Review of the year

I accept that home education will always be an easy target, and that governments of various kinds will try to monitor and assess home education. This is because a) they don't understand that home education is different to school education and that home education can be a MORE EFFECTIVE type of education for an individual child or young person; and b) I suspect although I cannot prove that states require control of their young and the state-provided education is one which controls the child.

I also have a faint suspicion that governments will not move too obviously against home educators because their motives will then become too obvious. Control, dictatorship, 'nudging' people to act as the 'nudgers' expect and wish other people to act are all situations where one group of people judges another group of people and finds them wanting.

We are all slaves, but home educators are less steeped in their slavery than others.

We all participate in our own slavery because we have been taught to be slaves. We are not free because we, usually, cannot follow our own stars and develop our own talents. We are not free because the system is intrinsically anti-human, anti-growth of the individual and anti-spiritual.

We are all meant to be vibrant souls bathed in sunlight and reflecting rainbows.

We are meant to be radiant.

Are we radiant?

Most of us don't shine in our own glory; we make do and compromise and settle and put up with and think that, later, we'll have time to polish our talents.

But there is only this time.

There is only this moment...

So when will you do something to become the soul you should be?

Shine on into the New Year.

And may you fly in all your glory through all the days of your lives.

Have a joyous and happy New Year.

When you're dying...

A palliative care worker in Australia asked some dying people what, if anything, they regretted or would have/should have done differently.

They said:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

"I wish I hadn't worked so hard."

"I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

"I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."

"I wish that I had let myself be happier."

The excerpts from the article were quoted in Nursing Times (Vol 107 No 18 10.05.11).

They are obvious really, but everyone needs reminding. I am going to be happy (a thing I find hard to do, but I can do it for today). I can phone a friend or visit. I can tell those I love that I love them. I can go shopping for a few Christmas presents for my mother (who is terrible to buy for).

I can concentrate on things that matter. Just for today. And maybe I'll keep the habit going for the rest of my life and, at the end of it, maybe I won't have any regrets to tell whoever is around to hear them.

Maybe.

Therapeutic

I've been thinking about something I learned about nursing a while back.

It's called 'the therapeutic relationship', and it's mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_relationship

Although it refers specifically to a healthcare practitioner and a client (once called a patient), the relationship between them should lead to a beneficial change in the client (or patient).

I was thinking that perhaps local authorities who seem to cause much turmoil in the breasts of some home educators think they have a 'therapeutic relationship' with said home educators. Or the local authorities think they should have a therapeutic relationship with those unusual characters.

I mean, it must be dreadful to have to 'engage' (how I hate the duplicity of that word) with these demanding, rejecting, feisty individualists who believe that either their children can educate themselves or that their children are better off being educated outside the state school system.

Imagine going along to a person's house, knocking at the door, and, when it's answered, saying, "Hello, here I am. I've come to help and support you and deliver a beneficent relationship wherein you, as my client, will change for the better."

I can imagine the responses. Can't you?

Even in a seemingly lovely idea like the therapeutic relationship there is a little worm at the core of the rosebud. There's the idea that, basically, buddy, you need to change: you're not doing something right, you're skeetering about thinking you're all that BUT I KNOW as the local authority person that, really, there's something not right about you.

Well, you must be wrong (or a little bit suspect) since you think you can deliver an education better than the one lots and lots of our resources and good people are serving up in school. You must be needing a therapeutic relationship with us.

Then, again, we need you too. We need to inform you that you're wrong or, if you're not too bad, we need to tell you that we'll let you get on BUT you've got to fill in consultation forms or questionnaires about what you're doing with your kids and you MUST TELL US if you need support.

And you must need support because you don't want it. BUT you must be in need of it because most of the population put their children in school and YET YOU DON'T WANT TO PUT THE SCHOOL IN CHILDREN.

You're telling us that our schools aren't good enough for you so we want the opportunity to tell you that we don't think your non-schooling is good enough for us.

You can see how and why everyone gets a trifle testy about the whole therapeutic relationship thing.

My idea is that the real therapeutic relationship rests in parents giving to their children the gift of trust (where they believe that the children can educate themselves) and the gift of time (where the children aren't dragged away from something they are in the middle of to do something else that someone else has decided they should do for no reason that is based on evidence that it's good and proper that they should do that something). Then there's the most important one: the gift of love. The sincere and honest caring that goes into home education. Love.

