I made a comment on a recent post when I described something as being a main advantage of home education and a home educating life style which got me thinking, I have tried to be really honest with my blog posts about the ups and downs so here, for those who like that kind of thing, is a numbered summary based on a survey of my family, The Smalls, The Daddy One and Me!
Advantages
- You can learn how you like to learn, not study things you are not interested in, focus on your passions and tackle things when you are developmentally ready at your own rhythm at the times that suit you best.
- Being healthy, avoiding illness, mainly through having food at the core of life and not having to suffer poor quality school meals, or a peer pressure inspired lunch box. Eating and drinking when hungry or thirsty not when the bell goes. Never having had the "Nit Experience."
- Going to places like: art galleries, museums, libraries and parks when they are empty and having term time holidays. Following on from this staying in when it rains and going out when it is sunny.
- Being in control and responsible for your own destiny, choosing approaches that suit you rather than the ones you are told to use.
- Not having to wear, purchase, organise and iron, a uniform.
It took a lot longer to think of 5 of these but then, that it how it should be. If your list of reasons to live in the city is longer than your list of reasons to live in the country and you live in the city then that equals unhappiness in my formulaic brain.
- Lack of money. I am sure all families feel this to some extent but having only one wage earner is a pressure and without the free child care that state school provides most home ed families have one breadwinner. In the Guardian last week they quoted £13,000 as the average annual cost of private school so with three children @£36,000 that is a high post tax income required and of course the cost doesn't stop there but then in our specific case we would probably not have had 3 children were we not home educating.
- There are few opportunities for a break! We are very lucky as we have fantastic support in my parents and a teenager who comes to help us out but, with our autonomous learning style, questions about the Wooden horse of Troy are as likely at 9pm as they are at 9am.
- The cost of travel. We live a long way from our friends, we live in a rural community so there is a certain inevitability about this even with a schooled life but even so, although some of our friends manage without a car it would make life very tough for us.
- Not being able to go a day, unless we don't leave the house, without a foolish comment or a daft question or an "Is that legal?" question coming our way.
6 comments:
Home ed has it's ups and downs, just as school does, but at least you know that you have more control over it than in the school situation, where you are a hostage to someone else's way of doing things.
Luckily there seems to be (slightly) more awareness of home ed these days than when we started, when we constantly had people saying "No school today?" to the kids in the supermarket, and then looking aghast when we said we home educated. That was 18 years ago! Though even as recently as last year we had someone ask whether DS#3 (now 17) felt isolated at home doing an OU course! That always makes me laugh.
Sue Cardus
Was just mentioning to another HE mum tonight that we had an enlightened realisation about the advantage of our HE lifestyle when we were evacuated with hurricane Katrina. Whilst all the other evacuees were panicking and scrambling to get their children in to a new 'school' (in the area they evacuated to), the thought never crossed our minds. It was really odd hearing parents tell how worried they were that their children were not 'getting an education' (from not being in school), when my husband and I could only wonder at what a phenomenal 'real life' education our 11 year old was getting from the whole experience. We read stories about local schools opening their doors to cram more students in to their already overcrowded classrooms. And all I could wonder is how stressful it must have been for those children to be separated from their parents all day, considering how traumatised they had to be from having to evacuate. Sticking together close as a family was really important in an event like that. Before then I never would have thought a benefit of HE would be 'oh, gee, we won't have to worry about where out children go to school in case of a major disaster'.....but rest assured it's a benefit!
and you still only found 4 (not 5)
disadvantages....!
Home Educating can feel isolating sometimes,but we are lucky in that we have such a great online community for support.
I often think of the quote
"Sometimes the loneliest place in the world can be a crowded room"
and I know that a little while with people of like mind is better for my sense of well being than ages with people on another wavelength.
People often ask if my children are isolated but I think it is I that struggles the most but I am getting better as they get older as we can chat more and more now!
Interesting MissyLou! I thought about that a lot with breastfeeding funnily enough I remember thinking but if I bottle feed what would we do if there was a powercut!
Keeping family together is important to us too but don't you often hear the complete opposite suggested!
ps Mess / Messy house was going to be number 5 but I figured in the final analysis a messy house full of love and life is better than an empty tidy house!
I would say we as a family have been home educating for nearly 16 years now!
The main advantages we have discovered are:
1. They can learn what is relevant and useful to them, thier lives and future careers.
2. They have a choice! In all things - what they learn, when, where, how, why.
They have such a varied choice to learn as well. The world is their oyster!
3. They can eat, drink, rest and play when they want. If it's a sunny day we can reschedule our work and take advantage of the weather, season or last minute events.
4. They are involved in the world and community around them far more than if they were in school. They have empathy with a far range of people and life situations, that we feel they wouldn't have benefited from had they been in school.
Home educated children have an increased self confidence and sef belief. That in it's self is priceless.Something school, it seems,cannot seem to provide them with.
5. They have no peer pressure or peer singularity. Meaning they can mix with a vast range or adults and children from varying cultures and backgrounds alike without an age barrier or restriction. They can converse with a vast range of people on wide and varied topics. This, we feel, is a valuable life skill.
Our disadvantages:
1. Lack of understanding within the community in general about what home ed really means. All the silly questioning from people and family. That everyone and his dog seem to have an opinion on how you choose to raise your own children.
2. Lack of funding. There is no tax relief, no grants, no financial benefits. Yet we are saving the schools thousands and we still have to pay full tax. Having to go to a one income family, is hard.
You also have to find and fund learning resources and educational trips,workshops for yourself. There is no financial help available if you are a home educating family.
3. Exams: As mentioned above we get no financial aid, so all exams have to be paid for ourselves. No help with finding exam centres, setting up these or with talks, course work or practical lab events. You really are on your own with this.
4. The fact that you are lumped in with excluded children from school. It has taken a long battle and re-education of the local authority in the west sussex area to nake a distinction between excluded children and elective home ed children. Two totally different reasons for home education and ways of going about it.
5. That home ed is 24/7. It is a full time commitment, sacrifice and a way of life. It is a HUGE thing to take on. There is very little 'me' time for the main home educating parent when the children are young. This does however get better as they grow older,(I promise you x) but when they are small it is a full time job. Home education is always a full time job though. One that you will always question yourself over.
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