Flexischool to feral

I must be helpful to a new home educator, so forgive this moment of thought. (Normal service will be resumed shortly.)

One of the difficulties people in the home ed world seem to have (and probably not just in the world of home ed) is how to label the stuff we do. Like the Autonomous vs Structured tag.

I have fretted about this myself. Is la famille Grit autonomous? Structured? School at home? Free range? Eclectic?

How many times have I heard myself explaining what position we adopt in this wild spectrum, not to people outside the community, but to people inside it. Yet I never think I got that label exactly right.

And it's easy to make the same assumptions about each other. One week you might observe Tinkertop casually kicking a chicken carcass about a car park while mama looks on tolerantly. Then I'm thinking, Aha! Note the non-coercive parent approach. Must be autonomous. Mama is probably respecting Tinkertop's expression of violence towards the dead chicken as some sort of emotional response towards the avian world. 

But two weeks later I could probably catch Tinkertop hunched over a desk with a maths worksheet, mama scrutinising her from afar, holding a pack of 12 pencils in a threatening manner. Then I might think, Aha! Note the coercive parent approach. Must be structured. Mama is probably organising Tinkertop's entry into the GCSE exam right now.

The reality is, once we withdraw Tinkertop from school to do it the alternative way, we never really know what the alternative way is, until we do it. So you try everything in every direction.

Through trial and error, by picking a way through all options, choices and approaches, you come to see what fits with Tinkertop's brain, character and emotional state. It may be a way that simultaneously allows you to manage the days, cook dinner, consider the rest of the tribe, and attend to your own needs. As if you needed more pressure, you might find yourself trying to position your family group in a face-saving way within the expectations of the wider communities in which you all move - and present yourself so the unaware school-choosers who are watching this whole sorry performance don't ostracise you on the conclusion that you just proved yourself irredeemably nuts.

That experience of home ed becomes the very close way you come to know your own child. And is possibly one reason why home educators become picky and prickly if they feel they're being given the wrong sort of interpretation. We're still working and thinking through all the approaches ourselves.

So my conclusion is, as you get started, I wouldn't fret too much about the labels; neither the ones that are given to you, nor the ones you feel under pressure to use, especially if they come with a whole package of ideas that you don't automatically subscribe to. Be free to try what you like, how you like, when you like.

And now I can leave you to draw your own conclusions about Squirrel's activities of the day.

College for home ed kids

You know how home ed goes, right? Sweat, tears, panic, fear, sleepless nights, and that piece of paper you ironed. The one when Tinkertop proved she could write. The one you keep as the Almighty Evidence, just in case the EWO calls round again.

But in dark moments of confusion and chaos, you might seek solace from your local group.

Fine. If you don't live in the exact area of the dysfunctional split where the grudge match is played out between the philosophical free rangers, the tutors-for-profit educational support services, the Evangelical Christians, the feral hippies in the wood, and the home schoolers who came up with the great idea for the timetable and the uniform.

But there's always online! Blogs, lists, forums, and email chat.

But the online world mirrors your face-to-face local group. Where you realise just how wide blown apart is the spectrum of home education. Cross-sectioned with dozens of learning approaches, a pile of different philosophies, thousands of uniquely strange kids, and all blasted with the prejudices, opinions, weaknesses and bizarre beliefs that you've come to expect from humanity.

If it didn't get mind-blowing enough, add the government's eternally changing statements, guidances, legislations, amendments, committee reports with the legal challenges, court cases, media reporting, comedic nonsense trotted out by the TES, and the opinion of your cousin Valerie who says now your kids won't ever learn how to socialise.

Home education? I bet you recognise it.

So the fact that sometimes you can just be given a bit of news straightforwardly comes somewhat as a relief.

Like for jaded old Grit, keen to hear the present situation on colleges for September 2013. Yes, despite what I may have heard, colleges can still accept home educated 14-16-year olds, the courses can be funded by a local education department, and the college does not need to act as if they were a school. The national pattern remains scattered, and if Tinkertop wants to poke her face in on a college course, you may have to educate your local admissions tutor who may be confused about their college responsibilities.

Phew.

It's for updates like that I go to the HesFes talks. Without the HesFes talks, you could always go to places like here.

And don't start any arguments, now.

HesFes 2014

If you are one of the .0000000001% of the UK population right now sitting on the fence deciding about whether or not to attend HesFes 2014, then I can reassure you.

Ignore what I said about the hippies, and come along.

For loads more promising reasons than to see whether the kids you dump in a field set up an anarcho-syndicalist state, or whether Tinkertop will go instantly all Lord of the Flies and the management will be taking down the pig's head by Sunday.