So when a local authority starts poking about in your life, try to feel sorry for it and wish it all the best. It needs a little love.

It needs a therapeutic relationship in its life.

Hello, Russia

Hello all you lovely Russian people who are tuning into my blog.

I can tell you that my daughter, E, is enjoying her second Russian course. She gets up at silly o'clock on a Saturday morning, spends over one hour on a jerky, jumpy bus, and then walks through a University campus to reach you.

Your language. She likes it very much. From the little acorn of a Russian course last November (2011), your alphabet and your cadences have intrigued her and she is one of the few people left in the classroom as the last day approaches. This coming Saturday is the end. Or not the end.

There'll be another course without a doubt.

It's so amazing, isn't it, the wealth of language learning now? In my young student days it would've been difficult for me to learn Russian. Now E studies for three hours on Saturday mornings. She's even bought the text (and the CD) because whatever E decides to study she goes into it deeply and joyfully.

I'll miss the Saturday morning treks up to town with her when I do my Christmas shopping and envy her the hours with your beautiful tongue.

Спасибо (Thank you).

Sparkling

If I had a sparkler for every time someone has told me that his or her child has improved tremendously when the family began home educating; that he or she had taken an interest in something, decided to become a different person, learned to read, write, draw, sing, go camping, attend meetings, get political, volunteer, ice skate, exercise, bird-watch, grow some vegetables, obtain a kit for electronics, horse-ride, write letters to the editor of the local paper, scrutinise what the newspapers are printing, acquire Japanese, Chinese and Russian, and keep going with a musical instrument to study as opposed to dropping everything to bone up for SATS, teach him/herself artwork that wows people, rampage around the internet and find out everything about anything they are interested in... and much, much more.

"If I hadn't had the chance to... (says one of my young people) which led to...(something else)... And I had the chance to do ... (whatever)... I can even give presentations without being bullied, and get more comfortable making speeches or even talking to people."

"And I wouldn't have got more confident with Maths", says my young person. "They put me in the wrong set in school and I lost confidence because lots of the others were better than me whereas I was good at English and should have been in that set."

"Then I took Maths outside of school at my own pace, and did quite well at it. I'm glad about that."

The other of my young people, when asked "What do you think you've done that you don't think you could've done if you'd stayed at school?" said: "Oh, I'd be on all day."

There'd be so much to say. Too much to tell you.  

Isn't that what you want for your children's lives? That they can take all the opportunities out there, all the good things available and - well - avail themselves of those good things?

That's what I want.

For my children. And for what they remember about me. 

I hope that they remember me for giving them the chances that they've had to create their own lives and not live the way other people dictate that they should live.

I hope they live according to what they would like for themselves, and not how someone else tells them to live.

I hope that they sparkle and shine, all the wonderful days of their brilliant lives.

Not the post you might have seen

You're not seeing things. Or not not seeing things. There was a post about Humphrey's visit to a home education group meeting, but I shouldn't be writing late at night or early in the morning, and I posted it instead of saving it as a draft.

I made a mistake.

Not a big mistake.

I suppose the world won't end. Not your world. Not mine.

Instead I will apologise. It wasn't ready though. The blog post entry wasn't ready. It was a draft. I was experimenting. I was thinking and writing. And I wasn't satisfied with the writing. It didn't inspire me. If it doesn't inspire me it might not inspire you. I want you to be inspired. I want me to be inspired.

My children always inspire me. They do. They've made me more me. I have had their company in the home educating journey for years and they've taught me every day.

They are inspiring. The young people. They are.

I like my children. I like spending time with them. I like learning about them and with them. I like them, and I'm so grateful to have had all this precious quality time with them to enjoy them and to enjoy seeing them change and grow. 

I know they've been happy at home base. I know they've chosen to educate themselves about things they find interesting. I know they've been more themselves, instead of the false selves that school forced them to construct for protection. I know that they've never been stuffed into small pigeon holes because you cannot pigeon hole a human spirit.

We've been happy. We are happy. What better way to educate your child than to inspire them to be happy?

