In praise of the partners of creatives (or, what we have to suffer)

Dig is home. (Until he returns to Hong Kong, that is.) But don't I know about it? Because he's here writing, which means yes, I suffer. Like Dante in his circles, I will experience all 128 pages of book-creating pain.

I think it has reached page 16. But the experience is already so bad that I have half a mind to post the architect of this distress back early to Asia with a letter that reads, Here, you have him, and welcome. P.S. I drained the bank account.

But my sympathies are not with the mangled creative spirits of him and his ilk, not at all. Quite frankly, I have heard it up-to-here with their afflicted geniuses battling tortured souls to wring out distilled wisdoms and wondrous thinkings. And don't they go on about it?

No, my sympathies - my quiet expressions of empathy, my supportive glances, and fond hand-holdings - are with the person who has to live with it all. I sympathise, totally and utterly, with you partners/wives/husbands to these work-at-home-at-the-computer-screen types.

Just for the record then, here's what we partners to the tortured creatives have to put up with.

1. The hair pulling, groaning and sighing.
Starts before page 1 is even attempted. One week in to a 6-week process and we have to watch how the tortured soul is on the verge of breast-beating and clothes-rending. If, one morning, I discover it writhing on the floor chewing the carpet, well, I recommend stepping over the soul wracked with pain to get breakfast because a bowl of Frosties is preferable to wasting effort on your vocal chords saying Are you alright down there?

2. The distracted demeanour.
Specifically, the tortured soul spends weeks staring blankly at walls; gazing to a remote point by the left ear of anyone making sounds (commonly known as talking); ignoring any person, event, or situation (including minor house-fires and collapsed ceilings); and forgetting how to breathe. This last near-fatal forgetfulness is combined round here with dramatic hand-raising over the keyboard in a prolonged moment of word-based genesis.

3. Uselessness.
The tortured soul cannot do any practical tasks, none at all. No putting out the rubbish / helping mend the gate / hanging out the washing. Nor can they answer any practical questions like What do you want for dinner? or Did you put the iguana in the fridge like I asked you to? (This is the only fun we get, just forgive us. The tortured soul can't hear us anyway.)

4. No sense of time.
The rest of the household has a sort of pattern (even if, in Shark's case, the day starts by crawling out of bed at 11am). But the tortured soul has trouble keeping up with simple, basic clockery, confusing night and day with morning and supper-time. It is like you are permanently jet-lagged. Personally, I could cope with this temporal dislocation, because I have troubles myself with the hour hand, but this lack of time-sense is a killer when combined with Creative Issue Number 5.

5. Distraction.
Oh yes, we all suffer from this. Have a difficult form to fill in? How about the ironing! The stairs need cleaning! (No matter if you live in a bungalow.) The dusting is urgent! Well, it is ten thousand times worse if you have a 128-page book to write. By page 2 the entire study needs a re-build and the kitchen needs dismantling because the kettle is in the wrong place. If only I were joking! One morning at 5am I came down to find Dig sawing up my cupboard.

6. Smell.
I apologise for this, but truth will out. Personal care routines are the last thing on your mind, admit it. The tortured soul may forget to, um, wash behind the ears, shall we say? Partners, wives, husbands, we have to put up with this lack of grooming until by page 7 you have turned into some hairy sprouting alien creature we can only approach if we are holding a lavender pomander and a broom handle. I have considered just spraying the soul with the garden hose. (If anyone has tried this, I would like to know whether it worked.)

7. Irritability.
Of course we partners of the tortured soul are not all indifferent to the suffering! We love you; we want to help. Sometimes, you may even ask us to help! Perhaps with a bit of reading, light editing, or a safe person to whom you can explain an idea in infinitesimal detail while we grunt yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and meanwhile plan the daily meals for the coming year. But then what happens? After we helped? You rouse yourself to irrational anger, stare in disbelief at the monstrous wrong we have done to the integrity of your life's work! Your vision! (Moved the comma.)

8. The need for The Other.
This, I observe, is an essential ingredient of the creative soul. It must find an oppositional thing/object/dog to explore and test the boundaries of the tortured ideas in progress. Sadly, the partner/husband/wife must take this role when all else has been broken and the dog run off to lick its wounds (or in that fine example of Eric Gill, sit down for a while). This is a truly miserable haunting to inhabit. We, the partner/husband/wife, must be The Other. Someone to kick against. Yet we must be both sympathetic to the genius (you are doing great, your book is wonderful, etc. etc.) and simultaneously be made the scapegoat for all disasters, wrongs, and why, why, why, after 12 months, you're still on page 9.

9. The way life needs to be lived now, before it can be further writ.
Such pleasure is not only reserved for fiction writers! Non-fiction writers, biographers, composers of reports, policy documents, training manuals and workshop materials. You are all the same. Serious, in-depth research is needed, possibly for years, before a single sentence on the political implications of the comma can be committed to page 3. The history of Argentina may be related, so worth stopping everything for a month's further study, and maybe a 2-week visit. The implications of the 1925 trade agreement between Burkino Faso and a grocer's in Hexham could be crucial. Better delay page 12 than get the facts wrong!

10. The awful, awful, deadline.
If it were a play we would now reach Act 5. The dreadful pit of fiery Hell with the Master of Despair, Lucifer himself, swinging open the fearful door, yawning to embrace your tortured soul. But wait, Satan, wait! He is only on page 13! Truly, the tortured soul now embarks on a tremendous gnashing of teeth. Everything would be alright if it wasn't for the bloody awful audience expecting so much! And the publishers who are always on your back! And the printers who mess it up every bleeding time! The warehouse staff who sent the last box to the wrong place! They're in on it too! The dog has run off with the cat, the comma was moved to fatal effect, the Other isn't speaking to you and there's no-one left to blame but yourself. (Better start redrafting that email to explain why you just missed Deadline Number 3, Extension 4.)

But every cloud has a silver lining, does it not? We partners of the creative souls are strong, and constant. Loyalty, steadfastness, blinkered stupidity, call it what you will, we know it will come right. We can see the touching and affecting vulnerability you can show, in all the horrible 128 pages; the boy in the man or the girl in the woman, we know how you struggle for the ideas that must, somehow, be true to the vision.

Let us keep hold of this, that is my way, because round here it may be the only thing now keeping the creative soul from the door with a suitcase launched at his head. The hopefulness that when it is all done, we partners, wives and husbands can look back and hear, I'm proud of that. And you were right about the comma.

Let's nail the language

I am clearing up the craft wreckage that normally accompanies a weekend market, and I am naturally led to muse on all the disasters of my life. These I have brought upon myself ever since I broke the rules of Gwynne's Grammar.

Gwynne's Grammar, by the way, is the law we all should follow if we aspire to be proper people, and not hairy bonobos grunting in a swamp of craft wreckage, incapable even of answering that question, Why You Are Shamed by the Mistakes You Make in English?

Gwynne's Grammar, should ye be unknowing about this, has not only been blasted by the BBC this week, it also has endorsement by 'the most important person in education' who is (not any child), but Michael Gove. Expect to hear GG landing on a school desk near you soon.

From wot I can understand, GG contains an assortment of punctuational prejudices, copywriter's notes, conventions suitable for a house style, cultural comments, rules gathered from technical writing practice and a few social observations thrown in for good measure. (One of which is not The author went to Eton, runs a business selling online courses, and has an eye for the right type of chums.) Beyond that, there is no grammar of the systemic functional linguistics sort, so I suppose we can be thankful for a small mercy.

However, it made me think.

I thought, I could do this!

Anyone who's anyone can surely dredge from their dark depths a personal ragbag of grammar rules, wild assertions, half-cock opinions, and rambling garbage!

Then here we go! Grit's Grammar Rules! Off the top of my head, my own prejudices, imposed upon Planet Internet!

Stop Yourself Being a Grammar Git with Grit's 10 Simple Rules!

1. Stick your verb up front.
Call a verb a doing word. Be prescriptive about this, no matter what those hoity-toity linguists say. What do they know? Putting your verb up front makes your writing active! Exciting! Works for all styles. Turns your voice into pure action hero, whereupon you may be highly sought after by the estate agency business. Failing to follow this rule indicates you are a decadent sort of character, running loose with your wordage. Liking to wear gold nylon 1950s smoking jackets, no doubt, being so out of touch with the modern dynamism of our global times.

