Unreasonable

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw.

I thought that was true, when I read it in Change Your Life in 7 Days' by Paul McKenna. And I think that home educators are anything but reasonable. What is reasonable about making your child's life so important that you give up a large chunk of your own life? But what is more important than your child's life, health and happiness? In my book, nothing is. 

A lot of people don't think it's reasonable to give up the 'everyone does it' mentality of schooling to offer your children a super-special amazing tailored-to-them and up-close-and-personal-education. However, I think it's reasonable for your children to demand the best from you. They deserve the best: the best I can produce.


It's unreasonable in society's eyes to so value the health, welfare and education of your children above anything else (usually money). Again, I don't go along with societal values because, to me, people are more important than obscene amounts of money and other people patting me on the back or thinking I'm a fine sort of woman because I take the easy way and send my child to school.


It's free so it's not reasonable to keep your child away from school, is it? Actually, it's not free. We all pay for schools from our taxes but we don't dictate the moral tone nor the method of teaching nor the selection of the teaching staff nor the curriculum. We pay for it all but choose none of it. As pipers - or, in fact, payers - we certainly do not command the tune.


It's better for your child to go to school, everyone says. Is it? Do you know my child? Do you know what situation my child flourishes in? No, you don't. I have the advantage of always knowing my children and being able to predict which situations that those young people will find conducive to learning and, more importantly, to health and happiness. I always maintain that no person who feels unsafe and unappreciated will learn anything other than he or she should avoid the unsafe situation.


And I've been told that 'You need to live in a box in order to think outside a box'. If you live forever in the dark how will you be able to see? You need to cope with non-school in order to cope with life which is - in the main - full of not-school happenings.


All in all, I think I'm unreasonable. I want the best for my children. I need to think outside any box. I need them to feel safe, happy and healthy. I wish them to develop coping skills for the real world not the fake world of school.


I think home education fills the bill nicely. Even if I have to pay for all the tunes.

 

Consulting

Oh, there are a few around. Consultations, I mean. There always seem to be a few around. Asking us what should we do about...' They have to ask us. Or they have to seem to ask us. However, have they already decided what we should say? You can slant questionnaires and questions in certain ways to produce certain answers. I used to think about questionnaires for hours. I worked for my local police department and, even amongst our small number of people in the office, I found that people defined words differently.

I'll give you an example. I think a porch is part of the building. M. who worked with me thought a porch was outside the building. So an outside light could've been inside a porch, but outside the building because a porch was, in her view, on the outside of a building. However, I thought that a light inside a porch was a light inside a building.

It was something very simple, even something quite silly, and we laughed about it. But it made me think. It made me wonder which words we use can mean other things to other people.

I learned somewhat to be careful what I thought about words, and the way that I used them.

That's part of the reason that I believe writers are underrated, and that words can be minefields.

There was a saying going around some years back. People would ask 'Have you stopped beating your wife (or husband or partner) yet?

It's a simple sentence, yet to answer the question involved is difficult. If you say yes, you admit that you've been beating up your partner. If you say no you plead guilty to continuing to beat up your partner.

If you answer yes or no, you can't win.

Sometimes you just cannot answer a question because of the way it's stated.

I don't like consultations. I really question whether the answers Mr and Ms Public turn in are ever read or, if they are read, whether they are understood. I wonder whether the wealth of knowledge that the 'experts' (like home educators) are listened to or can change anything if they are listened to. I wonder whether the people who compile the questionnaires or the questions see the porch light as part of the indoor lighting system or outside lighting.

What difference does it make? Well, the questionnaire that I was charged with designing was to ask householders about their houses. Those householders had been burgled. The burglars didn't like outside lighting because it showed up their activities, but they didn't care about inside lighting. That was just one question on one questionnaire. But that questionnaire was quite important in the 'war against crime' that the local police were carrying out. Those questions were helpful in knowing what to do with people's houses to make the houses unattractive to burglars. They helped to target police funds too. They gave householders some clues about why the burglars chose their properties to burgle.

So consultations, when you are really interested in the answers, can be illuminating. If you are just going through the motions because the system says you should consult then it's all a bit dark, isn't it?

Consultations. We, home educators, know a lot about them. More, I would wager, than the average citizen. And we've filled in (or filled out) a few of them in our time.

Consultations. They can be illuminating. Or not.


https://www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/departmentalinformation/consultations
(Apparently, the e-consultations tool has been taken offline due to technical problems)

Seeking the university

E and I have been going to University.

I went, some time ago. I suppose my stories have encouraged and interested E. They've got her 'into' the idea of higher education. Just in time for the increase in fees and everything for University.

Oh, well. Timing was never my strong point.