Reasons like the talks, discussions, and grown-up sharing debatey stuff, which is going on all day long, formal and informal, organised and chaotic. Not just on the best hippie methods for cooking roadkill and stuff like that. But useful talks. Like educational options, Special Educational Needs, flexi-schooling, exam issues, virtual colleges, and even the bleedin' law - the very words which give us our strong-armed righteousness and a fine sense of virtue while we go about undermining the rest of society.

So yes. Parents considering or embarking on alternative forms of education, come to HesFes.

Not just for children. Or hippies.

Middle class and ruthless

My mother would be PROUD.

I made it to THE MIDDLE CLASS.

What I failed to achieve by marriage, education, aligning my cultural norms with the preferred socio-economic group, I made it thanks to Barry Sheerman, the former chair of the Education select committee who says My home educating kind? We are not only middle class, we are RUTHLESS.

I'm cracking open the cava!

To celebrate the public reading of 'You can't drive education like a sports car' I get Shark, Squirrel and Tiger in the car and drive them over to Cambridge.

I'm driving a clapped out Citroen van, which demonstrates just how aligned I am to the 'right to private and family life', and how fast we aren't travelling while I concoct my next ruthless, middle class scheme to dangerously visit upon the heads of the vulnerable home educated children, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

That scheme, incidentally, is to march them round the Polar Museum, eat student-style at Gardenia, then go sit in King's College Chapel listening to Bach's St Matthew Passion.

Surely qualifies for middle class and ruthless, right?

My dangerous scheming works splendidly! Except for a few minor working-class problems, like failing to realise Bach's St Matthew Passion actually does last three hours on hard seats, and cheap five-pounds unsighted tickets means you can't see a damn thing about the choir except the back of a tenor's head. It also means having to grudgingly get a taxi to redeem the stranded van because I cannot read a park-and-ride timetable, and walking about Cambridge with a vegetarian hamburger from Gardenia stuffed in my handbag because Squirrel refused to eat the blasted thing so I threatened to serve it up for breakfast, then pride wouldn't let me part with it. APART FROM THAT. I am so totally delighted to be middle class and ruthless.

Frobisher's Rock. I became unreasonably excited about this geology and history combined. 

I started photographing any geology collection I could find from that point, although this is not really the main draw of the Polar Museum for the happy visitor. It is the letters, of course, from Scott's doomed attempt on the Antarctic. They are deeply moving. I may have had to suppress a quiet working-class sniffle.

Then three hours! On hard seats! With never a word of complaint from the little Grits! An attempt on the Antarctic clearly put an evening's sore bottom into perspective.

Here, have a snatch of the Passion, and let us all thank Barry Sheerman for our elevation.

Turning home ed into your business

I cause a big fuss in the local home ed groups.

Surely not, Grit! That doesn't sound like you!

Yup. A big fuss was caused. I caused it. Mostly by not reading a bunch of emails I shove in a folder called NotReading.

But I have learned things! Every unhappy trouble has wisdoms to impart, does it not? Even if it is It is a bad idea to sleep with someone who dresses up as a Dalek, or Two buckets and spades divided between three toddlers is not a good way to save two pounds in cash.

So this particular bruising experience has taught me about the future. I can see, it's a business outlook for Educational Support Services in the land of home education!

Duh. I have been sharing my skills, offering my home ed experiences, giving stuff away for years, entering into the great collaborative enterprise that I knew as the community of home ed. But I need to become mean, keen and, hopefully, ruthless in all matters of business.

I am considering these ways of conducting myself when, as if by magic, I discover this miserable place in another email account I don't read every day either.

Clearly the stars have aligned. It's time for me to market home ed! If I'm going to make a good business out of home ed, I must adopt Grit's Top Ten Tips to CoinMyCommunity!

1. Bring business to the home ed world.
Adopt good business practice! Don't buy in a workshop at 50 quid, then tell everyone and divvy up the cost! Blimey, that is the old hippy way of doing things.

The new way is to buy in a workshop at 50 quid then re-sell it for 150 quid. Remember, there is nothing wrong with making a profit in business! (Unless the accountant finds out. Then they will advise you to report a loss so you don't pay tax.)

2. Position everyone else as a rival.
Essential if you are to cohere your market. Other home educators are obstacles if they blab how you can cadge this and that, get discounts here or there, share skills, find the free events, co-operate, divide up a tutor's costs, and take to Tinkertop's back room to avoid the hall charge.

What I need to do is claim these hippies are competition; that they run rival groups. This strategy forces everyone to take sides. Divided and ruled. Hopefully, they'll all come to me at CoinMyCommunity!

3. Restrict information.
Don't hint at other ways of doing things. Don't suggest the teacher doesn't have to be CRB checked. Never suggest parents do stuff themselves, buy their own tutor for cheaper, or admit that Tinkertop doesn't have to complete a sodding 100% National Curriculum guaranteed trackered worksheet in triplicate to get a decent education.

Never, never, ever, let parents find out they can just take their kids to the park. If it slips out, make them believe the best way to take the kids to the park is in a timetable when I'll be selling duck food for 50p a bag.