2. Miss out the word the. (Except where it is essential.)
Save time, effort, and paper space. Space which you can use on later projects, like paper aeroplane making. The word the is unnecessary and should be banned. Except where it is needed for beauty or clarity, clearly. On the use of the, I will issue you with a licence and give you a quota.

3. I don't like the word it either.

4. Keep sentences short.
Obviously.

5. Never use the passive voice.
Who is speaking? Who is the agent? Who is the action hero of this sentence? It stands to reason that the passive voice must be exterminated. You must take control of your sentence, be in charge of it and accept full responsibility of the consequence! People who use the passive voice are certainly vile, duplicitous sorts: deceivers, ne'er-do-wells and burglars, creeping about to rob you of your life savings.

6. Avoid cliches.
People who use cliches are merely following well-worn paths to express themselves. This inevitably leads them into trouble with mixed metaphors and the like. Such as, If she were alive today she'd turn in her grave. A common trap. Be original. Take the lesser path and plunge into the undergrowth where no-one has a clue what you are talking about.

7. No commas before and.
Don't come to me with your fancy American style guides, putting your commas willy-nilly before and. The comma is a beautiful punctuation piece and should be used as a breathless pause, with calm restraint.

8. If you bold and italicise the same word, you ought to swing for it.
There is no good reason why anyone using ordinary written communication should do this, unless you are ignorant of typographic conventions. You probably steal sheep as well.

9. Take out all exclamation marks!

9. Frankly I don't care if you miss out the apostrophes.
I am with George Bernard Shaw. Get rid of the little bastards. They are the terrorists of the punctuation world, used by people who get their kicks from imprisoning other people.

10. Proof-read your own lists.
It is extremely and most annoying to see unnecessary repetitions, tautologies and simple mistakes. These would not happen if only you stopped to read what you just wrote.

10. Never use off on.
This really makes me see red. She goes off on one. You cannot have her off and on at the same time. It does not make sense! Where is she? Off? Or on?

Oh, I could go off on one now I've started, adding rules 11-398 about colons, the word totally and Jane Austen's use of the word and. But I think this list should be enough for you to adopt at your peril, and if it leads you into trouble, then you can blame Gwynne and Gove.

On the bike

Yes, on the bike. Mostly because I cannot afford petrol. Anyway, cycling with your children is supposed to be a positive experience, isn't it?

We were aiming for the local music festival, but never made it on account of getting lost. (Memo to self: always carry a map, even if it is of the Andes.)

But look on the bright side! I had an opportunity to muse on cycling vs driving. I can add my thoughts to the western world's weighty consideration on these matters.

1. Flies go up my nose.
When I am cycling, obviously, not when I am sitting in the car. For that to happen I would have to push them up my nose myself, and I don't remember having a habit for that. When I am cycling, flies also go in my mouth, and get trapped in my hair. This may be a summer lane effect. I am not sure it has a resolution. I can only seek to minimise the undesirable impact of being a death hole for flies by shutting up talking to Tiger while cycling.

2. My bottom hurts.
Being discreet about this, I will only say that I observe no matter how foamed-up and comfy my saddle promises to be, it still doesn't work over potholes and road bumps.

3. I feel vulnerable.
Yes, thrillingly vulnerable, not in a no-knickers way, but in the way of meteorology. I mean, look at this cloud. It's coming my way.

4.  I observe interesting things and not the back of a Volvo.
This pisses Tiger off no end. I am constantly off the bike wanting to take photographs or saying ohh look at this! while pointing to a daisy or a pigeon or a stream or a tree. It turns a simple trip into a two-hour journey. I can hear mutterings that on the next cycle ride I might be left at home.

5. I can say hello and thank you to delightful gentlemen as they make way for me on my bike.
This is an absolute bonus and I recommend cycling if only for this. It is unlikely to help me form any more lasting relationships however as you whizz past them quite quickly.

6. Dogs have a new and special terror.
Is that terrier bicycle happy? We are not going to find out until we try and get past it.

7. All roads are terrifying.

8. I become more moral. When we cross the road bridge I am practically levitating with my own sanctity.

The super-moral side is saying Look at me! I am on a bicycle! While you car drivers are eating up the planet and destroying our climate with your bad, bad ways. (The other side of the brain is whispering Lucky bastards. I bet you have a secret stash of biscuits stashed in your glove compartment.)

9. I become acutely aware of my own shortcomings.
Like, there's no one to help me if this goes bellyup. Can I call out the RAC or AA? If the gears break down or I have a puncture, I'm facing a very long walk home with a very cross companion.

10. I become hopelessly lost.
Two minutes off my familiar road route and I haven't a clue where I'm going! Did we pass this litter bin already? I shall take a picture of it, so I can navigate my own way home when Tiger leaves me behind because I am annoyingly off the bike again, complaining about the foam saddle, and covered in flies.

Actually, getting hopelessly lost is exactly my same experience as in the car. I may have to strap the non-working satnav to the handle bars, put on a cheery face, and just say, let's go that way.

Turning home ed into your business

I cause a big fuss in the local home ed groups.

Surely not, Grit! That doesn't sound like you!

Yup. A big fuss was caused. I caused it. Mostly by not reading a bunch of emails I shove in a folder called NotReading.

But I have learned things! Every unhappy trouble has wisdoms to impart, does it not? Even if it is It is a bad idea to sleep with someone who dresses up as a Dalek, or Two buckets and spades divided between three toddlers is not a good way to save two pounds in cash.

So this particular bruising experience has taught me about the future. I can see, it's a business outlook for Educational Support Services in the land of home education!

Duh. I have been sharing my skills, offering my home ed experiences, giving stuff away for years, entering into the great collaborative enterprise that I knew as the community of home ed. But I need to become mean, keen and, hopefully, ruthless in all matters of business.

I am considering these ways of conducting myself when, as if by magic, I discover this miserable place in another email account I don't read every day either.

Clearly the stars have aligned. It's time for me to market home ed! If I'm going to make a good business out of home ed, I must adopt Grit's Top Ten Tips to CoinMyCommunity!

1. Bring business to the home ed world.
Adopt good business practice! Don't buy in a workshop at 50 quid, then tell everyone and divvy up the cost! Blimey, that is the old hippy way of doing things.

The new way is to buy in a workshop at 50 quid then re-sell it for 150 quid. Remember, there is nothing wrong with making a profit in business! (Unless the accountant finds out. Then they will advise you to report a loss so you don't pay tax.)

2. Position everyone else as a rival.
Essential if you are to cohere your market. Other home educators are obstacles if they blab how you can cadge this and that, get discounts here or there, share skills, find the free events, co-operate, divide up a tutor's costs, and take to Tinkertop's back room to avoid the hall charge.

What I need to do is claim these hippies are competition; that they run rival groups. This strategy forces everyone to take sides. Divided and ruled. Hopefully, they'll all come to me at CoinMyCommunity!

3. Restrict information.
Don't hint at other ways of doing things. Don't suggest the teacher doesn't have to be CRB checked. Never suggest parents do stuff themselves, buy their own tutor for cheaper, or admit that Tinkertop doesn't have to complete a sodding 100% National Curriculum guaranteed trackered worksheet in triplicate to get a decent education.

Never, never, ever, let parents find out they can just take their kids to the park. If it slips out, make them believe the best way to take the kids to the park is in a timetable when I'll be selling duck food for 50p a bag.

4. Obfuscate.
Use the words home education and home schooling as if they are interchangeable. Never suggest home education comes with a set of cultural values, a philosophy and community-based action, and home schooling comes with a great deal of school.

5. Position yourself as the only show in town.
Yes, tell all service providers of workshops, events, formal teaching, walk-and-talks, all stuff, that CoinMyCommunity is the organisation where home educators freely come. Tell them to reach home educators here; the only safe and trusted company to do business with. (Only don't use the word business, obviously, that breaks rule number 6.)

6. Forget to say, CoinMyCommunity? Actually, it's a private company.
Avoid being open and upfront. Claim CoinMyCommunity is just a big cuddly-huggy-wug home ed group. Never discuss the company footing on which it stands. Avoid putting the company registration number on all sites, correspondence and, if you can get away with it, invoices.

Claim CoinMyCommunity is nothing more than a vehicle for processing Paypal payments, which are understandably complex, considering I'll be charging a flat rate for the kiddy Christmas party.

