Are you committed?

My BFF is fantastic. She taught me a thing or two.

Like, switch on the bedside light if you stagger out your nest at 2am. Otherwise you will be driving your broken nose to A&E by 2.30am, dressed in your jimmy jams.

That is useful knowledge. She also taught me, if you want the council to move a lamp post along your street, you have to never give up. You have to be committed.

I think about that word, and I came to the conclusion that it's no accident the word committed means:

a) being locked up in a mental institution and
b) doggedly sticking to a point of view even though everyone hates you and laughs at you.

Maybe that's why some people avoid making a commitment to any position in public. Even stuff they get angry about. It is very exposing and makes you feel vulnerable. That is not a comfortable way to live. Once you make any commitment in public, you have to be on your ready to argue your point of view at all times.

Sometimes you have to argue with any random person who is equally committed in the other direction. And, let's face it, they might be mad, taking the opportunity to have a pop at you, or simply have a better, more convincing argument than you. They might be able to use their rhetorical classes to much better impact than you, too. They might win the argument. Publicly. How humiliating is that?

Sometimes, and I speak from bitter experience, after you make that public commitment, and the equally and oppositely enraged come at you with pointy sticks and cruel words, you enter an emotionally exhausting world. Sometimes you want to have done with it. It brings out the aggression in you. You want to stick up two fingers, and yell Piss off! Other times you just want a quiet life. You want to cave and squeal I don't know! It's all too much! Leave me alone! Then burst into tears and refuse to leave the cubby hole under the stairs.

But there are many times you find solidarity with other people who think like you do, and whose views are similar to yours. You can find strength in that.

It's yet another weakness of course, because you share the support of a group of people who can be easily identified, grouped, mocked, discredited and discounted. So you have to leave that cosy warm circle, go stand in a public place again, yell out your point of view some more, and be made uncomfortable and vulnerable all over again.

Personally, I recommend it. Making a public commitment to something - anything that you feel strongly about - is a good thing. Much better than sitting at home mumbling quietly to yourself and the kid's pet gerbil.

You see a lot more of human nature, find out a lot more about how government systems and societies work, learn a great deal about your local area and about national politics, and probably become a saint and a devil in the process. That has to be a more interesting way of spending a year than staring at the TV every night.

But if I could have seen a little of what was ahead for us, when Ed Balls and Graham Badman picked a fight with home educators - when we normally quiet, left-alone parents had to suddenly overcome our differences, take to the streets, visit local authorities, organise petitions and expose ourselves to the ordinary public in ways we had never done before - maybe it would have helped.

So, if you are committing yourself to any local or national action, then I recommend you read the ten lessons here. You could substitute wind farm for any issue. There are some parts I would argue with in reference to home ed, but not of the experience as a whole. It's as good a guide as any, for what lies ahead. The more informed you are, the more you can act.

Now, who's up for getting something done about that gravelly patch of waste ground? The one that could be made into a secret community garden, an old folk's sitting out area, an urban farm, or a kid's kick about area?

I should lighten up and play Twister, naked

Sometimes I tire.

I get so low down that there seems no way out. You can say it's my fault, and I should learn to point the gun away from my own feet.

I chose a lifestyle that took on a stupid amount of responsibility. Home educating kids who pot-boil themselves with their own competitive triplet issues is only the start. Having an absent husband doesn't help. The falling-down house with mice, broken boilers, exploding taps, it's like mould on a rancid cup cake. It's like someone says, that's your treat, so enjoy it.

But I can't do otherwise. I live through the choices I make. Like, these kids are my responsibility. I can't hand them over to someone else. Believe me, I've tried. Once we nearly got a babysitter.

Ultimately, I take responsibility for Shark, Tiger, and Squirrel. In all areas. Educationally, what the state offers around me is just not good enough. We can do better. But having made this choice, I have become ferocious in defending it. Now, it's a case of Don't cross me. Tell me I'm not just like you, with your mother loyalty and terrifying dedication. And I bet you have snarling teeth and hackles when it comes to protecting your offspring.

But I tire of having to do that defending job. That's the job where I try to hold back the stuff that I think will damage the lifestyle we've chosen, and the way we've decided to raise our kids; the choices we've made; the investment we've placed in it all; the aspirations we still have - even if I know we are quite capable of destroying those aspirations ourselves with our own stupidities, and because I cannot aim that gun anywhere else than at my own feet.

