Archive for the ‘Home Education’ Category
The Government wants to nationalise our children and control home education.
July 2nd, 2009
Unschooling Works. My Boy Has Proven It!
April 21st, 2009
Obviously I have always known this to be true but it has now been proven to me unequivocally. Ironically this happened because my youngest, pictured below with a very different looking Dad (Circa 2003), is thinking about going to school, again. He goes through these phases. Last time he went to school for 2 days.
Because when he makes these decisions we turn into ‘normal parents’ and start to panic about how he will compare to other children (Yes I know this is idiocy, but I am weak.) we decided to get a tutor for him for a few months to get him up to speed. Obviously as he has never had any formal education he is going to be a long way behind his schooled peers, we thought.
Here I think I need to explain our philosophy about education. We don’t have one. Our kids learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it. They don’t sit down at a desk and do school work, they get up when they want, they watch TV and play video games. Basically, they do everything that we are told by educrats and politicians stops children from achieving and doing well in life.
Anyway, the tutor duly arrived and I explained the situation. He immediately looked very worried and concerned and said he would do his best but could make no promises. Then he started his first ‘lesson’.
He immediately tried to get the boy to write something down. No joy obviously, as he has never sat down to write anything more than a birthday card in his life. “Oh dear” said tutor. “Oh bollocks”, thought Dad, what have I done?
“Let’s try to read a book then” said tutor.
So the boy started to read….. and read a bit more…… and then a bit more…..
At the end of the lesson tutor had a look on his face that showed he was somewhat confused. “I don’t really know how, but he is already reading ahead of the grade level he will need for next year”
Cool.
Lesson two was today and tutor wanted to check his math skills. He has hardly ever written down a sum in his life so expectations weren’t too high although his mental math has always been good.
After an hour at the kitchen table the tutor asked for a word with me.
“He is well ahead of his current grade level, but I would like to continue to work with him as he is obviously very good with numbers and I think, if he does go to school that you could try to get him placed a grade up from where he would be for his age.”
Super cool.
So to summarize:
He has never been to school, has done very very little school type work since the day he was born and yet he is ahead of his current grade level in both reading and math. With a little work on his handwriting he will soon catch up with that too.
Any doubts I have ever had about unschooling are now quashed (Again).
Deep down I hope the boy decides he doesn’t want to go to school. After all I don’t want him falling behind our high unschooling standards. (Hahaha, high standards, sheesh!)
This does raise one question for me though… What do they do in school?