7. Provide a one-stop solution.
Yes, to every newcomer to the home ed world (there are thousands of you! Thousands!) tell them this is the easy way to do it! My way! I have everything stitched up! I have timetables! And worksheets! With CRB-checked tutors and, when I set it up, online monitoring!

8. Swot up on Vance Packard.
Covertly use Packard's compelling needs to sell education services. We home educators? We need to be loved. We crave security. We want approval. We are fearful, and only want the best for our children. We don't want our home ed mess to mean Tinkertop misses out.

Make sure all services provided are hitting those buttons. Newcomers need comforting and supporting, because they are stupid enough to take a decision that will upset someone. Obviously they fear the opprobrium about to pour on their heads. This is where my offer to meet their needs is so important. My business can prey on their insecurity, doubt and fear by promising instant answers, step-by-step solutions, organised events, more CRB teachers, offering a big happy tick from the Local Authority, and providing extra worksheets! School, in fact!

(Shh! Never let on how there's an alternative Mad Badger home ed community operating right under your noses!)

9. Use the language of school.
Do not yack on about ways of living and learning. Do not even try and create a language to describe how education can be a seamless part of life. PAH. That is crap. Shut up with the segueing.

Use the language of school. Break home ed life into English, Maths, Science, French, like what parents understand and you can sell. Then keep clear divisions between subjects, bringing in stuff like Key Stages GCSE levels targets topics framework assessment learning objective certification award. This will make everyone think This is education!

10. Aim big.
Of course with Grit's Top Ten Tips I'll do pretty well. But it's no use going to the local authority looking to stitch up a deal. They're broke! We have Academy land! Anyway, Our Great Leader Gove wants us engaged in the great business of profitable educational enterprise. With my future, I can be looking for premises, running online facilities, buying in accreditation, outsourcing timetabling, monitoring attendance and, soon enough, running a free school!


Phew. Thank you for reading. But you happy school-choosing people can safely depart, feeling protected from the politics of home ed land!

But consider Grit here, having caused misery through the land, upset the local educational business enterprise - and thank goodness I've finally asked to be removed from the damn list I never read - and facing only the Mad Badgers as consolation; here I am, scrabbling around for community crumbs on the home ed floor, desperate to give the kids a daily functional education, while simultaneously pointing you towards those bright, bright light$ $hining in your educational future$.

But surely, we've been here before? All happening in our back-yard.

'How do you teach it all?'

Of course I cannot answer in the street!

Not even in the time I am standing in the Co-op queue waiting for Doreen. Have this instead. Make yourself a cup of tea.

1. Announce to Tinkertop, I am your teacher.
Yes! This course of action is best pursued if you are slightly unhinged. You need only engage a supersonic energy drive, construct a timetable, demand homework, introduce a uniform and replicate school-at-home for this one to work perfectly. Ignore Tinkertop's pathetic pleading. Chain her by one leg to the desk if necessary. While you are forging ahead, preparing, teaching, marking, assessing, planning, resourcing, you will also need a servant/dogsbody/cook/housekeeper to take on all your other life responsibilities.

Personally, not an approach that can work chez Grit. Apart from lack of a willing servant and the combined force of three kids who help each other slip the chains, the sight of a timetable blows up my head.

2. Click BUY on 458 internet curriculums.
Common solution to late-night home ed panic. The very arrival of a curriculum through the post - guaranteed to lead Tinkertop through all stages in Maths, English and Build-your-own-fridge - consoles the home educator as effectively as a cuddly blankie, a bottle of gin, or a face full of chocolate. Even when you actually open the parcel to the promised land of structured learning, then decide to stash it in the cupboard because it's too difficult, it continues to work magic. You can push off and do what you want, safe in the knowledge that one day Tinkertop will announce she wants a GCSE in Fridge building. Now you'll be in that cupboard! Ta-Dah!

Not an approach that works here, although I have tried. I did succumb to a Parts-of-Grammar board game that makes no sense and no one likes. (But I keep it in the cupboard, just in case.)

3. Use people in your local community.
Perfect for primary education on the basis that everyone can teach us something! Yes, that includes Doreen with the dodgy leg working the Co-op tills. Decide on a next-to-nothing tuition budget and see how far you get. Try the toy library, scrapstore, library storytime, arts and crafts events at local heritage centres, tours of museums and galleries, community festivals, cultural events, walks and talks groups. Then try the fire station visit, police talk, tour of the gurdwara, behind-the-scenes at the supermarket, the lady who fits the glasses at the opticians, the bloke who runs the canal enthusiast club and the local bundle of eccentrics who will be delighted to show a crowd of home ed kids the skills needed for clog dancing and chinchilla balancing.

A strategy that has worked well round here for years!

4. Ingratiate yourself with the insanely busy woman in the home ed group who organises stuff. 
Butter her up, say how marvellous it is that she organises workshops for Maths/Physics/Verb conjugation and how much Tinkertop loves them, even when Tinkertop defiantly sits sullenly with her arms crossed and a face like a slapped arse. Keep going. Remind Tinkertop (while holding her pocket money in one hand), that this tuition is organised, relatively cheap, and you can tick verbs and socialisation in one swoop, for which all you need do is smile and never ask of the PTA woman of your nightmares, Are you on acid?

Of course I routinely try this approach. It invariably ends badly. One of the offspring refuses to have anything more to do with the infinitive, or the woman on acid puts Crispin back in a more demanding scholarly environment where people take verbs seriously.

5. Share the load. 
Coerce a bunch of co-operative parents to each offer to teach something. Whatever is their special skill. Can be an excellent approach if your chums offer PhD Chemistry, Practical Archaeology, Theatre Studies and Maths. The additional advantage is that you get to crow that the whole tribe is raising your child (sounds vaguely ethical, hippie-friendly, and somehow morally righteous).

Works for us, after a fashion. Although I have noted the approach isn't so effective if the only skill set the parent group can raise is fibbing about watching Jeremy Kyle, scoffing bourbon creams in secret, and getting the TV to work.

6. Buy the services of a private tutor.
A useful approach if you are sick of pushing water uphill on the maths. Lower the cost (and the stress) by admitting your defeat and dredging together a group of parents who are similarly prepared to give up with the simultaneous equations. Then you can share one private tutor between eight of you at a satisfactory cost.

An approach with many attractions. The hazard is, your offspring might stare at the tutor with undisguised loathing while the tutor does the same to you.

7. Join a flexischool scheme. 
The advantage is, you can use school teachers.

The disadvantage is, they are school teachers. Teacher training is geared to taking students in a class of 30 through a painfully lengthy process with tortured testing points for extra box-ticking purposes. (However, I still reserve my right to dump my offspring in a flexischool scheme at a moment's notice. Even if the offspring hate me and I end up teaching the stuff at home myself.)

8. Get the kids to teach each other. 
Ignore Tinkertop and Moonbeam. Let them get on with it. The theory is, kids teach themselves, so your job is to run about satisfying their need to learn Ancient Greek (and not, you pray, run about preventing them from roasting Tiddles over the fire they have lit on the kitchen table).

Of course I have tried this child-centred approach! It works fine. For about half an hour. After the expert in marine biology becomes a tad too competitive with the expert on horse maintenance she may pin her down to beat the crap out of her. Meanwhile, the expert on rocks is off with the fairies and is conversing with a pine cone. (You may have better success, depending on your genetic mix.)

9. Demand support from your local council.
If you have had enough of conventional school but are not convinced by home education, this is a possible approach. Get the council to pay for tuition. You might even wangle a tutor for Tinkertop at home. Of course your child might also need to possess a serious long-term illness, disability, or an ongoing school issue, while you will need a track record of single-mindedly terrorising all local authority staff to get out of them exactly what you want and it's not called home education.

Not a strategy used at Grit's. Say the same for all dealings with administrative types, wrestling with fund-holders, having ambitions to set up a free school, or interacting with any official from any local council any second more than necessary.

10. Redefine the words teaching and learning then call it an educational philosophy.
The perfect option if you are a home educator. You can define education how it suits. You don't have to teach in one way, nor in any way that a person familiar with school can recognise. You do not need to adopt the role of an authority taking control of a discipline, nor divide a subject into parts to assess. You can say I don't know, let topics segue one into another, stop to allow time to talk, pick up non-conventional areas to learn about, and find someone who can speak knowledgeably and passionately about something they love.