So I do that defending job by handing in the petition of evil to the MP of pointlessness; by grappling with the ton of statements, actions, reactions from Ofsted, local authorities, other home educating voices; by reading background notes from the DCSF, from Badman and Balls. And I am grateful to others who've presented ideas for me, who provide clear explanations, who are calm, when I want to rip up my clothes and tear out my hair.

Because sometimes, because of the work of others, I can stop thinking for a while about defending my choice. And I can take the kids to the science workshop, and I can enjoy watching this lovely mixed age, mixed-kid group, all work together to make ideas, build connections, and simply have fun.


Then I can come home to make lunch, and fuss about Tiger who these days will eat only beige. And we can sit down on the sofa together and have a cuddle, and I don't have to man the barricades or nail flags to the roof, I can just smell my daughter's hair, and know that this is the best I can do, and the way I've chosen to live is the best I can make.

Yet another reason to blog

These last few days have been so wretched, the first thing I think when I'm opening my eyes in the morning is how bad will it be today?

It would be OK if I meant triplets or home education.

Neither of those for me has been the wonderful fulfilling experience some may want you to believe. I have been in states of sadness, anger, loneliness and despair about both, but I have found ways through those impossible states, and found that there are joys, and triumphs, and pure feelings of satisfaction to be had; and certain knowledge that I am building loving relationships that will work.

So today my plan is normal: to get everyone to Mad Science, drive thirty miles for drama, then come home, cook, clear up, guide Shark to a new maths website, help Squirrel with her writing, and find that book I so faithfully promised for Tiger, then make a project book on Mexico. Throughout the hours we'll read, listen, talk, argue, and kiss nightnight before bed.

But managing triplets through this home educated day all pales into nothing when I imagine what new horrors and attacks Badman and the DCSF can dream up for me today.

This endless daily cycle of stress here has really brought me low. It feels like I am alone, and struggling. And right now, it's not with the education. I just want to be left alone to do that. It feels like people in this government must hate me for the choices I've made, for what I do, and I don't know why.

To prove to you that they are right to be suspicious, what will they tell you next? They've already said home educators are child abusers; oppressive evangelicals; we force our children to miss out on education; we're on the fringes of society; mentally ill. What will they tell you next? What next?

It's an act of resistance then, to tell you all, to tell anyone who wanders past this blog, that in the past few days this is what we've done, this normal home educating family. These are the things we've done, and I never said, because I was too busy with Badman and Balls.

They won't win, because I have stronger ammunition.

I have taken Tiger, Squirrel and Shark to playgrounds.


We have joined a local group for a lecture at the Open University on the Magic of Oxygen. I have taken my children to join a local nature group to search for fungi. With the help on an expert guide, they found chicken of the woods, King Alfred's cakes, strange and wondrous fairy bells.


They made their monthly evening outing to their wildlife explorer's group. We went to see Pixar's Up, and afterwards talked together about characterisation, animation, and about the story, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. We had a wonderful discussion wandering over interpretations of truth, power, colonial ambitions, obsessions. The responses from Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were staggering; mature, insightful, thoughtful, unchildlike.

They joined a group in St Albans to listen to stories, and make wigwams. We came home and pored over geography books and talked about the Americas, the New World, colonisation, the conquistadors.


They joined their regular classroom group for French; Shark went to her drama group. We have pinned up a giant skeleton on the wall in the front room; found out about Mexico's Day of the Dead; made icing sugar skulls.


We have read more of The Hobbit; cooked food together; listened to music; talked, made bad jokes, laughed, and flew kites.


Those are our activities of the last few days. Is that normal? That seems normal to me, to us. That's normal, and to do it, and tell you about it, is my ongoing, daily act of resistance.

Now I have Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy

Seriously, anyone would think we decided to home educate these triplets like we choose pizza for lunch. Shall we have mushroom? Or just cheese and tomato?

I don't know about you, but we went through agony of thinking about the education of our kids, because like you with yours, we love ours. Like you, we didn't take our decisions lightly.

And I don't know whether when you made your decision, you were able to sit back and think, That's settled for the next few years. We don't have to think about that again until 2012.

If you did, that must be cool. I would like that feeling. And I envy you that.

