Apparently they cook cake

Wander round St Albans while Shark, Squirrel and Tiger attend their new teen social group.

Basically, apart from the cooking that goes on here weekly, it looks like an anarcho-syndicalist party of teens who meet in a hut.

Be wary of them, that's all I'm saying, because one day they might be in your local government, where some of them have dodgy ideas about how to spend your taxes. (On municipal fish tanks.)

Anyway, parents can stay or go. I went. I fantasised about using the unaccompanied hours by escaping St Albans altogether, maybe travelling to London on my own.* Then I bought a book about political theory in a charity shop.

Um.

I think there should be pictures. In the absence of my afternoon in St Albans, have yesterday's bones book, suited to a radiographer.

*Such stuff makes my most pleasant of day dreams. (I am a person of meagre ambitions.)

Once again with Hunger Games

Just about a perfect day as you get.

Bunch of home ed kids get together to kill each other; wood & dog walkers bemused; I enjoy wood.

(For those interested in running the same, the rules we play by, below).

Rules:
Games last 2 hours.
You need two bases for play: water and food. You must sign in for water every 20 minutes and food every 30 minutes. A parent is at each base to record your arrival. If you fail to sign in within the time, you are out of the game. There is no need to tag in for food or water in the last 15 minutes.

Combat:
Each tribute (player) wears three ribbons. One ribbon on each shoulder, one ribbon on the chest. In combat you try and get each other's ribbons.
If you lose one of your shoulder ribbons you are injured.  If you lose both your shoulder ribbons you are out of the games. If you lose your chest ribbon, your wound is fatal, and you are out of the games.
If a tribute gets you out, you can't then grab for their ribbons. We rely on you being honest about this.
If you are wounded (have one shoulder ribbon remaining) you can receive medicine from a Medical Base. (You can go to the medical base when you have lost an arm ribbon, but should only take one ribbon.  You can't 'stock-up' on spares!)
If you go to the Medical Base, your new ribbon counts after you have attached it to yourself.  If another tribute grabs your one remaining shoulder ribbon while you have your new one in your hand you are out.
Players who are out, return to the parent at the picnic site.

Winning:
The first player to successfully tag the Base Tree after the two hours has elapsed.

Monday playtime, home ed style

Usual hard-core outdoor group, meeting in hail, wind, snow, mud, rain, gale, storm, flood. Wherever there is playtime.

This one will do it

I am on the search of another cure for my tortoise balloons. The diet isn't working. It is ages before the hospital appointment. I must embrace the homoeopathic approach.

To this end, I first have to abandon the kids in a park. Not any old park, obviously. The park of our Monday meet. When a bunch of home educators come together so we can introduce kids to other kids, call it the S-word and, while the offspring disappear to beat each other with sticks, chat about how no-one understand us.

I think of our local home ed groups a little like an extended family - dysfunctional disparate people, some of whom have nothing in common except for the fact that we all educate outside of normal - yet we still come together routinely to alternatively amuse and piss each other off.

We can support each other too of course, while we bitch and whine, which means I feel safe to dump my kids on them while I attend to something much more important. Me. I need to zip across town and track down this miracle homoeopathic creme with its seductive packaging and fragrant promises.

Back in the park, someone would phone if there was blood.

See? This is how focused I am on the kids and home education in general. Not at all. I am the centre of my attention. I have to make myself be fit for purpose, which presently I am so clearly not.

For a start, I look ahead in my diary and see that I am soon to be sleeping in a field, joining all the other hardened home educators in the annual sleep-in-a-field-fest.

I doubt my capabilities for enduring that, even when I am on top form, so I have already negotiated an opt-out clause mid-week. But I'm worried that in this present state of health I shall not be able to carry out this sleeping-in-a-field responsibility at all. I won't be strong enough. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will never forgive me.

So the only option is to dump them with the helpful extended family who can complain about me when I leg it, and go grovelling in alternative remedy shops looking for the perfect answer.

Yes! I find it! Aqua, Prunus dulcis, Calendula, Lavendula, Anthemis nobilis, Citrus grandis. A force of Roman deities sweeping to my aid!

But this cure will work, trust me. It promises everything I want in the world!