Works well. I would like to say all of our home ed life can continue in this blissful state, but as we begin to imagine ourselves staring down the barrel of the exam years, I am minded to say, if you are just starting out with your five-year old, don't set out with the thought that you must teach it all. Indeed, with your five-year old, don't fret and struggle to teach much at all. Just relax, enjoy it, and let learning take its course.

Touch of number 4 with number 6 for the costume workshop: private tutor and organiser with much more efficiency than me.

The dangers of home education

'There is not a broad public understanding of home education: its strengths, weaknesses and, on rare occasions, dangers.' Mr Badman.

Oh, Mr Badman! Come thou hither to grit's day.

Here you can learn of the strengths, weaknesses, and dangers of home education. But you will surely tremble to hear the woeful chant of perils, hazards, and horrors that befall the poor, weak, abused home educated offspring!

Can you hear them mewling in piteous lament? Hear their innocent voices now, cry, Save me! Save me from these home educating dangers! 

For you, Mr Badman, I list them, sorrowfully, here.


Danger 1: The Mother. See her, arranging a house of certain death. Slippy carpets! Gas cooking! Sharp pencils! Obviously the house is composed with abusive intent. She is certainly mentally ill. Possibly with Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. I recommend separate mother and child with all haste! Three days with her is three days too long!

Danger 2: The Father. Absent or present or just popped down to the grocer's? Watch him here, slumped in the arm chair, crawling with babies. Know him by his unstable stagger on the landing at 4am tripping over the Tankertop truck. Hear him yell blasphemies when the 5-year old wakes him up at 6 in the morning singing the Octopus song. Oh, poor unschooled infant, to have such feckless parents!

Danger 3: Siblings. Terror! A 'fun game with my sister' is to carve knives, spears, and pitchforks, then lay into each other! Children must desist from this dangerous sibling activity. Adoption is the only route. For this sorry state of play you can blame Michelle Paver. In fact, she is so dangerous, I give her a bullet point all of her own.

Danger 4: Michelle Paver. Her, and all her wolf-bothering books set in the stone age. Yes, add Morpurgo, Pullman, and the rest. Throw on the fire all authors and books referencing all child hazards - water, sand, sea, bikes, trees, outhouses, peanut butter sandwiches. All becomes threat in the impressionable minds of the innocent! Unable to separate fact from fiction, the unguarded home educated child sets about nailing together a unicorn from an old brush and shovel because they read it in - the horror, the horror - a book.

Danger 5: The library. Common home educating haunt. But a child's head has been known to literally explode on entering this disturbing space! Close them all down.

Danger 6: Countryside. Have you seen the perils in this risk-filled place? Have you? Grass! Electric fencing! Agricultural machinery! Staring cows! Diseased soil! Zombie-death-killing sheep! Crows! With beaks! Bushes with sharp pointy bits! Trees! More tetanus than your local A&E can cure! Did anyone ever, ever conduct a risk assessment? The only safe solution is to concrete the lot.

Danger 7: Local museums in old houses. They look safe, but you and I know these places can kill. The hazards are countless. Stone steps. Rickety doors. Little old ladies in the foyer fixing themselves with PG Tips. We must allow school visits only where CRB-checked staff and safety officers can hold fire extinguishers and rubber batons at all supervised viewing points.

Danger 8: The High Street. Is there any circle of Hell more malign? Filled with the swill of all humanity? Anyone could be here! Control these places of dangerous assembly. Inspect all haunts of commoners and home educators: stick up CCTVs in swimming pools, theatres, art galleries, community spaces, scout huts and worst of all, that den of vile vipers, the village hall.

Danger 9: Words. They are all around us, these shifty slippery things with their tricksy ways. And these untrained parents, not a PGCE between ten of them, blithering nonsense on Chemistry, Maths, Physics and Art? Using our fine scholarly words unsupervised, as if all was spillage and slop! Language must be controlled, Mr Badman. We must know what is said, to whom, at what point, about what content, for what mark, and this must be approved and rubber stamped for meaning.

Danger 10: Family culture. But this is the Devil's arse, is it not? This is what causes you sleepless nights. Feckless parents passing on suspect cultural values to their offspring unsupervised by any inspector. We could be teaching the innocents that dinosaurs are chickens, that God is a woolly mammoth called Nigel, that plastic crocodiles run the Isle of Wight. We could be saying anything.


Finally, I would just like to point out, in the interests of balance, that:

There is no statistical evidence to support your assertion that home educated children are at a greater risk of harm than any other child who attends flexi-school, school, or any form of alternative educational provision. Indeed, the numbers of children who attend school with domestic problems and home difficulties suggests that 'being seen' by an employee of the state does not in any way prevent sexual abuse, domestic violence, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, psychological attack, bullying, or any other perils of humanities that you can find in the general population.

Second, causing thousands of home educators to register, be monitored, approved or inspected is to increase surveillance and knowledge control on the family; it will not find the child you claim to be seeking who is at risk of abuse by their parent. There are already many routes in existence to find that child, but the problem seems to be that Local Council staff do not use their powers wisely, with competence, or indeed, in knowledge of the laws they already have. Take, for example, the case of Khyra Ishaq, known to child protection teams long before her withdrawal from school. Local Council staff knew of her plight yet failed to protect her. Home education cannot be blamed for their failure to take appropriate action using the powers they already possess.

Oh, and another thing. Baby P was not home educated.

Now I am so glad you are still here Mr Badman. Without you, today's blog post might have been a photograph of Shark's dinner.

Letting go of those emotions

A favourite person in all the universe (they run home ed sessions IN THEIR FRONT ROOM and invite my kids to SLEEPOVERS) just wrote something which really chimed in my brain.

To the effect of, Which is more satisfying? Aggravated assault or departing the family home?

I have now tried many approaches to this fundamental problem: being in the company of your own family all day long.

How do you get rid of the anger, deal with frustration, and free yourself from the relentless double binds which children impose on you? Thanks to years of being in company with my own, I can clearly see the many strategies available to the demented full-time mother caught up in the daily maelstrom of the argument with kids.

What best to do?

1. Hide in the cupboard under the stairs with a bottle of brandy.
A strategy with obvious disadvantages. The thudding on the stairs is amplified and you continue to hear the smash of hurled objects. The insults I hate you poopy brain get out of my life I never want to see you again etc etc., all echo in your chamber.

On the plus side, a dark cupboard does offer the safe regression to the womb and, in the brandy, the comfort of the amniotic fluid.

So, as a strategy for your emotional escape, doable. (Unless you have foolishly turned the space into a 'computer room' with an unturnoffable fluorescent light and no door.)

2. Kick the shit out of the kitchen bin.
As an emotional release, extremely satisfying. But only in the short term. Maybe for about two minutes. Say, until your big toe hurts, or you realise the kitchen bin you have irretrievably dented cost you two hundred quid and boasted a state-of-the-art Philippe Starck foot pedal. Then you don't feel so good.

(It may be why our kitchen bin is now a plastic bag hanging from a nail, but I'm admitting to nothing.)

3. Slam the crockery.
Class-related emotional therapy. You can smash an Ikea dinner plate into the pot sink, sure! When you chip it, crack it, or it explodes, you can buy two more for under a fiver, so not much loss. In fact a price worth paying rather than two years in prison.

I have found, however, that with Minton or Royal Doulton in my furious hands, the whole catharsis becomes much more problematic. At the final throwing moment my brain must tot up the damage.

Then again, the superior range of dinner plates can take a lot of bashing.

Hmm, if you are a crockery thrower, worth investing in the best, in my opinion, to ensure they last the emotional damage.

4. Adopt a serious face.
Completely rubbish strategy with no merit whatsoever. Your true emotions have no outlet. Denying your feelings and placing them under the added pressure to be an uber parent will guarantee your anger furiously boils up inside you like a volcano. When the crust on your face ruptures, you can be sure it is going to be bad.

5. Threaten stuff.
Grounding. No TV for ever. Bed without supper. Incineration of Mr Flopsy, etc. etc. As a strategy this serves your need to control rather than release your emotional tension.

I have also found the strategy requires a certain steely heart and a dedication to emotional cruelty. I have tried it, of course, on many occasions, but am fundamentally spineless therefore fail to see it through effectively. If I have confiscated Mr Flopsy I invariably return it five minutes later with a backsliding excuse to cover my weak resolve. After ten minutes I will issue a grovelling apology. Therefore, no release of emotional energy whatsoever. Only the addition of misery and guilt.