Round here, the agony of debate continues everyday. Because everyday I wonder if we make the right choice and do the right thing; whether this worry I have about Tiger's maths, or Squirrel's reading, or the general reluctance of these kids to write, whether these worries are justified; what I should do about them; how I can best approach life so that everyone's encouraged in their various ways.

And then there's all that laundry to be done, so get up early and go to bed late to fit that in your educating day, Grit.

Doubts, fears, worries, laundry. These are my everyday. And to a large extent, I live with them because I have various convictions. Not religious ones, although sometimes I think this would be easier if I believed in that god; my beliefs are about people and education. And I am prepared to see through my convictions in practical ways by taking on that individual responsibility towards my own kids.

Having done that, and lifted that enormous weight on my back and shoulders and head and heart, I would like one part of my day to be able to heave a big sigh of relief.

I would like a part of my day to feel safe and free from worry, to know that I am supported, and trusted, and respected for my choices.

I would like to think that you, seeing my kids everyday, would know that my choices and responsibilities have some substance; you can see that Tiger, Shark, and Squirrel are happy kids who engage in activities, events, who enjoy life, learn new things, and look forward to everything this world has to offer. They appreciate their home education, and they're learning all the time about the expectations we have, and which I share with you. I want my kids to be responsible; to be resourceful; to be respectful. Those are our 3Rs. Through these, I want them to grow wise, learn independently, and learn how to learn all the time, so they have that to guide them throughout their lives.

But I rarely have that room to breathe. I rarely feel that I am supported, and trusted, and respected for the choice I've made.

When I read this today, I confess to sitting down and bawling out my eyes and howling from the top to the bottom of this house.

Memorandum submitted by Dr Paula Rothermel FRSA, Educational psychologist expert witness

1. I am one of the leading academics in the field in the UK and the only expert witness specialising in court cases where home education is an issue. My 2002 research involved 1099 children and remains the largest and most in-depth and authoritative independent of home education carried out in the UK. The research involved 419 survey questionnaires to families and 238 targeted assessments (with 196 different children) to evaluate the psychosocial and academic development of home-educated children aged eleven years and under.

2. I was invited on two occasions to meet with Mr Badman.

3. At our first interview Mr Badman was interested in what I had to say. His opening question was to ask me if home educating mothers suffered from Munchhausen's by Proxy. ...

4. At our second interview Mr Badman was dismissive of my work. He insisted that my study covered just 30 children. He indicated that someone had told him this and insisted that my conclusions and findings, therefore, were of little significance. Nothing I could say would sway him from this view.

This government should know that I have judgment, I have sense, I have a heart that can break a thousand times over and I will have strength in me to mend it again and again and again.

But I cannot for the life of me understand what motivates this attack of me and mine; what drives this cruel campaign; what informs this frame of reference used to judge me and my choice.

Today it's just another day of standing up and finding the strength to take this on, this hurtful and cruel way of describing me and how I live. I will do that, and I will fight for the choices I make and to keep the way that we live. They are my convictions, my family, our way of life, and no person will shake them.

But sometimes people, you will have to forgive me, or join me, when I climb to the top of this house and scream with all my lungs that you, you destroyer of choice, you corruption to my family, my life, my kids, you attacker of me, of mine, of us,

FUCK YOU.

I hope Maggie Atkinson has big ears

Why on earth would anyone want to be Children's Commissioner? Do they really want to listen to children? Have they thought that through?

I don't know about your kids, but mine disgorge an endless stream of incoherent rubbish concerning the intricate bowel movements of unicorns and fish and caravans and mudlarks wearing kitchenfoil body armour. Fifteen minutes of that and you'd be stabbing your own head with a knitting needle. I can tell you it's far less painful.

I chose to stay alongside my kids for this rambling muddling through journey, rather than packing them off to boarding school for some earhole respite. By the way, don't think I'm telling you this to show you how great and glorious a self sacrificing mother I am. Rather, it should tell you what a cruel streak I use to beat myself, thinking I want to experience the forbidding place that is daily living and education of your own children, and all the while listening to hours of endless babble.