Death of a thousand cuts

The cut of constant consultations. 

The cut of negative media 'reports'.

The cut of governmental reports.

The cut of bad men who masquerade as good men in politics.

The cut of people who 'allow' us slaves our freedom.

The cut of offering 'help and support'.

The cut of universities demanding x number of A levels.

The cut of numpties from local councils offering to monitor home educators even though the real meaning of education escapes them.

The cut of 'no funding' for home educators.

The cut of being made to search for non-existent jobs and not assigned benefits even though we are doing vitally important facilitation work with our children's education.

The cut of home educators accepting monitoring because they think the lady from the council is 'nice'.

The cut of local authorities Education Welfare Officers shouting at a new home educator that she MUST let them into her home.

The cut of local authority officers being told of the agony of your daughter having been bullied to within a few degrees of the death of her sensitive spirit and telling you that "you should have come to us for help".

The cut of some MPs 'getting' it, but never being able to trust them because we don't trust MPs because they've let us down before.

The cut of being suspected child abusers, over and over and over.

The cut of people who say they want to check our children because some home educators might be abusing their kids and not seeing that they are defaming our good names, our reputations and sinking our hearts into the black hole of distrust and hurt because they are really accusing us of damaging our children.

The cut of schooled people not understanding that we understand that children learn independently and freely and not through coercion and pain.

The cut of local councils saying you should be on a special database because you love your child enough to give up your usual life for him.

The cut of turning to the possible apparent sources of help in society when you are falsely accusing of hurting your child and find that they all agree with your accusers.

The cut of ignorant people who don't understand and won't understand admonishing you about socialisation for your children when their kids are out desecrating public spaces and ripping off elderly neighbours.

The cut of everyone thinking that schooling is education.

The cut of local councils putting your child in a database of NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training) because you don't think it's their business to know what your young person is doing.

The cut of local council assigning your child to a list of NEETS because they are home educated.

The cut of Child Benefit losing your form, that you carefully and tenderly filled in, and cutting you off Child Benefit.

The cut of the government 'helplines' not recognising home education as a legitimate alternative to school, and cutting off your Child Tax Credit or Child Benefit.

The cut of not knowing whether you will be able to see your grandchildren home educating.

The cut of other countries falling to the demands of anti-home education lobbies.

The cut of thousands of hours of work by home educating parents in re-analysing incorrect statistics (Badman) promulgated as an excuse for radically changing home education.

The cut of having friends and families and neighbours think that you are nuts for choosing to home educate.

The cut of having nothing in common with people in wider society when they complain about the terrible job schools are doing and you say "home educate" and they look at you like you are a freak.

The cut of telling people who are ranting about the school's reaction to little Royston being bullied and you suggest home education, and they say, "Is it legal?"

The cut of trying to tell someone about home education to have them say, "Do you have safe and well checks?"

The cut of your child going to Harvard at the age of fifteen because he is so ready for the challenge and everyone saying that you 'hot-housed' him and that you've abused him by not letting him be a child.

The cut of seeing the 'inspector' calling at your door when you haven't made an appointment when the dog has been sick on the cat and you're late getting up because you took your youngsters to see a London show and you all slept in and you know she's going to report that she 'saw no evidence of an education going on'.

The cut of assuming that, as the local council person doesn't like what you do, he will issue a School Attendance Order which assumes that SCHOOL IS BEST.

The cut of knowing that complete strangers can demand that you jump through lots of hoops which can still end in a School Attendance Order, just because they don't 'approve' of your educating habits.

The cut of having a school fail your child and being forced to accommodate the prejudices of someone who thinks school is best.

The cut of Education Welfare Officers asking what sort of socialisation you give your child and frowning when you tell them that young Lisle goes to home educating groups, and then asking if he sees any 'normal' children.

The cut of everyone thinking that you're a bad parent for being so stupid as to think you can educate your child because don't experts do that?

The cut of having local authorities tell you what they believe is the law and what their policy is, but you know what the law really says and you have to tell them that they don't know their job, but they don't care because they believe what they say is right and, anyway, they have a policy that says they can do whatever they say they wish to do.

The cut of.... (insert your own. If you're a home educator, I'm sure you'll have more)