I cannot recommend this strategy. Well, only if you are a heartless bitch with a control agenda and a mind set on revenge.

6. Hit someone.
Have I hit my children? Of course I have. Shark once threw a shovel at my head. What do you expect me to do? Turn the other cheek so she can decapitate me with a mallet?

Parents lash out because they are people who probably have had enough, haven't slept for a week, and they're facing the horrible realisation that their marriage has ended. Cut them some slack you moral idiots and stop trying to make people feel more guilty than they already do.

Now that's out the way, I can say, as a considered strategy for emotional release, hitting is a simple non-starter. After they recover their senses from their moment of shock, the kids hit you back.

7. Shout.
Emotionally satisfying in the immediate experience, but eventually futile. It gains only a headache, sore throat, and bad feeling. Made even worse after the neighbours complain, indicating they heard every word.

8. Eat the kid chocolate stash in front of them.
This strategy can work well, especially if you are on medication which does not permit alcohol abuse yet you still require some emotional support.

The downsides are that the kids never notice; they are too engaged in thumping each other. And, if you are going through a bad patch, it guarantees your enormous arse in a mere two weeks.

9. Make grand moral statements.
This strategy is typical of many holier-than-thou parenting strategies, usually scattered about by people who never stared a determined five-year old in the face.

In my view, grand moral statements are not much good in an emergency: discussions on how to run a happy family using Aristotelian precepts are essentially intellectual, therefore do not release your emotional tension.

Anyway, the kids can't hear because they are yelling, and even to your ears you sound like a tosser. Save it till over dinner when everyone has calmed down and their mouths are full of pasta.

10. Go berserk.
Throw yourself from a window, hang yourself from the stairs, put your head in the gas oven, etc. etc.

A really bad strategy to deal with overwhelming emotions, and one I have not tried, obviously, although I have entertained it on more than one occasion.

The state of mind needed for self-annihilation is one where you totally fail to see any funny side of living. There is a funny side. Of course there is. There must be. If there wasn't, we'd all be dead.

However, in the middle of tense and emotional situations, when you are seeking escape or release, I know that humour is difficult to find ...which is why I endorse the only strategy for emotional escape that ever truly works.

11. Leave the house.
Slam the door behind you. Kick it. Call your children cruel and horrible names under your breath, then stomp about with a face like a slapped arse until people stare, or until you feel a bit foolish.

But remember, when you return in a fudge of self-justification, righteousness, and shame, it is humiliating to ring your own front door bell, then stand there five minutes, waiting until your eight-year old with a grudge over your failure to provide strawberry sauce decides whether they'll let you back into the house, or not.

So don't forget the door keys.

Making decisions?

Here I am. Skulking behind a rock, and suddenly! Up pops a crowd of you, poking me with flashlights.

In other words, grit's day is receiving an upswing in callers.

But I know what this is! It happens three times a year. The days before a new term starts.

Well, in grit's day you will find wisdom on home ed pain, trauma, comforting communities, delirious joys, face-ache from sobbing, ear-ache from slamming bathroom doors, no time (or money) to go and buy shoes, crippling doubts, occasional dementia, educational over-thinking with a bottle of red wine, and the odd cracked-pot idea about what you can get up to with kids in a field, wood, museum, art gallery, craft shop, shopping centre, or National Trust property. Take consolation and search the blog.

Today, if you are researching home ed, you already know it's a big decision. Be reassured! The people who chose it know what you feel, and what a big decision it is. They will help.

And have a virtual hug. You need not choose this course of action purely for negative reasons, i.e. because your heart will break on January 3rd, at the sound of Tinkertop bawling her eyes out when she imagines returning to school, where no sanctuary is to be found from the little kid who has effectively modelled his playground career on Charles Manson.

You can choose home ed for positive reasons! (I know at the outset it will seem unlikely.) Consider these as you weigh the consequences of that deregistration letter.

1. You can loaf around in bed.
It's important! At 8am you can ear-wig on the street noises of other mummies screaming at kids on the school run. Ha! Ask Tinkertop to bring her books and sit with you while you both curl up with toast and chocolate. Call it your reading lesson.

2. You can do what you want, for as long as you want.
Activities last as long as Tinkertop likes. Two minutes, two hours, three days. You do not have to bash her over the head with timetables or tell her to stop the moment Gillian the giraffe becomes interesting.

3. You can follow Tinkertop's interests.
Flowers? Fish? Soil? Why not? You do not have to teach the National Curriculum. (Not unless you're slotting her back in school in February.) Seriously, at primary level, the NC is pants. Tinkertop will absorb the knowledge she needs as you live a normal home ed life, be confident about that.

4. Tinkertop can be her own person.
Yes! You have put years into raising an individual. Home ed lets Tinkertop find out about that in her own way. She can do a task simply because she wants to, and not because 30 kids down the road are doing it. She can form ideas and opinions about the world without fear of Crusher threatening her or Mrs Binns humiliating her.

5. Everyone can join in.
Home ed is not simply about transmitting knowledge to a kid's head. It is about living a shared experience. An entire family can be involved. You can each learn new skills, work out different ways of doing ordinary activities, find beautiful moments, and enjoy how time passes. Of course you'll argue how to do it. You would if Tinkertop went to school.

6. Tinkertop will make new friends.
In this brilliant community, you will meet the people who blast apart your ideas about normal. And of course you will meet the wackos. It is a privilege to meet them all. They are what makes this society sparkle.

7. You can develop skills you didn't know you had.
Abilities to sweet-talk your way to education officers, negotiate cut-price entrance fees, organise group tours, find workshops, barter for lessons, face the truancy patrol, learn the law, write philosophies of education. (To my way of thinking, all more rewarding than being bullied by the PTA.)

8. The world becomes exciting!
Once you break away from routines that are considered conventional, then everything is up for grabs. You'll hear, time and again, The world is our classroom. That phrase didn't become common because people couldn't recognise its truth.

9. You're special.
Turn up Monday to Friday 9-3 at a museum, cinema, ice rink, gallery, sports centre, discovery centre, swimming pool, and you have that space to yourselves. At most, your home crowd, come for a workshop, just for your group. Within days you will expect immediate access and reduced rates. Come the Easter holidays, you'll be pulling pouty faces and making outraged Who's in charge here? noises, simply because you clapped eyes on a queue.

10. School pressure is off.
You don't have to do what teacher says. You don't have to maintain uniforms. You don't have to smuggle a Jaffa Cake past the lunchbox police. And you don't have to become a teacher. You don't have to set work, mark it, or match any arbitrary standards that someone else is crowing about their child achieving. You just have to help your own child explore and discover the world.

(If Tinkertop is aged 14, obviously some of the above does not apply. Just join the Home Ed Exams list if she wants GCSEs, A levels, or OU courses, then leave her alone to paint her room black.)

Now if you want legal advice on home ed, go elsewhere. Sober counsel on Education Law is not my strength.

If you want tales of home ed glory and Hama beading, go elsewhere. Personally, I find perfection sometimes encouraging; sometimes it just makes me feel like a pissed off failure.

If you want to find contact lists for your local home ed groups, go elsewhere. (We have excellent connections.)

But please lower the flashlight because Tiger is trying to get to sleep. She has had a long hard day loafing on the sofa, reading a book. (And I call that an education.)

The perfect home educating body

Many times in our home educating journey have I had cause to look inwards, measuring my heavy responsibilities against the insufficiency of my inner resources.

But I have also looked down, and seen the physical impact this great learning journey has wrought upon a woman's frail and feeble body.

Here is the evidence of a home educating experience. Battered ribs, stringy thighs, and wretched knees of despair. Ankles of doom, pounded feet, and wiry hands, scarred from a thousand face-clawing, vein-popping struggles.

Yet, as I look south, beyond these sad and torn remnants, I am happy, for I have learned what wisdoms to impart.

Collecting my battle wounds and dismembered limbs, I can now give you, youthful person considering home education, the gift of my experience.

If you really, really, REALLY are intent on spending several years teaching your own, then with these essential items, you must now prepare your body.*

1. Brass neck.
Every home educating mother must acquire one of these. A solid brass neck to navigate the High Street at 11am on a Monday morning.

More than moral righteousness is cast in the brass. It disables any ability to turn head-wise to the whisperings following the 'school-age child' straggling at your side. The particularly scruffy child, clad in grubby tee-shirt, torn jeans, an assortment of dreadlocks, chocolate over one eye, and a left shoe only (a fact you are bound not to notice until you reach the Co op on account of not being able to turn the neck).