The idea of journeying in home education alongside three mardy mucky kids - staying with it from the stumbling punch-drunk dwarf years towards the stroppy hair-flicking pre-teens - well, a long time ago it did seem like a good idea. That idea, as you can guess, was before these human types were made into microns of cells. And that one-sided decision to home educate was also possibly taken after a glass of red wine, facing a worried looking husband over a kitchen table some years ago. Perhaps the decision was affected by rising at 6am every morning to try and teach 7G about full stops while Kevin prowled the corridors with a baseball bat, and Jim routinely hid his bag of heroin wraps in my book cupboard. Maybe I thought any educational mayhem I could bring about wouldn't be quite as bad as that.

But now, sitting here, sunk under paint, paper, offcuts of fabric and unicorn fluff, rendered semi-unconscious from hours of stream-of-consciousness drivel about lampshades and trams and Barbi who wears matching shoes! You can bet some days I have my doubts.

So I wonder why Maggie Atkinson really wants that job of Children's Commissioner. Probably not to listen to children; certainly not to mine, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. They would almost certainly speak the wrong answers, or witter on for five hours about giant cats fighting underwater battles with shape-shifting fish.

And wittering kids aside, she has all that work to do with bloodyminded parents. Would you like to do that job?

These home educating types for a start. They can be determined for battle, I can tell you. You're going to have a fight on your hands there, Maggie.

Let's face it, things have not started well with them, have they? First there's the link to the favourite bete noire, BullyBoyBalls. Then Maggie upset the parents of thousands of kids in England at a stroke. Take the information she gave to the Education select committee regarding her future appointment:

'I will take you back, if I may, to when I was an adviser in Birmingham city council, where there were quite large numbers of home-educated children - it is getting on for 20 years now since I worked in Birmingham. At that time, as an advisor I had a right and a duty not only to knock on the doors of people who were choosing electively to educate their children at home, but simply to go into their premises and, on the most headline of bases, to look at whether the environment was right, whether there were age-appropriate materials in use, and whether the children seemed okay.'

Let me hold up that rhetorical pointing finger, Maggie, and take you back to the law. Show me the law. Show me the law that gave a local authority advisor the right to enter someone's house and home. I don't think that law exists, Maggie. Ed Balls would like it to, which is why he's worked so well with Badman, who's recommended it.

In fact, Maggie probably knows that this is one of the sticking points for home educators.

The state seems itching to get inside family life, and many ordinary people are making a ripe rich noise about that right now. And it seems to many of us that local authority bodies are desperate to assume the power to enter any home in England where there can be a child defined as 'home educated'.

So be careful, you keepers of runny-nosed bawling mini-humans aged under 5. If you do not choose a state nursery for your delightful littlehairysnorting Moonbeam, then can it be said you are 'delivering the birth-five curriculum, that every child is entitled to' in your own home? Then welcome to the world of home education.

Of course we can fight back on the idea of Maggie's mates doorstepping us Monday morning. Perhaps if the local authority would like the right to enter my house, inspect my 'environment', look at my 'age-appropriate materials', and assess whether I have beaten my child recently, then that's a right we can potentially extend to everyone. Doesn't it follow that citizens should have the right to enter any 'premises' belonging to an employee of the local authority and check that their family household is running in accordance with state policy?

Somehow, I think if Maggie wants that job of listening to children and the families who love and protect them, then her work's cut out.

But I can't leave this post just yet. There's one thing that's bugging me more than fifty beetles stuffed down my bra.

Did you notice the word Maggie first used to describe where thousands of people live? Premises? Not someone's house or home, but their premises.

I don't know what children up and down England call it - maybe after listening to those children you could tell me Maggie - but Shark, Squirrel and Tiger call these premises their 'home'.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger love their home. They love this house. They love the way the floorboards don't quite meet; they love the way the worn down Victorian brass doorhandles turn; they love how you can gaze at the wooden joists overhead in their workroom; they love the curved stone step down to the coldest bedroom.

I might beat myself about the head because I cannot see the floor from one November to the next, but I know my children love this space, their home. And I've chosen to live with the way they show their love. Call that way rolling around, screaming, laughing, throwing themselves about, slamming doors, pulling the front room curtains down, creeping down under the fluffy sofa throw to read, and yelling obscenities while perched on the toilet. It's chaos. But it's our chaos.

Maggie should know above all that this is our family home. It's the place where we love, laugh, eat, sleep, shout, cry, argue, make up.

