Angry, angry Grit

Art with Hitler. I can't take anymore. I say to Shark, Tiger and Squirrel in the car on the way home, through ground-down teeth, 'Do you want to go to any more of those lessons or not?' Fortunately their mouths are full of fruit bars because I'm not waiting for an answer anyhow. 'Good' I say 'because I'm not driving you there and back for that crap'.

I am so angry I could kick cats. Line them up. I'll kick the fluffy ones first.

And for once, it's not my kids that have pissed me off. It's not Squirrel beating me about the rear with a home-made willow fish, or Tiger shouting by the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum that she hates me, or even because Shark has laid down in the gutter screaming out her lungs again. No. This time it's Hitler. And I am seeing red.

We get to the art class, and the other kids are already sat around looking as miserable as miserable kids can get, and what are they doing? They are sticking pumpkin seeds onto a picture with glue. We have driven 30 miles to stick seeds on a piece of paper.

Excuse me while I just pop into the yard to scream.

Right, back now, that feels better. I can breathe again.

If your kids go to school, I guess you don't really know in detail exactly what they do all day long, and that must be relieving in a way, because when a lesson is aimed wrong, too low, too high, poorly prepared, inadequately resourced, then you may not know about it, and if it's a one off, not much harm done. But if it's every day or every week, you may get the feeling that something's not right when your little Tahara-Tinkertop trudges home complaining again about Miss Smith who always hands out the worksheet everyone did last week. And the week before.

Well, we don't have to put up with that. As a home educator, I get critical, and demanding of the educational resources we work so hard to find. And I often get to see lessons the kids take. And in the first week of art when Tiger looks dismayed that she's asked to do some colouring in, I sigh, because things might get better. In the second week, Shark, Tiger and Squirrel cut out masks, and I sigh and tut because Shark, Tiger and Squirrel were doing this sort of thing about the age of three.

And now today. Stick these seeds on paper in a pattern. We drive this far for this art lesson and when we get there all I see is Hitler's lack of imagination, the absence of any energy or enthusiasm in her class, her unengaged presentation, the paucity of her ideas, the neglect of the capabilities of the children, the toddler art she thinks she can get away with, the damage she is doing to my home-grown artists, Tiger's downcast face and I want to do some serious cat-kicking, screaming in frustration, effing and blinding, because it all comes down to lazy teaching lazy art. And to avoid that crap is why we bloody well home educate in the first place.

When all the pissed off anger comes pouring out of me in the car like this, no one says much. Then Squirrel says 'Art is a bit boring', and Tiger adds with a giggle, 'She could do a lot better' and Shark says 'This is what I think of art' and blows an enormous raspberry.

Decision made.