2. A tongue you already bit off.
My advice is DON'T SAY IT. I have struggled with this, and still do, because oh yes there are so many responses to the in-law who, horror-struck, whispers Home education? Is that wise? or the neighbour who asks 'Are you allowed to do that?

STOP. Your response will not only be taken as evidence in court, it must be totally positive PR for what you are about to do, and simultaneously support all the struggling world of home ed. DON'T SAY WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. JUST SMILE.

3. Face of steel.
As you sit around the kitchen table, determined to enjoy yet another happy learning moment with Urban Environments or What shall we watch on the telly, the peace will shatter between Arch Enemies, Sibling Rivals 1,2, and 3. Number 1 destroys the moment of educational perfection with I hate you; number 2 screams Get out of my life, and number 3 chimes in with the chorus, It would be better off if you were dead.

Then, with the learning day of happiness in ruins, you will need a face of steel. Any ordinary plasticine face, betraying motherly tenderness brutalised by shock, disbelief, and horror, inevitably adds emotion to the moment; it allows the offspring a terrible opportunity to observe the maternal pain, then show how much they care by finishing the kill.

4. No ears.
With kids around all day everyday, simply plug the ears up. Shove them under a duvet. Better still, take them off. Hide them in a padded box and stash them in the linen cupboard where they can't transmit any sound at all.

5. Wired up teeth.
Yes, wire the buggers up, top to bottom, and quick about it. If you are home educating any primary-age child, with or without siblings, you very quickly realise that your entire education is composed of cake.

Cake is chemical reaction! (Obviously.) It's maths! (There are four in the family to eat one cake and the mother must be fed six slices.) Cake is geography! (Punch a hole in one side and turn it into a river valley with a bucket of cream.) French! (Oui, nous voulons faire un bon gâteau.) Business studies! (Grandma, your slice costs $200, hand it over, cash.) And English Literature! (While their mouths are full, reverentially lay your copy of Robinson Crusoe upon the table.)

If you fail to wire your teeth together, you will come to know the consequences. That cake is 5,890 calories every day. And only Millets can cater for size 36.

6. Hands, hands, and more hands.
Three pairs of hands per child, minimum, are required for all daily interactions of education and child management.

One pair to lay out the happy learning craft resources. A second pair to put the kid with the scissors in lock down. The third to pour a stiff gin and tonic. Three kids = Nine pairs of hands. Stitch your extra hands onto a belt and hang them round your middle.

7. Legs.
Acquire a pair of stout and sturdy tree trunks to attach when the original human pair buckle, as they are sure to do. (Mine went in a stable yard under three kids, a pissed off horse-keeper and a disabled mongrel called Lucy.**)

Keep two additional leg pairs, both waterproof, suitable for nature studies and small children peeing on you. Use one pair for climbing out of ditches because no-one else will fetch the ball, and use the second pair for plodding across woods, fields and hills in the drizzle while you look in despair and rising panic for prehistoric art, moths, or rocks.

(Keep a decent trolly-dolly pair in the cupboard 'for best'. You can always hope to have a night out in 2016.)

8. No hair.
Shave it off or hope it falls out. Only this way can you be relieved of washing, styling, cutting and thinking about the irritating, increasingly grey chore sprouting from your head.

When you home educate kids, consider this. You may have them 24/7. Spending two hours alone in the hairdressers is as likely as flying to the moon.

If you do get to Curl up and Dye, you will inevitably sit next to the lucky cow who whines on and on about how her life is shit because she has to be home in five hours to 'pick the kids up from school'. Then you will never want to go there again.

9. Armour.
In your home educating journey, there will be weapons. Feet, fists, words dipped in poison, lethal pauses, and fatal punctuation marks. Your body without armour will be dented, scratched, bruised, bitten, torn, and trampled upon. Medieval armour c. 1485 is recommended.

10. Nerves of steel.
You are going to need these. You are going to chew down your knuckles with anxiety for Tinkertop's total FAIL if your mother measures her against the common ideas in her knitting circle about reading, writing and 'rithmeticing. When your teeth hit the bones, the nerves of steel will be the only things holding the entire arm together.

11. Large empty space in head.
Yes, when you start home educating, the world will open up, and with it, your mind.

Your brain will no longer be crammed full of pointless crap about lunch boxes, the PTA, holiday forms, or whether Tinkertop's uniform meets the regulation grey.

But do not be scared of the space. Enjoy it. Your mind will be called upon at all hours to help explore the Arctic, explain why polar bears have feet, or expound upon DNA. Keep the space as wide and as far-ranging as possible, then exercise it often. It must be fit for sudden demands to answer questions What holds the sky up? and then to elaborate upon Stephen Hawkin's conception of the universe.

Yet always it must be prepared to try out a new recipe for cake. This time cooked with nettle leaves.

12. Heart.
This must be enormous, bigger than your whole body, with a capacity far greater than all the oceans of the world.

What you are about to do will challenge yourself, your in-laws, show the neighbours a thing or two, take on the educational thought police, put you on the defensive against people you meet, lose friends, make enemies, and cause a tail-back on the M1 southbound from Junction 14. Yes, you will probably take the blame for that too, from the likes of Ed Balls, the NUT and the TES.

In the face of this onslaught you will at times be plunged into severe and crippling doubt. Then you will need a strong heart.

When you are fighting the universe and the children are foul; when the heart wants only to sit sobbing and defeated in a corner; when you are overwhelmed, in despair; when Tinkertop says, after all your effort and stinging hands, that maths with nettle cake is crap, then you must call upon the heart's limitless capacity for forgiving.

Apply it to everyone and, most importantly, to yourself.

* True, I am only talking woman body. This is based on the undeniable, observable fact that most people who turn up at the home ed meet up group - and who we can assume are in the bloody daily front line of the home ed decision - are women.

**Disabled mongrel.

Edited because my French is so bad. That shows you what an A grade is worth.

Thinking of a career in teaching?

Give school teachers some sympathy. Really! They deal with so much crap!

Remember, I have perspective. I did that job.

But I was very naive! No-one told me the truth about teaching before I began. Well, as everyone says I am very helpful, here are ten areas to consider before the interview for that PGCE course.

1. Imagine the worst kid behaviour you can.
Double it. Welcome to your classroom, Monday to Friday.

Sad but true. Schools have plenty of kids who are social-work caseloads, but on an educational course you are specifically not being trained for this, so you'll be caught between a rock and a hard place.

For example, Tinkertop looks cute, but this can hide a foul-mouthed monster. She'll front up to any challenge (like please sit down), then start a fist fight and tell you to fuck off. All in the time you set aside to welcome her to GCSE Macbeth.

Unfortunately, her parents might behave much the same. If you meet them, Tinkertop suddenly makes horrible sense. You will sadly realise your job might not be about dreaming up fun ways to bring Macbeth into the everyday, but is a depressing daily trial of crowd control and form filling.

My advice is pick your school intake according to whether you like social work or teaching.

2. Prepare to suffer for the good kids.
Some great kids go to school. Not only the bright ones. The charming, funny, quirky, a delight-to-be-with ones. These mini people keep you sane. They are probably the reason why teachers stay on teaching. Some kids you know will go on to achieve amazing things with the subject you love. They are your reason to work. They share ideas, are wise in their own ways, and are just utterly brilliant.

But then you realise why they are doing well is because they are working or supported at home. Look at all the disruptions to the day, and the way the hours are divided and timetabled into unproductive short fragments. Kids have to find a sane place to go and recover, or simply go and teach themselves. This is called home.

Kids of all and any ability was one big reason why I wanted to teach. I enjoy their company. That sounds painful and naive but it is true. Unfortunately, this leads to trouble.

3. Face the suspicion that your motives are dishonest.
You really want to work with kids? What are you up to?

Especially if you're a man and the kids are young. Or if you are a good-looking man and the girls are older.

People can't quite believe you want to teach because you see school as a meaningful career. (Unless you are a male in a suit who wants to be a manager. Then it's okay.)

But cast your eyes over the daily newspapers and it's not surprising people suspect you. Every week there's a teacher who's a murderer, deceiver, thief, liar, adulterer, child abuser. You have to get used to that, but be on the safe side. Never touch a child, never ever.