But it doesn't stop there. These rooms are filled with the things we have made and built. That mess of blue pipe cleaners, sequins and folded paper? It's Shark's home-made ray, and she dreams of the time she stood in the warm pool to stroke their silvery backs and feed them treats from her hand, and my underwater dreamer longs for that again. We'll try and help make her dream come true.

But that tangle of twisted wire? That's the day Squirrel spent two hours painfully constructing a wire horse from a design she'd seen painted in a Celtic festival. Every tiny piece of wire she carefully twisted between her near-bleeding fingers. I coaxed her to use the pliers; she still needed to feel the tiny threads press into her skin. That's how she learned the strength and tension of that wire.

And Tiger's painting, hanging on the wall in our front room. The one she screamed over, wept over, declared rubbish, and returned to, time and time again, bringing all the determination she could wring from her body to put into that paint the feeling she had. Tiger, trasher of bathroom, destroyer of clothing, creator of beauty: my most sensitive, expressive artist.

I wouldn't want to be Children's Commissioner, having to listen to all this.

But I bet this is all the wrong answer, so Maggie probably won't want to hear.

January to October, 2009

Grit has a secret stat counter. It's the one she installed after the mainframe exploded in Texas. She knows people stray here, possibly by accident. And they may not know much about home education.

Jo in York could be here to satisfy a pigeon fetish (which can be done here).

But Grit thought, in that tender way of hers, Jo needed an easy reference guide to our political home ed world instead.

1. Start here. Shake a double 6! Withdraw your kids from school!
Thanks to the media, the local primary playground sounds like Afghanistan.

Peer into this muddymedia world and you'll find little seven-year old Tinkertop is taught how to swear, spit, drink vodka, mix crack and shoot the rising-5s.

Some people choose home education. They may want to withdraw their little pig-tailed Tinkertop from this apparent battle ground. Others home educate because they are sick to the heart of constant exam prep from birth.

There are, of course, a sad minority, like Grit, who home educate because to make school in the mornings we'd have to get out of bed, and we can't be arsed.

In these days, the government wants to know what we're doing, who we're doing it with, and if can they fine it or use it to smack us on a database. They probably want to stop the stroppy rebellious and independent attitudes that come with home education, too.

So in January the government tried doing a Number 2.

2. Step back! You all MUST KNOW that home education is a cover for ABUSE.
The government slam out juicy stories to the press and the prurient public who murmur there's no smoke without fire and if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear.

Some journalists later conflate home education and child abuse, home education and forced marriage, home education and devil worship, home education and sexual exploitation, home education and drug abuse, home education and fundamentalism, home education and eating weasels with the fur on.

The government rubs their hands in glee! Soon the general public will say there's no smoke without fire and if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear.

And how many informers there will be! Lots of people who probably do not have much power over their own lives try to pretend they really do have power by seeking to exert a little bit of power over other members of the public, by way of withholding teaspoons and cheese. And probably reporting the hippie next door!

In fact, Grit has noticed that walking down the High Street has recently drawn suspicious stares and surreptitious glances from these types of people. Perhaps that is just because of my gold lame platform cowboy boots, but you never know.

3. January: Graham, would you like to write a review?
Graham Badman is a completely independent person who is utterly impartial and totally unbiased when it comes to reporting on matters of home education. The government say, Bring him in to this game!

As an independent, unbiased person of impeccable credentials, Graham has been a school teacher, school headteacher, school inspector and chief education officer, in charge of mostly schools. Totally independent and fair minded, with no vested interest whatsoever in promoting of a particular type of education, he is also a Governor of Christ Church University and a Governor and Trustee of three Kent academies. Completely independent of the DCSF, in January 2008 he was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours List for services to education and local government. As I said, totally independent. Totally fair when it comes to non-school provision. The right man for the job. If I had a baby, he could kiss it.

Graham was invited to write a review of home education for publication this year.

4. June: Stop everything for Graham's review of Elective Home Education.
Now we all say Graham Badman's review like it's his work alone. This is astonishing, isn't it? Where's the panel of committee members? Gone?