Instant relief, perfect skin, normal eyelids, a properly responsive autoimmune system, refreshed spirit, fortitude, emotional strength, the stamina to sleep a week in a wet field, weight gain to make a shapely thigh and not a thick ankle, a dinner of spinach and salmon, deep red wine, a vulnerable naked man, and a tiny toy fox terrier to keep in my handbag.

This could be it. Now all I need do is apply it thrice a day, and lo! The magic will prevail!

WLTM

I am on the look-out for girls again.*

This is something I do regularly, so I suppose I should tell you about it. And I thought it could help you, if you are worried about making your profound move from school to home ed, and are concerned about the S-word.

Here are the usual strategies.

1. Join the local home ed group. They meet up routinely to muck about in woods, fields and swimming pools.

This is helpful, but it can be frustrating. You can't choose whether your local group is made up of a bunch of boys, a group of girls, or a pile of toddlers who want to eat soil.

Presently, our local group contains mostly boys. They enjoy waving sticks at each other, chucking pines cones about, and making a loud noise. I have asked Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, does this matter? Because you do exactly the same. (I am unreliably informed by Squirrel, when boys chuck pine cones about, it is 'different'.)

2. Join as many interest groups, hobby clubs, volunteering groups, and after-school activities as possible.

This can be quite a useful strategy to meet girls, but there are several problems, like the after-school club closes down, thanks to the fact that no-one attends, apart from us. (Apparently, too much homework; not enough takers; parents can't afford it; the water activity centre sacked the late staff.)

Then the other problems. You obviously must have kids who are joiners; you cannot attend every club held on a Saturday morning between 9.30 and 11.30; and if Shark, Squirrel or Tiger do make new friends, then they have to wait all week or month to see them again. Because school kids can't come on a whim to footle about the garden because it's sunny.

If you overcome all these hurdles and find a group where you eye-spy a potential good few matches, then you might just face this problem: the one where the schoolies stare in bug-eyed incredulity at the home edders, and the home edders stare back in confusion at the schoolies. The schoolies are all scared to death that the home edders are an uncivilised rabble (as the for/against English debate concluded), and the home edders struggle to understand why the schoolies pay attention to anything they are told, ever. Sometimes there's no helping kids. You simply have to encourage both sides to understand that the other side is not going to eat them.

(Hmm. Ditto for the parents. If I sidle up to you, it is because I want to say, it's OK by me if Tinkertop comes over. You do not need to slide your eyes at me like I am hiding a knife and fork in my handbag.)

3. Roam the streets, visit the playgrounds, hang out.

Not a good strategy. As parents, we have specifically not encouraged Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to hang around street corners. They get bored at the playgrounds if there's no one to play with, and they are not of the age or disposition where they can 'hang out'. They like doing and making stuff and, being young women of purposes, find waiting on group decisions annoying.

4. Make compromised alliances with special interest groups.

Like the local home ed Christian group, or the nearby anarchist brigade. If there is a suitable girl in that lot, we parents have to put aside our differences, never mention God/meat-eaters/taxation/politics/the local authority/the electricity company/indeed much of any potentially interesting conversation at all, and hope the kids hit it off, somehow.

5. Skype, email, go online.

Useful, especially if Shark, Tiger and Squirrel are expecting to see remote friends soon in person, like Twiss&Flizz, hopefully to arrive in England this summer! Yay!

Of course we sanction this contact only with known friends. So if you are Mr Spooky trying to pass yourself off as the 'sad 13-year old home educated Angelica looking for friends', then forget it.

It is an unavoidable truth that home ed involves the entire family. Yes, I agree, it is a nuisance. I have tried sneaking off for years in search of easy men and cheap beer, and I haven't made it yet.

6. Make private deals.

Most of the time, this is where we're at. 'Psst! Meet you at the lake at 2pm! Bring your Jessie, Em, and Erika!'

The problem with this is that Jessie, Em, and Erika take part in a maths group until one, the Latin tutor with the head wound comes round at five, and they must bring the dog because he has prostrate problems and piddles on the floor if he's left alone.

Now, these techniques are how I have been approaching the S-word issue since we returned to England a good two months back. I have had partial success.

