Freedom from plans

I shouldn't be writing this. I didn't plan it.

I'm too tired.

Don't know why but I could sleep as I'm typing.

I was thinking about how much I hate people interfering with other people's lives.

I was thinking how much discomfort I suffered at the thought of home educators having to put up with strangers judging and assessing them, and proposing plans for their children's education.

That was the plan, wasn't it? From Mr. Badman and Ed. Balls in 2009-2010.

It's the children's freedom to self-educate or be taught or do workbooks or do their own research or sleep in or go to a special educational place that I like in home education. It is the sheer flexibility of home education that delights and enthralls me. It is the unexpected steps or leaps that children suddenly make and without anyone planning them. Planning things - some things - is like trying to plan when a flower will open from a bud. Sometimes some things should just happen and not be regulated.

Home education and plans. No, I don't think so. Not unless the children have the freedom to adopt a plan. Not unless the children have a choice.

Local Education Authority plans? No, I don't think so.

Freedom

I like the way that I don't usually have to plan anything.

Sometimes, of course, I do. Outings, dental visits, walks, talks, dish-washing, when to pop the heating on... Those kinds of things. And this year I'm thinking about Christmas shopping in two doses because, although they are sisters, my daughters are different and enjoy different things.

But, mostly, I have freedom to decide what it is I wish to spend my time on. My time is my own. It is a commodity owned by me. Not so in schools where your time is micro-managed down to seconds and you have to do all kinds of things that you can't be bothered with, find irritating or just plain hate. But no-one's giving you the option to refuse or offer palatable alternatives.

E. is just finishing her piano practice and is off to study some Japanese, and then, she says, she'll wash her hair. She has the freedom on the whole NOT to be at someone else's beck and call; not to have to do things she finds annoying or boring or that eat up her time to do other things that she finds interesting and enlightening or fun.

She is free to determine her own schedule. Her own life.

What a tremendous gift for Christmas. Or any time at all.

Home educating is a gift I say thanks for all year round.

Poppy generation

I must bow my head now. I confess that I missed Remembrance Sunday.

Normally, I don't miss it. I've been known to sink my double chin to my chest to honour the dead of the two World Wars, and the dead of every other war and the survivors of all misbegotten deeds. But this year has been different.

This year, I feel their pain deep in my aching bones, and I have their screams echoing endlessly in my ears. They are with me, those violated creatures mired in mud and filth and the scarlet of their blood and that of other humans, knowing that the end of their lives - and such short lives - was a millisecond away.

You rest now, beneath the poppies. You sleep and wake to heaven now. You have passed the baton to this generation - these ones now quick and breathing.

And how we have failed you, our dear dead; how we have failed to see that discourse fills the airwaves now and not truth that you put your shaking hands to the guns to protect. We bow our heads at the thought of the comfortable dreadfulness of those days wherein you gave your future and your dreams. It is a cosy feeling that we have, snuggling up in our coats and jackets, watching the march of the handfuls left of the few who made it back alive but not unblooded and not unchanged.

We remember on November 11th (or the nearest Sunday) only to forget on the day after.

How much you must long to shriek at us. How much you must wish to awaken us. How much you try to warn us.

"This too can happen to you..." they whisper from their scattered graves. "Beware. You too can lose your freedom. The poppy can be your symbol as well as ours. Beware".

A million bombs fell upon our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and they clambered over the bodies of the beloved, the children, the families, the friends and the unknown to reach the haven of freedom.

But there are other ways to destroy a man or a woman: it can be done without dropping a bomb or pointing a gun. The new times have more subtle deaths for us.

"Beware. You too can lose your freedom at the behest of vile men. Beware. The poppy can be your symbol as well as ours. Beware. Oh, please, beware".