Grit has worked on the publication of a committee report in her distant past and it was a nightmare. Every committee member pulled in three different ways from anyone else. The chairperson went bonkers. The report had to be presented as a multiple voiced work. None of this diversity can be seen in Badman's work. Maybe the committee was there merely to spread something that looks like consensus; we haven't heard a dicky out of them since. Only Elizabeth Green of the government's DCSF receives a big smackeroo on page iv. Hmm.

Graham's 'recommendations' for home educators include allowing a local official to enter the home and assess the child. Without their parents.

Um, this is supposed to be a review into educational provision.

Not surprisingly, step number 6...

6. All summerlong: Home educators make a nuisance of themselves.
Some home educators are good at this. They run off with all the counters.

Look at all those Freedom of Information requests. Lots. Including requests for details of the statistical evidence on which Mr Badman bases the assertion, 'Children educated at home are twice as likely to be on social services registers for being at risk of abuse as the rest of the population.'

Home educators also do a bit of mockery. Stop sniggering.

7. The DCSF say Right, that's it! We're not playing!
Honestly, you need a super sharp steel pair of secateurs to start snipsnipsnipping through the emails buzzed back and forth about the FOI requests turned down.

Those requests for the release of documents and background statistics that helped compose the report were turned down mostly on the grounds that Graham Badman is in danger of becoming mentally unstable. Home educators might tip him over the edge.

8. The volcanic pressure builds ... a select committee is appointed.
A select committee is appointed when scrutiny is needed. Initially, things look up when a select committee is announced, because they might accept the dodgy and disreputable basis of the Badman review, and the fact that the majority of respondents suggested no change was needed to the presently wide and wonderful world of home ed.

By this time, Grit is learning more about parliamentary procedure than she is about the 6x table. But every cloud has a silver lining. What strikes me now is the huge resource on the web to access your government and parliament. My only recommendation is to roll your sleeves up, get in there, and assert your rights.

9. Wednesday. The witnesses to the select committee are announced.
On behalf of the common all garden home educating parent, two men are speaking to the select committee next Monday.

If you go to a kid's home ed social meet, you'd expect fathers to outnumber mothers wouldn't you? Why do you think Grit goes? She is just swamped by hunky-men-eye-candy. They only wear false boobs to confuse everyone, obviously.

One of the men speaking is Simon Webb. On that, I just can't see the funny side.

10. To be continued...
On Tuesday 13 October, a mass lobby of Parliament is taking place; lots of home educators will turn up. Who knows what will happen when you have a barrel load of bolshy types together?

One thing is sure, these past few months have seen a lot of involvement from many home educators and many people, some of whom choose school, or flexi-school, but who fundamentally sympathise and support the right of parents to bring up their own kids as they see fit.

It's exhausting, isn't it Jo, keeping up with this lot?

Perhaps it's time to wander off, and find your sexy pigeon elsewhere.

Home educators are sexy

In their various ways the NSPCC, DCSF and Badman all allowed unchallenged the media slur that home educating families are probably child abusers, delinquents and vagabonds.

Why? Because they thought they could get away with it.

And they banked on the great British public mindlessly agreeing. After all! These home educators are freaks, outcasts and hippies on the fringes of our society. They are already on the margins. Strange. Excluded. They have shunned normal society. They are alone. Kill the hippies! Persecute the paedophiles!

But what the NSPCC, DCSF and Badman failed to see is that home educators are a cross section of all society.

Home educators are not solely drawn from fringes, gutters or swamps. No. We are like a line drawn from top to bottom of all society; there are some top nob kids home educated alongside the feral squealers who once saw a comb and thought it was a medieval torture instrument.* Hey, sometimes they are both one and the same kids.

And with them is a huge swathe of kids swirling round the mouthy middle classes, whose ex-marketing manager mums are organising piano lessons on the one hand and Latin lessons on the other; doing it all in an environment safe from knives, drugs, and Jessie of 3b who will beat you to a pulp because you're wearing pink socks.

And these people from the top to the bottom of British society are attending to their children brilliantly and - dare we whisper it - sometimes better, and with more social mobility, than school.

But the NSPCC, DCSF and Badman are rather counting on that outdated old stereotype of home educators - shoeless, covered in grime, and living in a tent.

Well you don't have to travel far round the blogs to see that stereotype is changing. Bloggers who are smart, funny, thorough, determined, and wise.