4. Obfuscate.
Use the words home education and home schooling as if they are interchangeable. Never suggest home education comes with a set of cultural values, a philosophy and community-based action, and home schooling comes with a great deal of school.

5. Position yourself as the only show in town.
Yes, tell all service providers of workshops, events, formal teaching, walk-and-talks, all stuff, that CoinMyCommunity is the organisation where home educators freely come. Tell them to reach home educators here; the only safe and trusted company to do business with. (Only don't use the word business, obviously, that breaks rule number 6.)

6. Forget to say, CoinMyCommunity? Actually, it's a private company.
Avoid being open and upfront. Claim CoinMyCommunity is just a big cuddly-huggy-wug home ed group. Never discuss the company footing on which it stands. Avoid putting the company registration number on all sites, correspondence and, if you can get away with it, invoices.

Claim CoinMyCommunity is nothing more than a vehicle for processing Paypal payments, which are understandably complex, considering I'll be charging a flat rate for the kiddy Christmas party.

7. Provide a one-stop solution.
Yes, to every newcomer to the home ed world (there are thousands of you! Thousands!) tell them this is the easy way to do it! My way! I have everything stitched up! I have timetables! And worksheets! With CRB-checked tutors and, when I set it up, online monitoring!

8. Swot up on Vance Packard.
Covertly use Packard's compelling needs to sell education services. We home educators? We need to be loved. We crave security. We want approval. We are fearful, and only want the best for our children. We don't want our home ed mess to mean Tinkertop misses out.

Make sure all services provided are hitting those buttons. Newcomers need comforting and supporting, because they are stupid enough to take a decision that will upset someone. Obviously they fear the opprobrium about to pour on their heads. This is where my offer to meet their needs is so important. My business can prey on their insecurity, doubt and fear by promising instant answers, step-by-step solutions, organised events, more CRB teachers, offering a big happy tick from the Local Authority, and providing extra worksheets! School, in fact!

(Shh! Never let on how there's an alternative Mad Badger home ed community operating right under your noses!)

9. Use the language of school.
Do not yack on about ways of living and learning. Do not even try and create a language to describe how education can be a seamless part of life. PAH. That is crap. Shut up with the segueing.

Use the language of school. Break home ed life into English, Maths, Science, French, like what parents understand and you can sell. Then keep clear divisions between subjects, bringing in stuff like Key Stages GCSE levels targets topics framework assessment learning objective certification award. This will make everyone think This is education!

10. Aim big.
Of course with Grit's Top Ten Tips I'll do pretty well. But it's no use going to the local authority looking to stitch up a deal. They're broke! We have Academy land! Anyway, Our Great Leader Gove wants us engaged in the great business of profitable educational enterprise. With my future, I can be looking for premises, running online facilities, buying in accreditation, outsourcing timetabling, monitoring attendance and, soon enough, running a free school!


Phew. Thank you for reading. But you happy school-choosing people can safely depart, feeling protected from the politics of home ed land!

But consider Grit here, having caused misery through the land, upset the local educational business enterprise - and thank goodness I've finally asked to be removed from the damn list I never read - and facing only the Mad Badgers as consolation; here I am, scrabbling around for community crumbs on the home ed floor, desperate to give the kids a daily functional education, while simultaneously pointing you towards those bright, bright light$ $hining in your educational future$.

But surely, we've been here before? All happening in our back-yard.

Gird, loins, that sort of thing

It is with foreboding I come out of Wales, I can't deny it.

Even though the landscape is beautiful and makes us all want to run about in hiking boots declaring poetry

... and we all vote the sheep the prettiest in the world. In fact we speculate they are fairy sheep in disguise

... and, after meeting the gentleman slate splitter, I find myself surprisingly fallen in love with Wales, all things Welsh, and gentlemen slate splitters.

But I still carry a foreboding. There they are. The Welsh Government. Creeping behind me. I can see them if I look over my shoulder. They have plans. Like, 'compulsory registration and monitoring for children who are home educated'. Who doesn't believe it's a scheme tested in Wales? Or, if they're successful, that the ptb will aim to up and run the same system in England before I can unfurl my Badman banners?

I don't doubt the route planned. We seem to be entering a linguistic landscape for the 'accountability of the individual'. Handy, if by that means I am drawn into a system where I'm coerced into participating in pre-set packages and fined if I don't. And will I get any sympathy? Pah. Joe and Joanna of the general public probably think registration and monitoring is a great idea! Maybe they're surprised that maverick home educators aren't inspected already, don't have to be teachers, or aren't made to hoick our non-compliant arses up to a school supervisor who inspects the children for bruising then tests us on our annual timetables.