4. Remember, you can't pick your senior management team.
You'll either get a great management team, or a lousy one. If the latter, you will find yourself unsupported in the classroom, no matter how hard your department head works to remedy matters.

You will be powerless to do anything about poor management. Sometimes, when the management is really bad, they will demand you implement change and then set about frustrating your ability to do it.

Then you are doomed, pure and simple. Decisions will be made that you are not a part of; you will be treated as if you are merely another cog in the machine; you will be patronised, ignored, and probably bullied.

If you have a great department team, hurrah! Let's hope none of them leave! They will support you, even against the senior management. However, on the times that your colleagues all meet in the pub after work, then creeps in the fear...

5. Think, how will it read in the Daily Mail?
Teachers in the pub? Oooer. One is nicked for drink driving, smashes up the car, assaults someone?

You can't escape the brush, and say that people make a mess in their lives regardless of what job they do. Teachers hold a special place in the national psyche. The media will be part of your job. Want to do something that is slightly off-beat? Someone will whisper, How will it read in the Daily Mail?

Associated with this, is the miserable realisation that you must daily face representations of yourself which are nothing more than crappy sexist stereotyping.

Take women teachers portrayed in TV and film, where the visual exploration of fantasies and power dynamics are controlled by men. Films of student-teacher sex fantasies do not help you, not one bit. You will be hot, or not.

If you are hot, boys will try and look down your front, and make sexual jokes in your hearing. There will be innuendo, suggestions, and your physical space will be violated on a routine basis.

If you are not hot, you will be given scant respect in the classroom, your teaching ability will be questioned, and those year 11 boys who are being brought up in a culture where a woman's intelligence means not much at all, will simply walk out.

And the Daily Mail will imply that you deserved it, because you are a predator.

6. Plot your exit strategy if you have a weak head teacher.
The direction that a headteacher brings to what is a hierarchical and disciplined system is significant, and the impact in the school culture, enormous.

If they are crap, they might issue sudden directives about attainment with no infrastructure to support them. The senior management won't help because they're looking to protect themselves upwards, not downwards.

The result is, you might feel adrift and alone. And when you face Kirk with a hammer, that is a very lonely place indeed.

7. Prepare to watch your educational aspirations shrivel.
The saddest experience for me. Yes, I am a weedy theoriser / philosopher, I confess.

I also came to realise that if you are to develop any ideas within a school you must have a welcoming environment and a supportive team. Then you can genuinely innovate, challenge the way things are seen, introduce new ways of doing things, try out creative approaches, or basically have any vision at all.

Failure of some of those ideas must be part of the package. But failure is not the measure by which schools want to be judged. If your feeble head teacher is terrified of parents and the Daily Mail, you're stuffed. At best, even the most timid of your ideas will invite scorn. Sadly you might conclude that schools are anti-intellectual places geared to mediocrity.

8. Watch good colleagues leave in joy.
Some teachers in the staffroom you might adore because they are intelligent people who are fantastic fun. They provide balance, perspective, rationality.

Then you discover they are leaving. They believe their talents can be put to better use elsewhere. They go on to have great careers in office administration, and still claim that leaving the classroom is the best thing they ever did. Dispiriting.

9. Be aware how everyone pulls rank.
Schools are places designed to divide, order, rank, and create hierarchies. They are also places of judgement. This applies to kids and teachers. You will be placed in a category, given an identity and a label, then measured, ranked, and treated accordingly, like it or not.

Develop strategies from the start. My advice is make friends with cleaners and office staff. If you are attentive to the cleaners, they talk about how lovely you are to the infrastructure staff and that filters up, so slowly you build a reputation as a good classroom teacher who likes order. Any school loves an image like that.

Similarly, whatever paperwork the office gives you, deal with it immediately and hand it back, even if you fill it in wrong. The secretary will fill it in for you. You will be first to get that paperwork in on time and enjoy a reputation for being conscientious when really you are nothing of the sort. You are a manipulator. It's also called surviving.

10. Know that your own professional newspaper can happily treat you like an idiot.
As a teacher, I read the TES many times. Obviously it has self-serving views and advertisers to protect.

But the TES is not really useful if you are any thinker; they appear to cling to the same worn-out agenda that you might be fighting against. Indeed, their views can seem stuck with old interests and oft-repeated ideas. They can appear as if they are worshipping monoliths in the past.

Admittedly, these days - from the other side - I can laugh and know that of course the TES distorts events; of course it employs Sun journalists to hopefully whip up a bit of interest in its tired old pages.

Maybe it shows what they really think of their readers. I can believe they think their readers are not capable of much independent thought if they're teaching. You are, after all, cogs-in-the-machine and classroom fodder who must keep an eye to how your actions can be judged in the media.

But the TES I suppose knows this simple idea: you have to be kept in ignorance.

If you knew the truth, you probably wouldn't want a career in teaching.

Half-term? Aunty Grit is here

Oh dear. I saw the headlines! Is it half-term?

Never mind! It's not so bad, is it? Take ten tips from me. I am an alternative educator. I have it nailed, this child-around-you-all-the-time business.

1. Is the very presence of your child irritating you?
The mummy...mummy...mummy? Constant whining? Neediness?

Remember, childhood is short and fleeting. Even if it feels like a life sentence until gin-time.

My solution? Ignore her.

If you really want to be involved in Tinkertop's ongoing education (and shut her up at the same time), then set her a challenge. Throw her a fiver. Tell her you need biscuits for your knitting circle. You need a minimum of 60 biscuits, at least a quarter of them chocolate, five packets please, and none of them must contain hydrogenated fat because that is BAD, Tinkertop, BAD.

Now kick her out the door, or take her shopping, and see what she can do. If she does well, let her have the biscuits. If she fails the challenge, eat the biscuits in front of her.

2. Are you seeing your child as the grunting unsocial offspring you feared?
Grabbing at the dinner table? Farting and belching in public? Answering harumph in a rude and snorty manner?

Consider yourself lucky. You have an advantage over all home educators. You can blame school. We only have ourselves to blame.

3. Irritated by watching your child loll about a sofa all day?
You, the purposeful parent, are filled with duties and obligations and cares of the world! But your cares are not your child's. Your adult necessities do not form the impulses of their day. Your goals are not their delights.

An alternative educator would say, let her be. Staring into space means little Tinkertop is exploring her inner freedom of thought, and that might be a rare pleasure in her school timetabled day. Allowing her thoughts to wander creatively and constructively, enjoying the process of dreaming restfully in her pool of silence, is a joy to see. Truly it is the breeding ground for her great future action and intention. It can only come to fruition in time.

This is so true! Today Squirrel sofa-lolled for two irritating hours, then went up to the roof and threw a coconut off it. See where deep thinking can lead?

4. Do you feel guilty unless you schedule Tinkertop's week in productive activities?
Pah. Everywhere you look you're encouraged to think a holiday activity plan is something you must do if you care about your child. Like a timetable is some sort of measure of love or devotion?

Ignore it. If the pressure comes from a commercial organisation, they just want to sell you something. If it comes form the school, ignore it. They just want to look good in the league tables, or chum up for extra funding for something at the Local Authority. And if it comes from Supermother down the road, ignore it.

Holiday timetables are crap. They conform to the idea that education is a competitive race. It isn't. That is a destructive message given out to make parents toe the line.

Basically, all kids are different. Some kids learn stuff in different ways. And if Tinkertop wants to learn stuff by digging a hole in the ground and filling it with dinosaurs, let her.

5. You are concerned that your child seems apathetic, lethargic and uninterested?
To be honest, if she is switched off and bored, you are seeing what school made her. If it had made her excited about learning, she'd be jumping up and down, raring to go, using half-term to fulfil her dream of painting a scale model of the Sistine Chapel.

It's a problem. You can't change it in a week. But you could start. Give Tinkertop a break. Excepting a medical issue, or something she's not telling you, ask yourself, why should she join in? Why should she have fun in prescribed ways?

Children should not be made to jump continuously through hoops, nor brought to account, examined or made to do anything which sniffs of school if they don't want to.

In other words, her interests will come from herself, if you give her enough time to loll about and find out for herself what they are.

(Just as a precaution, in case the interests take an unhealthy turn, you might want to safeguard the cat.)

