The school calls this a valuable learning experience (and charges you a tenner)

If I wake up in the night screaming at the horror of what I'm about to do - and I do scream, often, because my brain routinely serves up great midnight dollops of fear - then I have only to think of the circumstance that is the school visit, and my night sweat passes.

We see school visits on our travels, often. When we home educators get inside a museum, or a gallery, or any of the theme park 'educational experiences' on offer, like Britain being bombed even while you sit there, we invariably interact with the school visit. And this is what I see.

1. A lot of queuing. Children queue, and wait. And while they queue and wait, they are shouted at. I think that's called socialisation.

2. The shouting is done by adults, and often takes the form of words like 'if you were listening you will know that you must work with a partner' or 'you have ten minutes at each table and you must share' or 'complete each worksheet before you move onto the next activity'. Nothing about the Romans, then. Nor the Tudors. Nor the World Wars, or the artist, or the science, or whatever we might all be sharing this space to see. No. Instructions about organisation of people, or the flows, positioning, queuing and movement of bodies; information about routines and requirements. Any type of social control really, usually issued by covert threats, or reminders of threats previously issued on the bus on the way in. I guess this bit is called socialisation too.

3. Movement of children to designated areas with reminders about time. Movement is usually accompanied by adults strangely waving their arms, like semaphore. I've noticed this. Some teachers lift up both arms and flap them about a bit like they are struggling to fly. They will never manage it, holding those clipboards. Since the adults are doing this and the clipboards they hold contain the day's targets, I guess this is education.

4. The students are permitted to do things (but only for ten minutes). Now, this is what I saw. A crocodile line of children came into the discovery gallery. They did the queuing and the listening to the shouting and then they were off! Freedom to discover! One little primary school kid queued at Henry the Cycling Skeleton. He wanted to sit on the bicycle and see Henry (who is a skeleton) cycle along too. Henry shows you how your skeleton articulates and how your different joints work. The little boy queued and queued. After a while, the teacher shouted to all the children to line up as a crocodile again so everyone could move to the next gallery. And the little boy went too. He never sat on the bicycle, because the queue never reached him. But now no-one was queueing for Henry, and I felt sorry for the little boy who looked glum and resigned. I would've hailed him back, out of that crocodile, had I been brave enough. And I don't know whether his experience was called socialisation or education.

5. Management of errant individuals. This is a problem. Isn't there always one? This is what I saw at the Science Museum. A secondary school party was in, and something caught a girl's eye. Not a smiling Romeo, beckoning. Not a large slab of cake, dribbling chocolate. Nor a desirable pair of sparkling shoes. None of those. A display about magnets. So she impulsively left the school group and went to it, with her arms outstretched. Seconds later, a booming voice rang out across the gallery, and she was hauled back, slinking miserably to the group, head hung, bright red face. Definitely socialisation.

6. Sometimes I earwig over the teachers talk. I know I shouldn't. But I'll use the excuse that I used to be one. I know it's no excuse really. I can't help myself. Anyway, I want to know what job they're doing. I hear different things. Sometimes I hear a member of staff really enthuse about what they're looking at, and try and communicate something that's exciting, or surprising, or wonderful. I want to hug that teacher, and give them a big smackeroo. I can tell you they're rare. Mostly the staff talk about the students, and the day, or the timetable, the buses, or the staffroom politics. Could go either way. Socialisation? Education? Luck of the draw.

7. At 2.30 everything falls quiet. The buses go back to the schools. The place closes at five. We home educators have it to ourselves, and will potter about, doing as much or as little as we need to fulfil our investigations. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are free to choose. They have time, and space. They might puzzle over exhibits, spend an hour with one display, demand photographs are taken, copy down notes, draw pictures, talk together, ask questions. Usually, at 5.15, we'll be thrown out too, by a tired looking bloke jangling keys.

If I wake up at midnight, fretting that we're doing it all wrong, worrying that our lifestyle won't help, what if my kids are destined to be forever illiterate, homeless, unsocialised, running squealers who cannot tell the difference between right and left, up and down? Well then, I'll think about the school party, and be consoled that at least I only paid £6.50 to get in.