I shall adopt my usual strategy. Go about the world noisily with my big home educating smile, pointing out the arguments as I can, telling anyone who listens that home education isn't scary and unknown. It isn't school-bashing, it isn't nirvana, it doesn't suit everybody, it doesn't turn the practitioner into mother superior. It is a legal option, you get to enjoy creating a principled and thoughtful way of life, and home educators are just like everyone else. They are not, in my experience, coordinating a clandestine network of child abusers, mind demons and maniacs, but are often disappointingly normal. People who itch, bleed, sorrow, joy, cry, and laugh.

And the other thing I did today was buy a bed.

Take your pick

One of the unpleasant knowledges I live with in England is what potential damage the Local Council can inflict on my family.

Legally, a member of staff in the Council can ask me if I provide an education for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

Legally, I am not obliged to tell them.

But I think silence would not serve my interests. With no information from me, a Council staff member - with not much else to do, a zealous line manager, and an annual appraisal form to complete - might quickly conclude I am providing no education for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

Within the blink of an eye they would mark my children down on some internal form or other, and there we would be, Missing Education.

This would press all the Busy Buttons. All kinds of Council paperwork would be activated. It would look very industrious on someone's annual appraisal. It might even help out in pay grade discussions or promotion.

But for me, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, such involvement would spell disaster. Once we have the administrative attentions of bureaucracy, their demands on my time and my life would have to take precedence. I would give up the maps of Mesopotamia.

When school-choosing people find out about this angle of home ed life, I have had several kinds of response. One not very sympathetic person even suggested I was paranoid! Well, I'm not making up this knowledge of my duty, nor my legal position, nor how wearing can be the knowledge that Council staff so blithely and carelessly overstep their legal boundaries.

Indeed, home education discussions are routinely occupied with people recounting their unhappy experiences of over-enthusiastic Council staff members (probably with zealous line managers, an annual appraisal form to complete, and someone's eye on a pay grade).

Hey, there's even a website for home educators to share their experiences - invaluable if you're considering moving from a benign Council to an aggressive Council. Choosing a house on either side of the county line could save you months of pain.

(You school people have been playing boundary and catchment games for years, haven't you? We alternate people do exactly the same.)

Well, becoming entangled in all this local bureaucracy is something I clearly want to avoid. We already have enough dealings with all other agencies, from the corporations tax people to the wretched accounts office. And then the voter registration staff spell my name wrong and the National Trust get the family ID messed up. Phew. I can't take on any more.

Then this blog comes in handy for me. I can save myself from the worst of my worries. I can put out pictures, crow about some latest education success, and satisfy myself with a mouthy platform from which to position myself to Maud at the Local Council who'd like a pay rise. Now if she ever comes a-knocking, I can answer, Look at the blog.

Today, Cambridge. Depending on who you are, take your pick.

If you are Maud from the Council, see us not chained to the radiators
but kneeling at the altar of culture!


Aka The Fitzwilliam Museum, Mesopotamian clay tablets.

Writing, drawing, leaving smudgy fingerprints all over the glass,
and scaring the security guards.

If you are a teacher-type, take this as evidence
that our education often looks like that provided by school.


Except my class today is 3 rather than 33,
and we spend what time we like wandering about the museum
without an attainment target / risk assessment / pre-determined tick list of objectives.

If you are an American, have some pictures of Cambridge.



If you are T&D, come over and visit us.
We'll make English ladies of you.
With tea.

If you like intriguing details, then so do I.

And if you are Shark, Squirrel and Tiger,
you might want to remember a leisurely day out in Cambridge,
where Squirrel wondered, should she should come to study at the Earth Sciences Department,
Shark mused on your river life, and Tiger drew pictures of horses.

Someone could take a lesson here

As a person who is apparently libertarian leaning (I took a quiz), it isn't surprising that the politics, culture and society of Kowloon Walled City fascinates me.


This city of 30,000 people - encased in a vertical area roughly the size of your local park - came about thanks to a British-Chinese diplomatic failing.

Originally the land was a Chinese military fort. The British never took possession of it, as they did with the surrounding land in the nineteenth century.

After the Japanese occupation and surrender, the Chinese reasserted their rights over this space.

For what point, I'm not sure. The place had lost its walls (pulled down by the Japanese to make the airport), and the politicians in Peking were far too busy brutalising the population with the Cultural Revolution to bother with what must have been a minor problem of local politics, far away down south, on colonised soil.

But, thanks to this Chinese reassertion of rights, the Brits could implement nothing of control in this growing city. No taxes, no business legislation, no building regulations, no registrations, no licensing, no insurances, no police, no services, no bleedin'health'n'safety, no legal requirements, no administration, no inspections, no sanitation, no monitoring of civilians, no clipboards, no bin collections, no formalities, and don't complain to the council.

Maybe it was the perfect libertarian state.

