Sick of being lazy

Hmmm, today I'm sick and tired.

I'm tired because I found a super-excellent-fantastic bloggy/websitey thingummy, and I've been sitting imbibing its wisdom for three nights whilst forgetting that my bed awaits in my cold bedroom upstairs.

I'm sick because I'm not well. I'm well enough to stare lovingly at super-excellent... blogspotty things until you-are-totally-out-of-your-mind-at-your-age o'clock.

I'm sick because where I did a large part of my growing up (in Canada) the local people said they were sick not that they were ill, unwell or off-colour.

But I feel unwell. Sometimes it veers into a slight case of illness.

I'm allowed to be. I'm home educated.

I could've faked it because I'm, without a faint doubt, on a list. I'm on the ill home educator list and I'll get a warning letter something like this:

"Dear Ms. Danae Trentsniffer,

I refer to your absents from the computer or any other of the educational places in which you could occur and which are appended in Appendix 2 of this letter.

Your absentence has been noted and should you exceed the total of seven point one six five days allottted for this term you will be referred to the Homeschool Attendunce Officer (heretofore referred to as HAO) who will arrange a visit to determine if yours is a true illness or a temporary illness that we can support you in.

The HAO is Mr. Donald Terrier who will visit you in three point six six repeating hours. Mr. Terier may, of course, be earlier or later than the stated time due to traffic conditions or his holiday in the Bahamas, and he may be Mrs. Rubella Noseclunker or her assistant, Ms. Harpy Artswiper.

Hoping you are well.

Yours truly,


Mr. Loreen Cudsworthy, 
Manager, Local Illness and Swinging the Lead Inspectorate.

When last appealed to Mrs. (or Mr.) Loreen Cudsworthy approved the plan of writing and producing her letters to me complete with grammatical boo-boos. I applied to her early because I thought the young fold might enjoy sporting the erros.

I alwo decidid to doe likewirse in mi bog.

But, you cry, how did their cume to be a HAHA officer?

Why, when you just got free of the schooled mess, should you reenterr the hell of officshul litters?

Wgekkm you could be having a larff. Or taking the fiss.

Don't forgit to prey for sum skulled kids who doe get this tripe of leter. Itz no jock to them.

Just one of the ways that home education vaults the hell over schooling in my humbel opinyon.


Right, children, SPOT THE DELIBRaTe MIZTAKES.



Super-excellent relationshippy blogthingummmy: 

http://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/

Lazy

Of course, some people think that home educating in the ol' autonomous style means that you're basically a good for nothing idle kind of educator. Lazy, in a word. 

They don't say that about the young folk.

They mean me.

I should be schooling. Or educating. Or reading about the latest theories in education. Or finding out how to get the buggers to learn (that's a tip of the hat to a whole series of how to get the buggers to...) and that series is a pretty example of what I think is wrong with forced education. Or 'making' them do something they don't want to do because, hey, everyone else 'has' to do it.

To force someone to learn something seems just intrinsically wrong.

Doesn't it to you?

I mean surely we evolved to learn things about our environment that save us from a) harm and b) stress and c) destroying the environment.

So what do we do now?

Well, we destroy not only our own environment but the environment that maintains other creatures who share our earth.

That's worked out well, then.

Surely, it seems just sensible to assume, that that which you know is something which has relevance and meaning to you. That which you know because you 'had' to learn it in English or Maths or History will vanish like a snowflake in mid-August boiling hot weather. Or it'll stick in your mind like one of the discarded pieces of pot that the Romans dropped in the kitchen years ago, about as useful as the average clod of earth except when you're watching the Eggheads t.v. quiz programme.

I prefer the word facilitator because when my two young people decide they wish to learn something I find a way to help them do it. I don't force them, and, if they don't like it, I don't insist that they do it. 

Force isn't the way.

But I won't make you agree with me, and you won't be tested on the  conclusions you reach later.



If you really want to know more about Sue Cowley's books starting with 'Getting the Buggers to Learn', please google or use some other search engine to find out about them.

Auto Ed

Autonomous education

You get so sick of it. Autonomy. Here is something about autonomy from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/autonomy

1. independence or freedom, as of the will or one's actions: theautonomy of the individual.
2. the condition of being autonomous; self-government, or theright of self-government; independence: The rebels demandedautonomy from Spain.
3. a self-governing community

I mean sometimes I really don't want to be autonomous. I don't want to control my day. Like today. I've got a bad cold; head full of horrible eurgh, pains everywhere, feel like, well, slime at the bottom of a well? Tufts of dog hair on the carpet?

Something that the cat dragged in and had a go at.

I want someone to tell me what to do.

That autonomy. It's... it's difficult... It's a hard taskmaster because you enjoy doing whatever you enjoy doing so much that you can't stop doing it. Then you get better at doing it so, to increase your sense of enjoyment, you do it even more.

They never stop doing stuff. The young folks. One year it's learning about art then it's listening to Chinese music and asking for a Chinese violin for Christmas, and that's the young person who listened to, but never showed any interest in making, music.

Sick of it really.

And how those darned interests persist.

The tours of the internet for information. Just stay uninformed, I say. Give your head a rest, I caution. 

Oh, and bother that Time Team. We're into Archaeology now because of 

those enthusiastic scientists and fascinated amateurs who get involved in water-logged fields. I can see things I've never seen before. I know about leaks (water courses) in muddy grass.

Dear, oh dear, there's no end to it. The autonomous learners. And how they pounce on things they know not of. And learn about them.

The whole autonomous education journey is so tiring.

And exciting, interesting, fascinating, unknown; you'll never quite be sure where you'll end up... if you ever end....

The way an education should be I reckon. Yours and under your control. Able to be picked up and put down as you desire because the brain bucket is busy calculating what is best for you, not working out what's best for everyone sharing a small, annoying room.

The human, eh? Born to learn. Everything. Not just approved stuff. Everything. Who can fathom it?

Auto Ed.  I guess people who direct their own experiences are just plain dangerous. 

Self-education. It might just catch on.

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).