Friday 8 February 2008

An appeal

Home education has hit the news in the UK again. And it's all very positive.

Oh dear.

Grit is making a public appeal now for all home edders to stop saying how marvellous home ed is. Just stop and think. You'll get everyone wanting to do it. And what will that mean? I am accustomed to marching into art galleries, science parks and museums. Term-time, these are usually empty apart from me, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Then once we're in, we can command the attention of the education officer just by asking. In the sea life centre at Weston-super-Mare we got five hours worth of fish talk. And compare that with a half-term holiday in Great Yarmouth. They made me queue! Queue! On the pavement! Once inside I could barely move. It was so traumatic I had to be led to a seat for the frail and elderly. Now come on all you home educators, can we just please all shut up about the freedoms, opportunities and joys and concentrate instead on the hard work, sacrifice and misery?

Just consider it is about PR management, to protect the truth from those who might abuse it. Spin doctors, that's what we need to be.

For example. Here I go off with Squirrel down the charity shop where she immediately goes face down in the 25p bucket. She comes up with a toy lizard. Now all us home educators will know that the educational opportunities are, quite frankly, enormous. We will scrutinise the lizard, decide whether it is a Furcifer gastrotaenia chameleon or a Basiliscus plumifrons. We will find out whether it lives in Madagascar or Melbourne. We will find out what it eats, where it lives and how it has babies. It will prompt a visit to a Natural History Museum and get us reading in the library, doing lizard maths, making lizard costumes and becoming reptile experts in general.

Well let's stop telling the nation that, please? No, home educator. Think about the queues. Let's tell the world that home ed is probably not worth the trouble. Tell everyone the sacrifices we have to make. Like how Grit just squandered good gin and drug cash on a plastic lizard that squeaks.



4 comments:

Angela DeRossett said...

LOL!!! Agreed... it is just as easy to tell people when they say 'I don't ever think I could do it' that they are right! Ha! *snicker*!

Brad said...

Tell me they're not rigid plastic and can't be turned into weapons,...please ?

Grit said...

hi folks! we need to keep home ed an exclusive club, right? and brad, i'm afraid the green one is heavy-duty plastic with a nasty hook on its tail. it can be launched in a lizard missile attack without warning and is usually confiscated.

Gill said...

That sounds like a very good plan. The club, not the lizard.