The Open Days are amazing. They're good for lots of poking my nose into places I don't normally get to see. Marvellous. And they're good for meeting people who answer my questions.

I've enjoyed the days. There are more Open Days coming up in different places, and I guess we'll be there, after having prayed for a sunny day.

I'm looking forward to it. I guess the days after my children left school I never really thought about where they might go when their home educating journey finished. Being a university graduate, I had a sneaking hope that at least one of those amazing young people would choose to study at a university. Or was the sheer immense scale of 'home educating' too big to admit those mini-dreams. It's been a while since the journey began. Is it nearly over? Probably not. In some way it'll never be over because we're still changing and growing, and if E goes to University then University will be just another venue for home education.

Now where's that new prospectus?

A question of time

Y had a friend at school, S, whose mother was talking to me about her daughter's schedule one day at the school gate..

"S spent three hours in dance rehearsal yesterday, and I had to wait for her in the parking lot because there wasn't anywhere for parents to sit and watch..."

That was a Sunday. The child rehearsed for three hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Hmmm.

Of course, one set of rehearsals for one Sunday might be a good price to pay for a children's dance performance. My two roundly refused to do anything dancy or singy or actory in school and they weren't into doing the same things either around the house or in an afterschool class either.

But it seems to me that I was bombarded with comments from other parents about what their children did. What extra classes they went to. How many 'things' they could squeeze into their lives. All the time.

I never asked, "Does the child want this or do you?"

Or, "Do you think that pushing a child into all these extra hours of slog will motivate them to do anything?"

And, "Are you fulfilling all your dreams through your child because you couldn't/wouldn't/didn't do this extra stuff for yourself in your own younger days?"

Equally, "What about downtime? Dreamtime? Time just to sit and think and be yourself? Does your child have that? Do you rush to shovel as much activity into your child's head and life that you can in order to be even with every other mother and father OR is it what your child has chosen to do?"

You see, I'm one for asking questions. I refrained, that time, because you're supposed to admire the mother taxi service and the father who always takes his kid to football practice even if that kid would rather watch frogs in the local pond that day.

How much of our life is given over to doing what everyone else does just because everyone else does it? Do we ignore our child's right just to idle or do what our child wants to do just because our child wants to do it?

So, as a belated retort to S's mother, I'll say, "Even God rested on a Sunday!"

Thought for today

“O [Love], I pray that you break my heart so wide open that the whole world falls in.”
Mother Theresa

Back from the dead - Badman returns

Is Badman back?

Recall the bloke - old-school and new school and every kind of school. He loved school, that man. That Badman. A few years back Mr. Badman seemed intent on making local authorities REALLY responsible for children's education. Not that some parents would mind - they'd thoroughly enjoy suing the shorts off LAs for the massive LACK of education that some LAs deliver to some children.

Mr. B. wanted to make home education into schooling. It was a mission set for him by Ed. Balls,. Education Secretary.at the time.

But like all ill-conceived ideas, this one has unleashed the furies of hell for some families. The dreadful duo encouraged, aided and abetted law avoiding local authorities (and why has their name changed from councils to authorities? Probably because a local authority sounds far more threatening than a local council, doesn't it?) in - well - avoiding the law where home education is concerned.

One pillar that society rests on is that parents are responsible for their children's education. Most parents think that the state is and that children MUST GO TO SCHOOL!!!! But, in fact, children can be educated anywhere and by anyone. Yes, even by themselves. And that's because the state is not legally responsible for providing an education for a ham sandwich (or a child).

Hum, hum, though, local authorities keep pushing at the door which will swing back and annihilate them. If they succeed in becoming responsible for home educating children's education then they will become responsible for school children's education. Considering the complete mess that is the hotch-potch curriculum, the boring and disagreeable school tasks, the lack of freedom to learn what you want, the disillusioned and over-stressed teachers, the bullied hordes and the disengaged youth we see in our marvellous state-run schools, I wouldn't be too keen to throw my hands in the air and say, "Lookee, here, kids, it's MY FAULT that you haven't been educated." What a veritable tranche of lawsuits we could look forward to. How many youngsters would gleefully learn about the law to pursue (and sue) the LAs.

You can just see it, can't you? The floodgates would open, the deluge equivalent to the biblical waters overwhelming the world would - er - overwhelm the world, and LAs would be toast. Sodden toast.

Nikki Harper says it very well here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/nikki-harper/ultra-vires-home-educatio_b_1538723.html?ref=uk

Why shouldn't we listen to LAs who are panting to be responsible for every child's education?

Simply because they are wrong. In the legal quagmire. Up the spout without a paddle. Talking through their proverbial...

Right now, Mr. Badman, you can go away again.

