That was a lesson and a half

We took the kids to visit Berlin. We cranked up a few journeys around the museums, with a few oohs and ahhs of the sights.

I particularly liked the Bauhaus Museum and the Deutsches Historisches Museum. And the upstairs  German Art exhibition in the Brohan Museum. We visited a Christmas Market! And I drank Glühwein in the frosty cold! The Berlin Wall exhibitions were on the list, of course, as was the sight of the reichstag, the Brandenberg Gate, reviews of the lovely Neil MacGregor's observations, and our ongoing, wide-ranging discussions on European economic policies and post-war European politics.

Yippee! say the home educated innocents, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger!

(One day they will be grateful for the parents they had.)

I can't call one particular line of our enquiry in Berlin a 'highlight', because that word triggers all the wrong connotations. But the most memorable lessons in humanity came from the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the exhibition at the Topography of Terror.

I am grateful to my parents. In 1974 they took me out of school for a tour of Germany and Austria. They found it difficult to navigate their relationship with Germany, or to talk about the Second World War, so they took me and my brother to experience together the modern Germany, then walk through Mauthausen Memorial. They left us at times to think out for ourselves what would our values be? Values of individual moralities when faced with social coercions; how we could be led into states of agreement, denial, complicity, resistance, fear or a belief in right and duty. How societies converge, part, forget, remember, move on.

And that's what I wanted to give Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

The memory of enjoying a holiday; seeing beautiful historic buildings, exciting modern developments, the boredoms and panics of travel, then feeling the texture of earth under foot, touching walls and doors and gateposts, moving through cold, practical spaces of death and survival. Such a visit for me in my same-teenage year was a more profound education than I could have gained by sitting in a classroom, staring at a black and white photograph in a school history textbook, waiting for breaktime.