The drug pushers, pimps, criminals and ne'er-do-wells probably thought so too. The stories go how Kowloon Walled City was a sanctuary for the Triads, a centre for gang culture, a place of general lawlessness, and a street of dentists who didn't need professional certificates but you could guarantee they were cheap.

Not surprisingly, the churches and charitable groups moved in.

In the exhibition we visit today, in Kowloon Walled City Park - the city was demolished in 1993 and landscaped into Qing Dynasty gardens - personal narratives come through loud and clear.

Stories of communities helping each other. Neighbours sharing food, belongings, miseries and triumph. Successful businesses flourishing. Employment, family successes, mutual support. People making lives for themselves; setting up resident groups, internal patrols and community associations to govern their own affairs.

Some residents were so reluctant indeed to give up this autonomous, self-regulating status that they clung on, defying all eviction orders, waiting to be carried out by the demolition team.

I'm sorry that I only know it by the diplomatic anomaly, and that I never got to see it as a working, heaving city.

But the park is pretty.


So that is Kowloon Walled City (Park). I thought home educators would like to know about it.

Especially the very loud and awkward ones who are further gone than me, and who keep Rottweilers to sniff out any form of control or regulation in any guise.

Secretly, they sometimes make me feel a tiny pang of sympathy for local council staff - particularly the thin, sad, weedy types, called Maureen and Denis, who would rather work in accounts than extract a bit of educational information over the head of a butcher's dog.

But let's think positive. I'm sure there is a ring road in Hemel Hempstead that could be up for a land grab.

The questions every parent should ask of an education

People on earth! I may be a late-comer - and the following wisdoms already discovered and exploited by the world's economic rulers, political leaders, and tele-evangelists - but I feel I must do this job.

Consider the Words of Our Lord John Taylor Gatto; he who brings knowledge on humanity and education for our humble planet via this video link.

I take from his talk (okay, I am only 23 minutes in) that those children set to rule Planet Earth will attain the following 14 wisdoms; endowed with these knowledges, they can grow society, pervert us all, or kick some ass (I bet he says that).

Note! If you send your child to school, Lord Gatto's wisdoms are far better questions to ask of your child's institution than whether the teaching staff meet any government's poxy list of attainment targets. Targets are a smokescreen to keep you fretting. This is the real knowledge your kid should have if you want them to enjoy a life of ruling, perverting, or ass-kicking.

Wave these questions, and demand, Will the school do this?

If you are home educating, then we need only join together in prayer.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. These questions are for you.

1. Can you learn what makes people tick?

To my children, I advise, continue observing and experimenting with the buttons on your sister. Some, you already know. Stop pressing NUCLEAR and DESTROY.

Press the other ones. Buttons which are activated by KINDNESS and which provide your sister with consolation and support.

From this knowledge, you will learn better how to empathise. You will learn how to help, or inspire. Even better, you will learn how to reach that place where your sister willingly offers you the last slice of double choc-chip cake, even though she wanted it for herself.

But do not consider these experiments as manipulation. Consider them lessons in human nature.

And attend to five subjects in particular. Without them, we are uneducated, and lost. History, philosophy, literature, theology, and law.

(Leave Mama in charge of law. She controls access to the biscuit tin.)

2. Can you learn how to write and speak?

Not bad spelling and mumbling! No! My children, make it your ambition to possess effective writing skills and good spoke-stuffing.

Think! With these techniques you might persuade your reluctant sister to give up her best clothes/best friend/rights to chocolate cake forever.

Learn how to persuade her with spoken eloquence and proper punctuation! You will reach this goal by:

a) observing the impact of what you say and write,
b) reflecting on your successes and failures,
c) presenting her ideas kindly, maybe in ways that encourage her, or the calm and logical set of practical steps she can follow, especially in giving up the cake.

Essentially, learn how to give back to her what she already said to you, only better. (If you follow that.)

3. Can you develop insights into how institutions work?

Can we discuss what factors drive the justice system, commercial business, political clubs, and military?

(In our case, yes; we need to, because we might yet be up before the Old Bill.)

Please note: Mama would prefer you did not learn the justice system from the wrong side of the dock in the magistrate's court, neither by your active involvement in prison. But if you cannot avoid it, then so be it. You won't be the first family member I visit in the clink.

4. Can you learn some bleedin' manners?

Remember. Graciousness, politeness and civility are the basis of your relationships, even close ones (although thank goodness we can take a few liberties there).

As Our Lord Gatto explains, civility is the means by which you gain access to 'places you might want to go'.

(Let's assume he means places like the Oxbridge Club, and not places like behind the bins on a Friday night.)

5. Can you learn how to work independently?

Have you the self-reliance and ability to be resourceful? To proceed without instruction? Have you the perception to use the work of others? To nick their stuff, then credit yourself with the glory? I think so. Ironically, academic life might beckon.

6. Can you enjoy the grace in your body?

Children, I have noticed that people who endure physical endeavour or who suffer physical misery also develop a confident body. Sports, exercise, climbing trees; they all teach you how to handle yourself.