Deeds from the dark - Secret Family Courts UK

Filthy deeds could be done in the dark.

Scurrilous.

Dangerous.

We walk in fear across shaking sands. In the dark.

What am I talking about? What now?

The biggest fear a parent has. The loss of a child. The tearing away, ripping apart, rending the heart out of, death of all laughter, all light, all heart, most hideous blow, mind-blowing, mind-destroying, worst thing one human can do to another thing.

The losing of a child. A little human that you live for, that you'd die for, that you cry over when he falls over, that you cry over when he stands up, that human being who took shelter in your deepest dreams and took sustenance from your own body. He who grew inside your inside. Or she.

Your child. Or the child you planted in someone else. Someone who carried that excellent burden. The other parent.

To parent. To hope. To protect. To live and breathe for. To give life. To give life to keep the life safe to enjoy the life with the one who holds your life in his hands.

OK. What? What? What am I meaning? What?

Filthy deeds could thrive in the dark.

The deeds of agents of the state taking babies from mothers, little ones from fathers when the parents are dumfounded and made dumb by gags stuffed in their mouths and, if they speak, if they squeak at the treatment, they're jailed and they lose. They lose their children; they don't care about their freedom when they've lost their children because freedom isn't worth a toss if you don't spend its coinage on your children, is it?


http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/corruption_and_perjury_in_secret

Can you lose your child because a social worker doesn't like you? Thinks you can't look after your child? Sees that you home educate?

Can you?

How should we know? These courts are SECRET. In the dark. In the screaming fighting longing crying dying dark.

How do we know? Some speak out. Some say that no good thing goes on in closed courts shrouded in the dark of secrecy. Of silence. Of silenced parents and grandparents. Of screaming in pain silenced parents...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-c6ATb7DP8

The earliest courts, my daughter tells me, were set up in public, in the light, where you could go to mock or to look and seeeeee what went on.. They weren't held in the basement. They were out in the light in the day not the dark.

Why are these courts secret? Why? Why shouldn't we see? Why shouldn't we hear these PUBLIC servants speak to the silenced parents and grandparents?

WHY ARE THEY SECRET?

Open them up to the light, so we can see in the LIGHT. Let's bring in the light. Let's fight the dark. The darkness. Let's hold it up to the light.

Bob Geldof can see it: Here, see what he says:

"Relocation and Leave to Remove: A Report by The Custody Minefield

Foreword by Sir Bob Geldof. Published December 2009

I can hardly read the literature on Family Law without simultaneous feelings of an awful sadness and profound rage. Sadness at what has been done to our children and their families and deep rage for our Family Courts and the inadequate practitioners that work within it.

In the near future the Family Law under which we endure will be seen as barbaric, criminally damaging, abusive, neglectful, harmful to society, the family, the parents and the children in whose name it purports to act. It is beyond scrutiny or criticism and like a secret society its members – the judges, lawyers, social and child “care” agencies behave like any closed vested interest and protect each others’ backs.

The court is entirely informed by outdated social engineering models and contemporary attitudes rather than fact, precedent rather than common sense and modish unproven nostrums rather than present day realities. It is a disgraceful mess. A farrago of cod professionalism and faux concern largely predicated on nonsensical social guff, mumbo-jumbo and psycho-babble. Dangling at the other end of this are the lives of thousands of British children and their families.

Here is one more report that empirically nails the obvious fact that to remove a child from their father (in the hugely vast majority of cases), their grandparents and other family, their school and friends, is wholly destructive to a child and its family.

How much longer must we put up with the state sanctioned kidnap of our most vulnerable? Because in effect that’s what “Leave to Remove” amounts to. How much longer do we tolerate the vested interest intransigence of the appalling U.K. Family Justice system? How long before just one of them admit they have got it ALL wrong and apologise to their myriad victims?

This report is important, timely and vital. To accept its findings, which could have and should have, been conducted at any time in the past 30 years, is to accept the awful conclusion that rather than Solomon like resolving our tragically human disputes with understanding, compassion and logical pragmatism the courts have consistently acted against society’s interest through the application of prejudice, gender bias and awful impartial cruelty.

This report proves it. May God forgive them. I won’t.

Bob Geldof (December 2009)"


And, and, and why don't we spend the money that we spend on the whole pitiful dark process on really helping people to stay with their children, to be with their children. Maybe, if the parenting is broken, we can hold a hand out and, at least, try to keep the parents with the children. It has to be worth a shot.. Better than tearing ripping destroying the bond between a parent and a child; the deepest truest most incredible bond that there ever could be.




Why do we have to punish? Why can't we heal people? Why can't we put together? Why can't we put the light on? WHY?