and one that we see raising its butt-ugly head again.

Are you better than your comparative male, woman? Are you twice the man that a man is? Can you cope with twice as much stress, do twice as much work, give everything to everyone and come up smiling and being pleasant? (And create and look after children, and a household too)

Well, now, we might hire you. Just for a trial. Until someone better comes along, of course. Someone male.

Here it is again. Home educators must be twice as good as teachers, twice as good as students in school. A child failing in school, once home educated, should be up-to-scratch before a year has turned and outperforming all his peers. Under new recommendations, all the matters that school has not addressed or helped will have to be sorted within months of home education beginning (and that is a generous estimate of the time the local authority will kindly allow you as you strain to erase the bad habits that school may have inculcated).

You might arrive at the situation, like many parents do, where school bullying has totally demoralised your child; then the local authority begins on you and on your young one, bullying again. Before you've found your feet, the tsunami will sweep you away.

It's like cutting a person's legs off then expecting them to not only run in a race, but to win it too, AND in half the length of time it takes for all the competing runners to cross the finish line.

Schooled children can fail. Yeah, well, the school tried everything, didn't it, to 'encourage' them and 'support' them. Schooled children can flunk out of courses, make Gs in their GCSEs and snort with laughter at higher education. But not home educating children. THEY have NOT to be NEET. They don't have the leisure to be people or to be themselves. They have to run full tilt, scramble over hurdles that would faze others, dash to the finish, end up with the biggest, shiniest trophy or it's "Oh, they home educate, you know. Huh, they get no education. Hang about all day. Don't do anything. It's an excuse to avoid truancy and shouldn't be allowed, I say".

So, home educate your children, that way your children's attainment will be spelt out to you. Be the best. Not the best you can be. Just BE THE BEST. OR ELSE.

OR ELSE we'll send you BACK to the FUNSHACK which failed you the first time and where you can enjoy being yourself just like all the others.

4 comments:

  1. Yes, it is hardly a pleasant thought that having fled the school system one might then have the same people barging their way into your home. It's as if, having quit your job and become self-employed, to have greater flexibility and no boss, you then find your former boss peeking through the window to give you your appraisal...

    The flip side of what you're saying, mind you, is that if your child does do really well by their markers of 'doing really well', you'll probably be accused of hot-housing, denying them a social life, and so on!

    Barry

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  2. Its just too depressing!

    I wish everyone who was failed by the school system would visit their solicitors and sue the bloody Local Authorities/DCSF for child abuse/poor education. By the time they're done paying out there'd be no money left to hunt us down.
    Bastards!!! (sorry for swearing, but I'm very upset by all this)

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  3. I agree with everything both Danae and Barry have said.

    Was thinking re Michelle's remark, that the one upside of Badman's proposals is that if they do implement them, there would be plenty more arguments to support suing LAs for failure in this area in one way or another.

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  4. I so agree with all the above. We have to be twice as good, but not so good that we might be accused of hot-housing. And yet schools can routinely fail some children and hot-house others to the brink of breakdowns. I've seen my daughter desperately try to fit in under both types of regime and there's no way on this earth that she's going back to either!

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