If any experienced home educators want to pitch in and help with a few more strategies to help me meet my responsibilities in the S-department, then I would be glad of it, since Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are clearly now missing their regular contact with the lassies up the Hong Kong mountainside.


* Girls for me, because I have girls. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have reached the age where they confidently claim that boys are 'pointless and annoying'. I have suggested they lighten up on this judgement, because how would they feel to be judged in turn? Squirrel thought about this, then conceded that boys do sometimes come in useful if they let you chase them with sticks.

Returning to normal (sadly)

I have realised that locking myself in a dark room, even with all the excitement and allure of the ipad, is no good for an active girl like me.

Fresh air is a positive antidote to technology, isn't it? Feeling the tingles of sun and wind on my face is bringing me to my senses.

Just lucky then, that today brings another opportunity to experience the great outdoors. Or at least the outdoor bit of the world that kids of any age think is great.

The playground. Where you may see a bunch of tots to teens throwing themselves about. Their parents sit on the periphery ignoring them and complaining about submarine sandwiches and the price of fuel (no, for us it doesn't get much better than this, because everyone complains if we climb on the swings).



Now if you see us enjoying the wind and sun and the movement of limbs at 2pm on a term-time weekday, don't assume we're all neglectful parents, shameless reprobates, or skiving truants. Some of us are recovering ipaddics and the kids are doing the S word.

(Well it had to be the playground. I couldn't photograph the swimming session in fear of being arrested.)

Home educators missing out social skills?

Of course, the answer's NO! Home ed kids don't miss out social skills. Just think about the social skills Child A (aged 11) has employed today.

1. Got herself out of bed, dressed appropriately, and made ready to go.

While mother is slopping in pyjamas with dribble on the bosom? Falling out the shower 10 minutes before she is due out the house? So what? She is an artist. Call it the start of her new public installation work: The Artist in Motion. Smelly & Dishevelled.

2. Bought breakfast en route to the public transport for all family members.

Okay. The mother-artist on duty doesn't actually provide breakfast. Well, what's the point? Squirrel has stitched up a good deal with our cake-woman street-seller for daily freshly-baked pastries. Still warm! And Hong Kong food culture is snack-based.

3. Checked the transport card is suitable for travel.

Yes, this is Squirrel's job! Don't look at me. I'm not doing it. I bung her fifty dollars to buy the top-up from the old woman in the booth. (Rats! I've forgotten my card! Surely Squirrel can deal with the guard on duty at the turnstiles, then slip me hers to get me through to the ferry?)

4. Seated the family on city transport.

Where are we going? Can someone remind me? Squirrel, sort it out. Go and ask that man to move. Look, today I am wearing matching socks. Consider that my triumph.

5. Purchased lunch from 7Eleven.

Just be quiet, you creepy lunch-box police types. This overpriced cheese sandwich is not a statement on modern motherhood. Hong Kong food culture is SNACK BASED. Now Squirrel, don't forget to ask the cashier for straws. And are they going to stock raisin bread again? Ask the assistant for me, there's a good girl.

6. Provided the details for the group meet-up at the right time, in the right place, at the right sports venue.

Thank goodness Squirrel is firmly in charge. She can recall which group of people we are meeting in which place today. Different from yesterday. And tomorrow. (My confusions are understandable, surely.)

7. Acquired the correct-sized sports gear from the attendant. Joined in appropriately with the mixed-age, mixed-ability sports group for ice skating session.

Squirrel, get it sorted with the young men behind the desk regarding the gear. And don't ask me again. NO WAY am I strapping thin metal blades to my feet and trying to stand upright on a sheet of ice. If you need me, I'll be in Starbucks with the rest of the hangers on, aka the parents.

8. Assisted, supported, and encouraged the junior in the group who is convinced she will fall over.

Ahhh. My girls are kind and caring. (Truly.)

9. Agreed time to exit the sports venue.

Twelve kids today to negotiate on a time? Blimey, that was quick. But must your mother leave Starbucks? The seat is so cosy and warm! The hot chocolate is delicious!

10. Made a selection of 12 cup cakes at fancy cake shop.

Squirrel, here is MATHS. Cake choices are as follows. 12x22; 3x54; 1x350; 2x140+3x22. You must feed 12 people. You have two minutes to decide. Order from the cake-shop woman and tell me how much cash to hand over.