Grit, who once wrote advertorial copy for a living and thus qualifies for what she's talking about, now contributes her cunning plan to help along our image change.

First, let's look at a case study: Image change and public consciousness: Fat people.

Once, fat people were as socially unacceptable as home educators. They were the objects of disdain. They were scorned.

But then the Great British Public discovered some of those fat people were having fun. More than that, some fat people were having sex. Kinky sex! They are having MORE FUN, MORE SEX and MORE KINKY SEX than thin people! What about those Fat Admirers! Feeders and Squashers! Ladies with big thighs! Men with big bellies! Yes! Yes! We all want to be fat!

Now hasn't it changed? Fat is OK. Fat is something we won't mind a bit more of round our sexy arses. The Great British Public is getting fatter just so they can have more kinky sex and more Jammie Dodgers.

Bearing this case study in mind, we home educators should be able to effect the same kind of image change.

Here is Grit's cunning plan.

We all take on that sexy mama and papa image for ourselves, because sex sells ideas.

So come on home educators! Let's change our image! Let's sex it up!

Mamas, hunt down those fuck me shoes, the sort you hobbled home in before you had the kids! Come along Papas! Splash on the Old Spice, cultivate that manly air, and come-to-bed smirk! Let's tell the Great British Public that home education is done by sexy mama and papas who pack the kids off to Latin, change from this...


to this...


...and then break out those Jammie Dodgers.

Disclaimer: Grit reserves the right to avoid any consequence of this post. Actually, she probably regrets it already.


*Please note that on some days I include Squirrel, Shark and Tiger both in the swamp-dwelling, comb-fearing brigade and in the cultivated tribe of posh kids who dine with daddy at official functions. Which just shows how socially fluid home educators can be.

Grit's top ten tips time! How to be irritating in Politics.

It is time to stop the silliness. Yes, Squirrel, that means you, threatening to poke cocktail sticks up Ed Balls' nose. No more of that. No threatening to kick Mr Badman on the shins either.

Right, let's think how we can all engage with the politics of the UK.

Or, how to be irritating until Judgement Day. That, for the Labour party, might be called Election Day.

Shark, I know you are aged only nine and cannot vote. But you, like Tiger and Squirrel, can be irritating if you try. You simply have to learn how to focus that ability to annoy more precisely. Aim it carefully at people in positions of power. And that is not mama, so put the puffin down.

Now, here are Grit's top ten tips, designed to propel our home education issues straight to the heart of government.

(Of course with these top ten tips you can make your voice heard with the people who run this country on all the important issues of the day, like molehills, jellyfish, and dog poo.)

1. See your MP.
In our case, waste of time. We have only annoyed ourselves. Go immediately to tip 2.

2. Connect and communicate.
Shark, Tiger and Squirrel, you have all the world at your disposal, or until the Ministry for Information shuts it down.

From here you can learn about the political processes of this country. Like Early day Motions. Or you can learn tactics about being annoying from masters of the art. But be warned! Satire might piss off people in power.

Don't repeat that phrase, Tiger. In the Co-op anyway. Say what? Yes. We can chant it at home. As much as we like. And nanananana PISS OFF PISS OFF CAN'T STOP US!

OK, stop being silly everyone. Back to the topic in hand.

Take part in UK politics by research. Look at Twitter, blogs, newsfeeds, email. Remember these connect you with people who both sympathise with, and criticise, your points of view. You have to become firmer and more robust in presenting your case. And these are skills of rhetoric, so we even get the Ancient Greeks in on the act today.

3. Write. And attend to the speling.
Write to them. Emails and letters are good. Postcards too. But have limited expectations. If you have a spineless toady MP squatting in a room in Parliament, they don't even bother answering.

Of course, ignoring the electorate is like asking to be baited.

Baiting politicians through the written word is quite satisfying. Until they figure out what you're up to. Then they start binning the letters and calling the police. Of course I was young then. These days I have to get the tea started so I don't have much time for this form of being irritating in UK political life.

4. Make your own forms for people to fill in.
This is very good. Play them at their own game. For every document sent to you, reply with your own form, called something like Permission to Request Information Form (Part One).

In the good old days when minor officials sent me pointless forms, I filled them in with several different coloured pens and some crayons. Then I supplied as much pointless information as possible, like how many stairs the neighbour is hiding in their house. If obliged to give anyone true information, I wrote tiny letters in 6 point and wrote it backwards at the end of a wavy arrow over the back of the page where they couldn't photocopy it. Oh, happy days!