(Our Lord Gatto also remarks how a commanding physique can translate into power and money. Hmm. As you can see, Mama has the body of a goddess but remains piss poor.)

7. Can you develop 'a complete theory of access to any workplace or person'?

Remember, nothing prevents you from looking to wangle a meeting with a person who can assist you. Never be cowed by title or place.

It may take planning, time, and work, and you may suffer some prejudice. And the result might be less than satisfactory when you achieve it, but it will have taught you something.

8. Can you take responsibility?

Not only take it, but deliver more than is asked for, because by this method you learn leadership.

9. Can you arrive at a personal code of standards?

Okay, don't follow me on this one. I am still working on the dodgy ethics, suspect behaviour and doubtful morals. And don't press me for a result by next Tuesday.

10. Can you become familiar with the arts?

OH YES. Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. We are slowly cracking this one, what with the literature, painting, dance, drama, sculpture.

'The arts transcend the animal materiality of our lives' indeed. (Until you get to Gilbert and George.)

11. Can you develop the power of accurate observation and recording?

Think of the instruction, 'draw what you see'. Drawing is a means of sharpening perception.

12. Can you deal with challenge?

As Our Lord Gatto explains, each person's challenge is different.

Shy, Tiger? Your challenge is public presentation! Loud and opinionated, Shark? Your challenge is to develop a razor-sharp, merciless edge, then use it only when necessary. On another planet, Squirrel? Enjoy it, because this earth-bound one is utterly over-rated.

13. Can you 'develop a habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions'?

I think Our Lord Gatto means, think out the debate from all sides and don't believe what anyone tells you.

(Ahem. Given our politicians in Britain, Lord Gatto, I think we might have reached this point some time ago.)

14. Can you continuously test your own judgement?

Were your intuitions well-founded? Were your assessments and predictions far off, or accurate? Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. You should reflect to better calibrate your ideas, fine-tune your judgements, and develop your capacity for good decision-making.

There. My work here is done. I must now study the remaining two hours of the Lord Gatto's video; and I must steel myself for any comments about how these are the very techniques by which we are better controlled from a ruling elite with their endless merciless mastery over our lives of miserable servile drudge.

After that, I can return to plotting how I might steal secret kisses from the perfectly tiny toy fox terrier that is not even mine, aka, The Dog of Loveliness.

Amen.

I hear you, brother. And sister.

You should all go and read this from the thinkers and doers outside St Paul's, printed in the Independent newspaper last Friday.

Incidentally, I can't link to the article as in the newspaper. I am still being ambushed by a guru who would like me to meditate over my 400 errors. (Dig says it is all my fault. Enough.)

Anyway, the issues brought to the undoubtedly widespread Independent readership, relating to learning, are the tofu burger and barleycup of my life; these ideas have informed our thinking about what constitutes an education for our children and directed our practical choices:

'In the context of the contemporary neoliberal 'marketisation' of universities, education functions less as a creator of critical, free-thinking human beings and more as a production chain for the integration of the young into the market economy'

and:

''anyone can teach, everyone can learn' and we seek to promote an approach to learning that prioritises process over end-point and values the skills all of us have to share and the capacity all of us have to learn. Our workshops are therefore given by bicycle mechanics and electricians as well as by academics'

Yes, these ideas do shape our days. You don't have to be camping outside St Paul's to be working through their implications. (We'll only entertain ourselves in working out how to compromise an IGCSE syllabus with an autonomous 'free-thinking' child.)

Encouraging to me, and what I think all Independent readers should also know, is that there are a lot of us people out here, thinking and doing along the same lines.

You should see my inbox, with the home ed email debating lists. Every morning I can read multiple debates about every possible angle, cause, consequence, and permutation resulting from Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, from its history into the future, all alongside the mundane reality: The round-the-world co-op is meeting next Wednesday in the village hall.

So I was quite pleased that the Independent gave space for this, the stuff of my life (even if for me it comes with a gatekeeping guru). I would like to think a newspaper can present to you more than the mainstream and, specifically, can believe its readership will assume that ideas about education are fundamentally important because those ideas bring about the society we live in.

But isn't it ever so difficult, communicating ideas about education?

I confess. I had to raise a smile. I observe the way that even I couldn't quite throw myself in with the spirit. I think it was the over-enthusiastic headline. Some of the language too. How I recognise that! My inbox is certainly busting with neoliberalism. Yes, all that, and - when I last could retrieve this article online - it was charmingly followed by no comments.

The shackles of apathy in the Independent readership had clearly not loosened enough to allow the raising of a finger to a keyboard, not even from the regular contributor, the gangsta rapping troll.

Passing judgements, picking fights, and nurturing grudges

I am coming late to recognise Simon Webb's blog.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a coward to say this only now, after the fact. He stopped writing the damned thing. It sure pissed me off when it was alive. I hope he doesn't resurrect it from the dead.