11. Located group at meet-up venue for impromptu birthday gathering!

Honestly, if someone doesn't find the way out of this shopping centre, eternity will finish and I will still be wandering around the blasted back of Versace. Thank goodness! Squirrel's asked the woman at the concierge desk.

12. Behaved appropriately for birthday gathering.

What? You mean no screaming? Shouting? Pushing? Or grabbing at the chocolate cake with scrabbling claws fiercely yelling GERROFFTHATONEISMINE. (For which I humbly apologise.)


13. Completed same in reverse; i.e. managed transport home, coordinated mother, organised all payments, negotiated purchasing of supper (not from 7Eleven).

Social skills? You can call them responsibility, resourcefulness, self sufficiency, care for others, sympathy for mother (okay, maybe pity), and dealing respectfully with a lot of people in a lot of jobs in real-world situations.

Now please excuse me. I have to go back to drinking lager, dribbling down my vest, watching Sky TV, and burping.

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.

Socialisation and home education (again)

One of the comments we all hear, is that if you pull a child out of school, they won't be able to socialise.

I have many responses to that issue, some of which are two words on an off-day, but I think that people who say this are generally expressing the fear 'you won't be able to socialise in the way that we do, round school gates and school events'.

Personally, if I hear this comment about socialisation, especially from an English person, I tend to think home education has touched an insecurity, not about education, but about how they feel uncomfortable in deviating far from the conformity of their social class.

I think people who lack confidence in moving very far from their social comfort zone perhaps see a school-based approach as the safest, least-risky way to bring up kids. Stay put, and socially you don't have to worry about getting it wrong. Move 'outside' that social zone and you potentially face the embarrassment, the judgement, the social awkwardness. Easier to stay safe, do what everyone else does, laugh at minor differences, and call that 'socialisation'.

I'm not surprised then that these people think that socialisation is in part confined and defined by school. Once they see us pull our kids away from that safe world of their 'normal', I wonder if they tend to assume that we must be in some sort of social limbo, outside everything. Then, our children of course 'cannot socialise'.

One moment of thought should tell them we are not outside anything, and their narrow angle of vision is their problem to explore, not ours. There is a big wide world outside the school gates populated by all social classes from top to bottom, left to right, purple to green.

In fact, one of the distinct advantages I see here is that it is possible for a home educated child to mix with other children from many different backgrounds. We meet parents from working class to upper class. One thing we have in common is that we are educating in ways which inspire and motivate children. We just argue here about what those ways are, and which methods work best. I'm pretty sure that some of that debate is socially motivated too. (The autonomous crowd are very difficult to pin down into a class system. They could be lower or upper, you just can't tell, and I wonder if that's why people like Balls and Badman were so unsettled by that approach.)

Well, you have to have a certain confidence about being in this home ed world, that's for sure. Me and Dig, we are suited to it in our various ways. I am a working class gutter gal who couldn't give a toss. He is an upper-middle class posh boy who doesn't take kindly to being told what to do by someone with a clipboard. Home education is maybe a natural place to go for people who don't quite fit their social classes anyway. Maybe that's why we are also temporarily expat and living on an island without roads.

But it is not surprising that parents in the home ed world similarly raise kids who are pretty hard to define on first meeting. Kids who do not follow the minutiae of etiquette which tie them to a particular social class, but who borrow freely from the spectrum. It's maybe easy for the people who find securities in their regular social groups to dismiss these dangerous free-roaming kids as 'unsocialised'.

Anyway, I'm thinking all this aloud today. We are surrounded by Americans, Canadians, Chinese and Singaporeans, none of whom I can fit into any English class system, and all of whom are warm, welcoming, and expanding our social horizons enormously. And because one of the kids in this wonderful mixed-age, mixed-sex group has a birthday party.


You see? We are not out of society. We do not lack 'socialisation'. We are very much in society, and socialising across it. We find some celebrations are similar, wherever you go, whatever you do, however you live. Like a birthday party, where all the kids can run around and play, then cluster around the table with the cake.

Baroness Deech, which classroom did this happen in today?

On the day that Baroness Deech claims home educated kids can't socialise, the Grit family has a big fight and Shark locks herself in the shed.