5. Join lots of pressure groups or join no pressure groups.
Joining pressure groups can be quite annoying to people who know you, but to the people in power it gives them an opportunity to define you and therefore discount you. They can say Poohpooh who listens to home educating hippies anyway? By joining no pressure groups you are more difficult to pin down. Water is harder to catch if it's running off down the street in all directions.

6. Publicise your cause.
Most satisfying because your righteous indignation can be visited on lots of people all at once. Post office queues are good but, strangely, not cashpoint queues. I think the people in front assume you are trying to steal their money.

I prefer the one-to-one approach. Librarians are easy targets. They can be converted to many fringe issues by your evangelical zeal. And they are natural allies in the world of home education, possibly because they are traumatised, picking out chewing gum from bookshelves thanks to the term's school visit.

NB: One-to-one intensive chats on the state of the world do not work with bus drivers on board the number 45 at the city centre bus stop.

7. Engage in the democratic process
Sign a petition, take part in a survey, respond to yet another consultation, join the mass lobby of parliament. All these are worthy and they will go on.

In the home education world I have met a lot of people who've waged campaigns longer than a couple of months, so the government are underestimating the resilience of home educators out there. Some of them have fought schools for years to get a decent education before throwing their hands up in the air and doing it themselves with better results. So if the government thinks these parents will keep quiet come October, they've got some lessons to learn.

8. Know people, pull strings, and get the law changed that way.
Tricky. I fail at this one. But I know a man who knows people. He isn't invited to meet HRH PoW for nothing. Unfortunately people don't take the HRH PoW seriously much in politics, so I know this connection doesn't really help. Lord Lucus might be a better bet.

9. Direct action!
Of course I would not of course advocate illegal stuff, like cramming a teddy bear with icing sugar and BLOWING THINGS UP (Hello to the person crawling over this site looking for those words, along with GAFFER TAPE and ED BALLS).

Anyway, these days I am a middle aged, slow running, big arsed grit who has to get the dinner on. So my direct action now excludes running across fields engaged in acts of sabotage.

My definition of direct action thus has to include using CHARM. I know that's difficult to believe.

I would like to think charm means letting everyone know the successes, problems, frustrations and joys of educating children at home, with or without help from the authorities. This blog is one way of doing it. (As you can see, eagle eye junior spy, this blog isn't about BLOWING THINGS UP. It's about HOME EDUCATION.)

10. Continue doing what you're doing.
Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, my home educated children. You are wonderful to be with. You are funny, knowledgeable, sociable, relaxed, happy, safe, confident, energetic, ambitious, and full of inquisitive questions about everyone and everything. And there is no better way, in my opinion, to show the world, including those politicians, just how fabulous home education can be for children. And for their parents.

And that, for some people, must be really, really irritating.

Really, home educators should stand on the naughty step

Home educators are being told off by the DCSF.

You see, some naughty home educators have been finding out information. Like statistics that show up the low rate of child abuse in home educating families, and the potential for malicious referrals from the neighbour who doesn't approve.

Oh dear. This does not fit with the approved storyline at all. Now the DCSF are very upset and may withhold any more statistics to stop those home educators piecing it all together. They say this is because a few very naughty individuals are being silly and rude about Mr Balls and making Mr Badman upset. When we all agree they are honest gents about their business.

So today Grit's blog will be filled with pictures of kittens.

OK, I haven't got any pictures of kittens, but you can bet that if I had some today, just for the DCSF, Mr Balls and Mr Badman, they would be cute.

I have some pictures from the anal museum instead.

Yes, you read that right.

On the road signpost to Stoke Bruerne anal museum someone persists in removing the letter C. They've been doing it for as long as I can remember. I think it demonstrates literacy in action. You might say you just can't stop some people taking the piss.

And here are my home educated children, for whom this blog truly exists, so they can show all of you what a fantastic time they have learning at Blisworth tunnel and the anal museum - from the big group of home educated children they know and run around with, from the old man who let them all help push the lock gates open, from the enthusiastic education officer, the supportive museum staff, and their own wit and wisdom, exploring the real world.

Over to you, gritlets.