What I found about Simon's blog - apart from how his confrontational, provocative, judgemental stance made me want to stab the computer - was that some of the home ed issues he referred to are fundamentally interesting and worthwhile ones to raise.

I don't know whether he covered them all, but I'd say of course these issues are worth thinking about as you make the decision to provide any type of education for your kids.

What do you want from school, what do you want from home ed, what do you want for your child, what involvement do you want the local authority to have? Your family values, your social networks, the composition of local school/home ed groups, the availability of transport, local sports and arts, libraries, clubs, computers. Then, you and your child together. Confidence/doubt, religious/secular, dis/ability, gifted kids, one-to-one teaching, non-coercive education, TCS (oh my god).

You can add legal jib, provision for statemented children, whether it's important to you to consider class, ethnic mix, composition of groups male/female. Try politics of school/home ed, your national and international connections, travel likes, and employment needs, finance, lifestyle choices, where can it all lead. Home ed/school for one year? Two years? All primary? Switch between the two? Right through to secondary, college, university, and do you or your child value that grade A pass? Or not?

It's your freedom of choice to consider it all, and more. Thank goodness we have this freedom; it's worth protecting, for anyone involved in education.

In fact I think it's a basic parental duty to explore these ideas; more worthwhile than fretting over put-up arguments over issues about teaching structure or child autonomy. These straw men are often a little pointless when you get into the home ed world, because most parents will try, over many years of learning, both those positions, which may both include school-at-home and running wild about woods, because the needs, wants and ideas of parents and kids change.

Well, I am not on campaign against any one aspect of education. I am on campaign against peddled misinformation, lack of imagination, and plain ignorance. Against the words 'compulsory school age'. Against every automatic assumption that now your child is aged 2/3/4 they must choose school, and so must you. Against anyone who chooses only one way because they never thought of any other option.

I want people to think, and choose education actively, whatever you choose, school/home/something in between. I want people to know that you can create your choice. If you want flexi-school, and there isn't a scheme, then you can make one happen. If you want autonomous, you'll find it. If you want private tutors at home, you can get those too.

So if you are thinking educational options, then of course go to homeedheretic. Ignore the fights; take away the issues. But then I'd recommend reading a host of blogs too. For the goss on all educational approaches, hazards, benefits, doubts, worries, everything. Calibrate the lot, one against the other.

And certainly don't alight only on grit's day. Because when I mentioned passing judgements, picking fights and nurturing grudges, I wasn't meaning Simon's blog.

Home educated children cannot socialise

Apologies for the title, but I am feeling arsey, thanks to HESFES.

HESFES, for people who use schools, is the home educator's summer festival. Here it is, just outside Bury St Edmunds.


Held annually over one week, it's a time and place where the off-gridsters, hippies, anarchists, pink hair brigade, and completely normal people like me, all meet each other.

Whatever the state of our hair, we have a common thread. We educate outside the conventional school system. While we're chatting in the workshops and over coffee, the kids can be chucked in a field together to build their own social system.

I last went to HESFES Dorset, but haven't bothered with it since. Really, the kids were too little and, although I felt home education was right in all the possibilities it offered, I was still trying to investigate the landscape, meet the type of people who do it, and keep an open mind with one eye on conventional school.

At that time, HESFES struck me completely as a wild camp filled with autonomous types and feral kids.

I have grown in my understanding and awareness of the many home ed communities since then.

I know that to many people like me at that stage - familiar with the sight of uniformed children progressing in crocodile chains, accustomed to the idea that to learn anything, children sit facing in one direction, still expecting them to do the same activity at the same time - then sure, a large cacophony of kids whooping it up at a camp Tom Sawyer style, dressing how they want, running over fields, in and out streams and up trees, all without much parental screaming and helicoptering, can look scary and intimidating.

Especially if you then add into the mix the hammering from the copper beaters, the singing of the weaving circle and the accordions of the music group, practising for the afternoon theatre show. The science roadshow will be ongoing too, right next to your ears, with experiments of air pressure rockets, and Mr Robinson is touting for his afternoon show on how the world was created. He's compressing the talk into 13.75 minutes; one minute for every billion years.

Then the pink hair brigade wander past clutching coffee cups looking wild eyed after a night when the air bed punctured. Yes, it can look like a good portrayal of chaos.

But it's not. Human behaviour is the same, regardless of the clothes it wears or the colour of the hair dye bottle. Look closer at this lot, and you'll see people from a slice of a society, same as you'd find anywhere in Britain. The teenage home ed kids do as you'd expect. They hang around in small groups, mostly dressed in black, hoping they look cool. The little kids get on bikes and race each other over the fields and into the stream. Their toddler siblings sit and bawl or eat grass. The parents wander about hugging babies or looking for coffee and passing comment on the state of the toilets, the weather, and the suitability of the tents after a night of rain and wind.