Normally, I wouldn't mention the fight.

But I am so totally confident in our chosen lifestyle - or so far gone you can call security - that I can now claim with a sincere heart how this great big nuclear argument is actually proof that home ed works.

Like I can't be insane enough for you, I'll also add that home ed leads to fine rounded adults, social awareness, personal strength, and may be responsible for roses in bloom in June.

I can tell you, Baroness, why I am so confident. It is because this home ed life, I have lived it.

Some days I have felt there is no difference between home education and the serving of a lifetime prison sentence nailed to a cross overlooking the market square. And some days are so blissfully perfect, so star shootingly knockout, that we can only stand bewildered, and wonder why everyone isn't simply building a society based on the freedom to fulfil their ambitions and capabilities.

Baroness, it is because I have lived both types of home educating days, that I am so confident.

But today there was this big, big fight. When everyone calmed down, and I tracked Shark to the new home she'd set up in the back of the garage, then there was a long and deep two hour discussion on all matters moral, social and individual.

Eventually this led all the gritlets into a discussion of the four worthies at the Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe Gardens, and some thoughts as to the roles of poetry, philosophy, lawmaking and military strength in ancient Greek society. We didn't stop there. We talked about whether these virtues are the best guide we have to run a country; to run a family; to live a life?

I wonder how this discussion might have played out, with fifteen minutes to get Shark into school. Or how it might never have happened at all. Instead, maybe I'd resort to bribery. Giving in. Coercion. Shouting. Threatening.

Baroness, our home educating life today was not about do what I say missy but drew us in thoughts and talks about what it is to be human, what it is to show weakness, what it is to show strength, what it is to build a society, and why poetry and philosophy matter.

Did that happen - in all its complete experience, emotional impact, intellectual debate, family understanding - did that happen in a classroom near you?


(P.S. I would just like to add that Tiger going bonkers twenty minutes later had nothing to do with how she is socialised. She is simply traumatised from the recent news that come June she may be living sixty floors up without unicorns or paint. That is called work in progress.)

Did we socialise?

If you've come to this blog before, you've encountered the s-word.

Get thee gone, Mr Spooky, seeking sexy pigeon. Here is the s-word in the world of home education.

The first question I asked, the last doubt I harboured, was socialisation. How will my kids socialise? Will they be able to socialise? Don't kids go to school to be socialised properly?

On that last point, I worried. I know that socialisation takes a particular form in schools. Kids are told to shut up, sit down, listen. If the kids work their way round that, then yes, they talk with each other. They may establish pecking orders, or create a hierarchy of the classroom. People are assigned labels. The clown. The shy one. The geek. The swot. Is that socialisation?

Groups of types will form. People hardwire into those groups, and it's difficult to break out. Kids carry them through the playground - perhaps to describe a personal identity; to create a community; to protect themselves in a large crowd. Some groups want to dominate and extract signals of submission. Is that socialisation?

Then there are large crowds - assemblies, fire drills, all the routine large pack systems - what is socialisation here? Is it knowing when you can whisper to get away with it? Try and subvert the authority. Try and redefine the event on your own terms. Try and not be a number, when you are a number. Is this socialisation?

There are people who move, between individuals, large groups, small groups; they transcend the labels. They ultimately deal with a large-scale organisation; an organisation with a command line from head down through deputy heads, form teachers, class teachers, supply teachers. They handle it. They are the succeeding people. We're glad. They survived socialisation.

But in the home ed world, what is socialisation?

My flippant answer, is that whatever socialisation is, we do too much of it. There are too many play dates, parties, all group meetings; mixing with adults, little kids, babies; all in workshops, lessons, parks, all day events. Then shops, high streets, libraries, galleries, museums. Everyday, somewhere. Can't we take a month off and stay at home?

My scared answer - on the days when all goes bellyup - is that whatever socialisation is, we don't do enough of it. We have issues. Too much shyness. Timidity. Fear of dogs. Strange people. New people. Too few people. Too many people. Wrong moment. Wrong place.

My more considered answer is, socialisation means what you want it to mean. It is the life you choose.

So today, socialisation is this tree. It contained eight kids for thirty minutes. One, reaching the top, yelled down to the others to come up.


