A fimo Wonder Woman S , 7, made this morning lies ready for the oven. Wonder Woman has escaped from worse scraps than this. She has both the golden lasso and Feminium bracelets.
On this, the eight anniversary of my retirement from paid work as an economist, I thought it would be appropriate to write about the economics of home education.
Of course I have touched on this almost daily in the past 17 months of blogging whether it be talking about the changes in the maths of human capital economics that have changed the value of a degree. In 2012 when graduate unemployment is high and graduate salary differentials are contracting in many professions, combined with the fact that the cost of obtaining a degree is significantly higher than when human capital economics was first fashionable, for example. The value of a degree, for the sake of a degree, is open to question.
Or alternatively when I have blogged about the huge differences in the price of term time and school holidays pricing when it comes to booking trips and holidays in both the UK and overseas. In many cases a tripling of the price is not unusual for example.
Recently too I have been blogging our spend on days out gallivanting, swimming, craft materials and so on.
Of course this post only relates to us and my family. There are home educators who are spending much replicating private school at home hiring in a range of bespoke private tutors to replicate the school curriculum at home only, in their opinion, better and equally there are home educators how have ripped up the rules the completely and changed the maths of life. Have a look at our friends, who used to be local, Wondering Wanderers to see the possibilities.
The tree of economics has grown many new branches over the last eight years, when I was working behavioural finance was one fresh area that was of interest to me another area is the Economics of Happiness.
With the economy in the UK still in a recessionary period it is clear why governments would like to see two parents working. If I returned to work I would be paying taxes, we would provide jobs by eating food in prepared factories rather than that cooked by us from scratch at home, buying lunches, paying for childcare thus turning our currently unquantifiable actions into useful, hopefully growing, numbers on a balance sheet.
A home morning of: fimo, cheese on toast with Empire Strikes Back melted into a library visit for Story Lab scratch and sniff, smelly trainers stickers which merged into a couple of hot sunny hours with a local home ed family as the only people at "our park" (that's what O calls it) eating gorgeous watermelon.
S and I watched a Poirot last night. I am thrilled she is turning into a detective and Agatha Christie (who was herself home educated) fan.
Never in any doubt.
6 comments:
I have been looking at holidays during school holiday time,and i really cant believe how much more it is,i dont understand how anyone affords to go away?
Great post Katie, love your last para before your other news. So totally right. I hate how mums returning to work is held up as the 'right' thing to do by all these men! I always thought it was bizarre that to pay someone to look after your children, whilst you go out to work to afford it, seemed to be more socially acceptable than looking after them yourself!
I believe it is a really big issue in schools Kim as parents complain against it.
When you hand over responsibility for your child's education you give up a lot of freedom in that deal.
I think holidays are really important for families and I agree. I would have to work for several months a year just to afford to pay the different holiday prices seems more logical to me to not work and go away when it is cheaper.
Thanks Roz.
I didn't really touch on exams in this post but they can be a big expense for home educating families if they chose to go down that path.
I agree re looking after your own children. It is my impression that continuity of care seems to be the best environment for autonomous learning and play.
It is a bit like the difficulties some people have with breastfeeding in that they like weights and measures and quantities. "How do you know they are getting enough?" they ask.
Not being quantifiable, being free range must be annoying.
Did you see that post on Classroom Free yesterday. "How do you know they are learning?" In a world full of testing and tests and league tables full of quantifiable numbers I thought it was a useful contribution to the debate
On the Agatha Christie bit this is excellent http://higglepeahomeed.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/exercising-little-grey-cells.html?m=1
I've been having several conversations about this post IRL (yeah! I know!) and on fb.
Of course when you don't have to live in the catchment area for a 'good' school you can live anywhere.
Post a Comment