It's in this environment that I am completely won over to the delights of the HESFES experience. And even less patient with the vocal opinionated arses who have very little understanding of the many ways in which home ed can work.

Because here I can sit and chat about all the familiar home ed issues - approaches to child rearing, the state of the house, legal duties, the role of the local authority, the usefulness of labels like autonomous and structure, child-friendly text books, self-motivation, truancy patrols, the oddities of local home ed groups, how to get hold of tutors for special courses, the easiest ways to access GCSEs, how to approach college entrance exams, what university requirements are in vogue, and which home ed kid you know who is now travelling the world, studying history at Oxford, setting up their own business, or working for charity. I can discuss it all, not so much with like minds as with people who understand the territory.

And I didn't talk much about socialisation, except to feel sure that the griblets need to be located at HESFES not only for the day, but for the entire week.

Shark, Tiger, and even Squirrel, the declared arch enemy of camping, each say that next year we are staying in a tent and we are not driving over for one measly day.

Even in our limited time we clocked up science, bag making, weaving, leatherwork and copper. (No photo of that. I was busy over tea.) Plus Mr Robinson's excellent talk.

All of which shows then, that home educated children do not lack opportunities to socialise, nor do they lack contexts and situations which meet their endless stream of inquiries. Even the parents can satisfy their rebellious urges over a cup of tea and a chin wag about the vagaries of the English weather.





Let's hope for next year then, that the weather is kind, the toilets are cleaned, and by July I have figured out how to pop the pop-up tent back down.

I'm talking labels

Labels? Not Vuitton and Marc Jacobs, obviously. The only way I'll get my hands on those beauties is by exchanging a few dollars for a Mong Kok rip off.

No, we're talking labels as definitions and descriptions, for people who home educate.

If you're one who thinks all kids should go to school, I guess you already have it sorted. Home ed people are freaks, crazies, bonkers. I guess you don't want to know what home ed people call you.

But we're not looking at extremes here. The discussion seems to be, can we find labels for home educators that work?

No, is my answer.

That's not to say there aren't advantages to labels. Making a lot of noise about a lot of labels could show J. Publics a huge educational variety, of which they may be ignorant.

Choosing home ed for primary; choosing home ed until age seven; choosing for under nines and tens; choosing home ed full stop; best choice for individuals; forced by circumstance; one-year out for travel; single term while moving house; pretending to do it while the kid plays truant...

If those descriptors become too confusing we could shorten them up. CHEP; CHEUAS; oops.

Of course not all labels are necessarily bad. Some people seek them out, because they define an identity, suggest a common purpose, or signal belonging to a community. I bet some folks become quite attached to their label. Do not call me a Chuffer! I am a Huffer! Once defined, I suppose a label can be used to apply political pressure. Freedom for Huffers!

If we think up some labels, then maybe it helps. Like, it would help people in officialdom who create tick-box forms. You may want to help them or not. That's up to you.

Labels are then short-cuts by which to filter people and organise resources. It's up to each person whether they want those resources, and that's freedom of choice.

The other pro-label reason I can think of, is that they make any form look very official and important. If you are an official box ticker, I bet that in itself is very satisfying.

For official use only. Tick one box.

[ ] Chuffer
[ ] Huffer

Of course I'm going to be awkward and not quite fit. I have a general difficulty with most labels. But it doesn't mean I won't use them.

The gritty style of education is to wander about and have a bash at everything. Thanks to that, we're unlikely to fall into neat boxes or fit under any label. Then we'll mess up any label with ambitions vs realities. We might have various philosophical outlooks on living, but we don't put them all into practice. And I'm difficult. I reserve the right to talk differently about what I do at any time, cosy up to whoever I want, and wriggle away from any label at any moment. Hey, I'm not even particularly happy with the term home educator!

In fact, as far as I can see, there's a distinct advantage in being difficult to pin down with a label. (Except for Still breathing when the organ donation team come looking.)

Without a home ed label, I'm like water. You never know where I am! I could be right behind you! If there's lots of us spilling about in society at all levels from top to bottom, left to right, we can't be easily defined, picked off, or set against each other. Huffers vs Chuffers.

But I know that if I don't label myself, someone else is going to do that for me. You never know, I might comply. Perhaps it's expedient for me. I'll think about what's on offer.

Meanwhile, you call me whatever you like. I'm taking the triplets to see Cantonese Opera. They adore this stuff. Can you believe that? How am I going to find Cantonese Opera in the UK to feed to my strange alien beings? I'll have to find a group.


Maybe when I do that, we should occupy a label all of our own. Home ed Known Unhidden Legal Illegal Expat Flexischooled Autonomous Cantonese Opera Loving Triplets. With false beards.

Say what? Simpler to call us Freaks.