Socialisation is this straggly walk through the conifers perched, wind blasted, against the Greensand Ridge.


Socialisation is this moment, wondering how many times a dog can jump into a lake to fetch a stick before it feels the cold.


Socialisation is walking on forest paths, talking about soil, the weather, lost scarves, and wondering about the lives of people who on Mondays must take themselves into schools.

Lovely. Just lovely lovely lovely.

Get your coat. We're going out.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are being educated properly, in society.

I know what you're thinking. The smugbastard home educator voice is back.

You're too right. We don't get days like this very often. And when we do, I'm milking them.

Let's just say it's the sort of day* I can shove granola down my moralhighgrounded sanctimonious homeknitted knickers.

Now come along on the perfect child-focused journey of an ordinary day down the home educating range.

Tonight, Shark Squirrel and Tiger are out at a drama club with schooled children for signing, singing, and dancing. But let's start the school day here. At the art gallery.


Did you hear that? THE ART GALLERY. Because over at MKG they have an exhibition on Nasreen Mohamedi. This is the sort of thing we home educators take for granted. That someone else will organise the gallery tour, talk and workshop. And they will be much better organisers than Grit.

They are too. In fact the gallery workshop people are so enthusiastic, working at just the right levels, and the home ed group of kids so occupied and involved, that Grit wanders off and gets artsy Mohamedi style with the phone camera.


When she gets back, the gritlets are all absorbed in making Mohamedi picture lookalikes with bits of wool and pencils.


So absorbed in fact, that I need to threaten them with the radiator to make them come away.

We must be on time for the afternoon education in a field. This is also a large group event not organised by Grit, for which she is truly grateful.

Here is the afternoon home ed group, getting ready to explore the natural world under the faultless guidance of a real unbludgeoned teacher who is free to respond in warm ordinary human language and totally unencumbered by worksheet 3 key stage 2 because it's Thursday.


Her first activity is to blindfold the children and send them off into the wood. On any other day I might say that at this point I ran off to the car and hid, but this home education group is having such a good time and my children are so accommodating, I might stick around to see the smiles and hear the laughter.



The walk is so successful all round that I will not even comment about how Shark, Squirrel and Tiger look like they are interrogating a tree in the style of an OFSTED inspector. No. They are making their own identification sheets.


This small insight should prove that home education children are not only quite normal children, what with the sensitivity, understanding and competence to hang around an art gallery and become inspired and enthused by the work, they are also inquiring, interested, well adjusted children who can read, write, make friends, have fun, talk to trees and go home happy.

I think it might be called a primary education suitable for a child.

Smug bastard.

* Don't mention the problem with the tap. I'm taking advice from Heather. The washer will grow back. After a day of pure education like today, it will see that this is a house of perfect parenting and total righteousness and make that decision to fulfil its destiny of tapturnonable and tapturnoffable. It's just been that sort of perfect day, I almost believe it.

If evidence were needed

I forgot. It is my current mission to show you how home educators abuse their children by forcing them to socialise.

Here is a bunch of home ed kids at the regular Mad Science workshop. Socialising. If that's the right word for this point.


I guess socialisation is what any government lackey calls this activity in schools - when everyone sits down and stares at the teacher - so we'll call it that here, for the benefit of those challenged by more than one interpretation of the s-word.

At this point, a home educator would say, Socialisation? We do it all the time. There you go. Photographic evidence.


But I know for any government lackey peering into this blogging home ed world, this is all merely further damning proof. These photographs are simply evidence of how home educators find the surest way to damage their offspring, academically, psychologically, and socially, literally guaranteeing them a life on the streets.


I can hear them thinking how they might represent the hazard home educators present to mainstream society.

They can present the casual, ordinary way we expose our kids to the danger that is other home educated children; they could tell you how we coerce our kids into sitting down while a teacher type person tells them about atoms, molecules and compounds; or how we force children to breathe each other's sweaty smelly breath in closed halls and rooms, with doorhandles crawling with swine flu bacteria.

And if that fails, those government lackeys could leak to the press how those damnable home educated parents laugh when they abuse those child innocents by forcing them to queue.


But then there is the proof staring straight at us all.

The government toady will cry, Of course it is an inadequate education! It should be stopped! The evidence is right there! In front of your eyes!

