Been to the Not Back to School Party?

Have you seen or been to your local Not Back to School Party? We had ours today.

(People should not leave these things to me. They know the problem I have with calendars.)

I throw out a date for the traditional in-your-face public show of alternative education - the Not Back to School Party - only to realise that, in this part of the world, on Tuesday 4 September, the kids aren't actually back to school.

Consequently, our feral home educated kids attending the Not Back to School Party become just another pack of feral kids running about a park, indistinguishable from all other feral kids running about a park.

The home ed political wing will tell you that being indistinguishable is not the point of the Not Back to School Party.

The Not Back to School Party is for alternative educators to make a big public show in a park while all the other kids are at school. Next, we write to the newspapers, invite them to join the Not Back to School Party, show off our talented, social and content kids, encourage the happy journalist to write up the event and share the positive picture on your breakfast table, along with the knowledge that Not Back to School is your legal option for an education.

Your Not Back to School Party might be ahead. It might also be an opportunity for great publicity. I hear Cambridge hands out leaflets! That's organised. And I bet it gets to the local paper.

Had I invited the local journalist along with her happy snaps camera, most of the people attending our Not Back to School Party probably wouldn't have turned up. Round here we like to maintain our cloaks of invisibility, hidden lives, and a general air of paranoia.

Now I have persuaded myself. I am not afflicted by a calendar problem. It is a jolly good idea to hold a Not Back to School Party in school holiday time, so we are invisible. We barely-knowns can attend a Not Back to School Party and do the home ed work in others ways.

Like writing about the Not Back to School Party.

Hello! Anyone wondering about home ed, and stumbling across grit's day! Go to your Not Back to School Party, meet your local home ed families and have a thoroughly gentle time of it in a park. Whatever the date, just know that it's legal.