Not one of those kids can be learning anything. Because not one of them is in UNIFORM.

Ed Balls, you have cause to be worried

No wonder folks round here are scared. I've tracked down the organised resistance movement. At great personal risk, I have photographed their secret rendezvous in the wild and fierce jungle plains of England.


See that lake? Filled with submarines. They can be called up at a moment's notice on the whim of this lot. I tell you, compared to this outfit, your local revolutionary guerrilla group are amateurs. Drugged up with Tixylix and lemon sherbets, this crew are lethal.


Here they are, huddled into little groups. Don't believe they're being organised to play team games about pinning the pollen on the stigma. No. That's what they want you to think. Actually, they are masterminding the undermining of the entire educational system, right here in the heart of England.


Here they are again! Brazen! They just want you to believe they're a bunch of home educated kids gearing up for a race pretending to be mice chased by owls. But do not believe it. All that running around making squeak squeak noises is merely a cover for their super organised clandestine operations.


See that map? Do not think for one minute this is an orienteering exercise so these kids can learn North from South and where are the markers. These people are planning a covert military strike. And that little kid in the fawn dufflecoat? Mr Big.

Don't say you weren't warned. Do not approach under any circumstances. Those snotty tissues can take out a man's eye at fifty metres.

But Mr Balls, if you think this crew is mean, let me tell you, you should see their mothers.

That's not real life

Some folks, like the woman I spoke to recently, say home educated kids surely can't learn real stuff of life, like how to socialise with people, unless they're in school. Because only in school do you find all ages.

Some home educators say that nowhere else in life are you made to work all day alongside people the same age as you. An experience interrupted only to get beaten up in the playground by Kevin of 4G, kicked out of the computer room for setting the tables on fire again.

Can you imagine accepting as an adult what you have to accept as a child?

I'm sorry Miss Smith, but you are now aged 30, so you can only work with the 30 year olds in Room 8. And please do not complain about Kevin again. I can assure you the incident with the hammer is being dealt with by personnel.

Give me the freedom to choose, and I'll choose to dump my kids straight in with the daily option that provides all ages, thanks; we meet old Doreen at the Co-op, and Fliss, age six month, who visited us last week.

But if I'm in debate with someone about that dreaded s-word - socialisation - they might look at some point like they've caught me out. They say AHA! But what about all the faiths and cultures eh? You clearly can't have those in your cocoon of a middle class cushion!

Then they have that smug look that suggests now they got me. Confess it, you measly-weedly Grit. You keep the kids at home to indoctrinate them with your cosy world view which, if you haven't already guessed, is narrow, bigoted and ignorant.

Yesterday we travelled to London with a group of home educating families to visit Irene White. Irene's aged 92. She told us her story about what it felt like to be growing up in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. She arrived a Jewish refugee in England via Palestine just before war broke out.

After we'd found out about Irene's life, Jewish heritage, family life in England, and eaten a kosher lunch with extra portions of latkes, we were invited to the local synagogue, where the Rabbi talked about Jewish beliefs, celebrations and history.


That visit to the synagogue joins others we have made. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have toured a Sikh Gurdwara with a young man of happy eyes and welcoming smile; they've visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton, led by an old man whose skin faded into the colour of every ancient stone; we've visited the Buddhist temple at Milton Keynes to be feted by warm smiles, hot tea and kind faces. We've visited with other people everytime; other home educators, other children, other citizens.

But I got to thinking after my recent argument, not that she was right, or even she deserved that black eye, but how you rarely see Shark, Squirrel and Tiger on this blog in the company of others.

That's probably because we are all made hyper sensitive in this world to the chastisements and rights of others. And of course, we are all now slaves to the fear of Mr Spooky from the corner. I'm sure he's hanging round the back of this internet connection right now waiting to pounce on my innocent child's face.

Well, you may start seeing other bodies. Like backs of necks, bits of limbs, tops of heads, halfsides, eartops and foottails. Unless those other home ed parents hunt me down and kill me. So far they've just shrugged, and said, Why are you bothering to ask? Click away.

I think maybe it's time to push back a bit on that little piece of arsewisdom - that home educated children cannot socialise.

Lady, call it a mission to socialise you.