6. You can't stand the arguments when the kids are around all day?
Phew! Neither can I. Children can be irritating, can't they? They know the precise buttons to press. Like discussing the bedroom floor in detail at a painfully abstract meta level instead of just clearing the damned thing up. Or bypassing the wind-up stage completely and impulsively bashing their sister in the face with a plastic frog.

But alternative educators have this sorted. We say, falling out, slamming doors, knocking the crap out of each other - this is all normal growing-up behaviour.

Anyway, humans are ridiculous creatures; you cannot take them seriously. What you can do - and call it an education - is to focus on the ways they make up, develop friends, resolve conflict, and deal with argument. Words like consideration, thoughtfulness, empathy, kindness, these are of lasting value.

In fact, if there is any good reason why school holidays exist, this has got to be it. Having the time and space to make up after an argument. But to get here, they must fall out first. See? Now that argument is positively healthy.

7. You wanted the week to be lovely but now it's all gone crap?
Stop reading the magazines that give you the toothy mummy and the cute kid (both blond, aged 23 and 4 respectively), which tell you that normal is permanent happiness, constant loving parents, and a fatty spread that may or may not be butter. Sometimes we all need a good yell. Forgive yourself.

8. Worried that Tinkertop has spent all week obsessively pressing buttons on a computer?
So what? Unless it's XXX-rated kill-murder-death and your child is aged 8. If that's the case, take the damn video game off them.

When you give children freedom to explore their interests they're not going to voluntarily take up your interests of accounting or office administration. When children begin to take charge of their own lives and their own interests it takes time to mature or grow a sense of responsibility.

The problem here is that half-term doesn't give any kid long enough to work out their interests or come out the other end having decided they want to be a rocket designer. School simply does not give them the opportunity to know, nor develop expertise in an area that they are passionate about.

What to do? Let them alone, unless it becomes actively dangerous.

9. You feel uptight because your beautiful house now looks like a landfill site?
Can't help. You may have control issues. I admit to these myself, so I can give some sympathy. Once, I was in love with my house, wooden floors and Victorian upholstery. I never knew the damage kids could bring. Took me years to get over that. Now, when I see the taps, I LAUGH.

Admittedly, this answer is of no practical help. We all have that journey of realisation to make, and we each must deal with that scenario of paint and screwdriver on the wooden flooring in our own way.

10. Tinkertop says she doesn't want to go back to school?
Now you're stuffed. You have obviously succeeded well in half-term, and she thinks, this is the life.

Well, it is, for lots of people. Within the alternative educating community there are thousand of kids like Tinkertop, for whom school does not serve their best interests. We have very high ratio of adults to children; fantastic social opportunities; plenty of group activities. I have never met an incidence of bullying yet in any home ed community. You have the chance to make learning a positive, switched-on experience for kids, where their experience is with the world, directly, rather than mediated through school, text books or the PE teacher who has to cover French again.

See? Half-term could be just the beginning.

Us, we don't do half-term. We stayed at home and the kids completed assignments.

Sibling rivalry

Dear Shark, Squirrel and Tiger,

From beyond the grave, where you have now put me, I am sending you this gift of life and experience.

Rules of Argument.

I hope, by these rules, you may conduct yourselves accordingly, and prepare for your futures, alongside all the people you will love, and who will love you.

Then let us pray you pass through this vale of tears without further death or permanent injury.

1. Exercise self control.
A rule sure to be broken, so let's put it as Number 1, where it can set the tone.

You will break this rule because you are, um, human. You are not a robot! Robots deserve a good kicking. (Except the electronic bug your sister owns. Leave that alone.)

When you break this rule, and indeed all others from this point, forgive yourself. Simply hold up your hands (and hopefully not anyone's dismembered limbs) to say, I am human.

2. Why do you want the argument?
You might consider this as you hurtle to mass destruction with the crayon box.

If the theft of a pink crayon is merely a conduit to release pent-up anxieties or minor frustrations, then better retreat now, kick the shit out of Mr Wobbles the fluffy seal in private, and consider what argument you really want to have.

3. How do you want the argument to end?
Consider the options, quickly. What do you want the resolution to look like? Bloodied in A&E? Slumped against the bathroom door, sobbing? With mama fleeing the house and papa threatening to chuck you all out the window?

Imagine! We could end the argument with some shared understanding about crayon frustrations, or mama quickly handing over a few dollars to replace the metallic pink!

4. Be prepared to back down.
Is the crayon worth the emotional damage it's about to do? If you doubt it, then retreat, retire, give up. Take a deep breath and say I don't want to argue.

A moment's reflection like this might help put the crayon into perspective.

If the argument is not really about a pink crayon but is about slights and humiliations from the day before, then clearly you'll have a festering need to erupt in a blazing argument and you'll need the rest of these rules to grab at as best you can.

If you decide the crayon is worth a fight to the death of your mother, then you will need a moment to plan your strategy and organise the funeral.

5. Move to a resolution, as you begin.
Let all your words seek a resolution. If you don't know what you want, nor what the aim of the argument is, neither will anyone else. Try and articulate it as you go.

Start utterances with I want... or, to soften the blow, I would like.

At least, when you begin shouting, you can shout the point you want to make.

6. Focus.
Think about exactly what's upset you, then stay with the crimes. Do not allow your argument to be hijacked by ancient grudges. The fact that your sister used your elbow as a teething ring in 2002 isn't going to get you anywhere.

7. Let it pass.
Ten seconds in, and your sister is being ridiculous! Saying you always take the crayons and you never let her have them! There are so many holes in her argument you could use it as a sieve.

But resist! Do not point out every flaw. Do not poke at every word. Let the illogicality, the inconsistency, the assumption, all pass.

Be calm. If you can achieve this state, you will feel extraordinarily generous while your sibling looks like a snotty whiner. (Better not, at this point, look smug.)

8. Do not blame.
You've gone and done it now.

The moment you blame, you personalise everything! You turn the argument over the sodding crayon into a power challenge when it was merely an issue about resources that could have had a consensus solution!

Now you are one step away from It is ALL YOUR FAULT.

Remember, our litany of sorrows is made more eloquent when we begin, I feel.

9. Listen.
Okay, do us all a favour and try to listen. We can't hear everyone yelling together. Just one at a time, and don't pull any of those yadayadayada faces while someone else is going off on one.

Where's the sodding conch?

10. Empathise with something that's said.
Your sister surely says something about her feelings that you can understand! Put yourself in her shoes!

(Not literally, obviously. That just starts another fight when you knock her to the ground and rip off her flip flops.)

11. Do they have a point?
It is hard to imagine that someone apart from ourselves actually has a valid point to make about a pink crayon, but give your sibling the benefit of the doubt.

(Until they mess it up bigtime by admitting they have stolen all the green ones as well.)

But maybe it is time to pause, and ask yourself, Do they have a point? You do assume control over the pencil box.

12. No mind reading.
Do not tell your sister what she is saying, thinking, or feeling. Clearly she is able to articulate for herself all her thoughts about the ruddy crayons.

You may, however, tell her what she are doing and how it affects you. As in, You are holding me down with a bookshelf. I feel uncomfortable with that.

13. No twisting, distorting, rephrasing another person's words.
I did NOT say she could have all the crayons. If you say I said that again I'm going to PUNCH YOUR LIGHTS OUT.

See how it makes your mother feel? Unjustly misrepresented.

Take my advice if you want to live. Never rephrase someone else's words in your own way, nor start an utterance with 'So what you mean is...' Much better to use, 'I understand what you are saying.'

Even if you don't because by now she is screeching her lungs out and no-one can make sense of anything.

14. Choose your words carefully.
Poopybrain. Conveys poop, brains, scorn.

I feel hurt. Conveys nuances of emotions, expectations of interactions, complexities of self and society.

Hear the difference? Try and be articulate when you argue! It is more interesting to listen to, as your unhappy audience will testify.

By the way, papa has left the building and slammed the door behind him.

15. Be respectful.
No insulting, no mocking, no sarcasm, no funny looks, no hands on hips, no lip curls, no sneers, no patronising.

Ha! I agree. Virtually impossible. You're all asking for it. Someone switched you lot at birth.

16. Do not joke.
You think this will help diffuse a tense situation, but it will not. The casual, off hand and flippantly delivered wit falls flat. It will seem like you are belittling another's genuine concerns and deliberately employing mockery to take the superior ground.

I have no experience in breaking this rule. Please move on.

17. Put yourself in time out.
If you find yourself picking up the crayons and throwing them furiously at the wall, and if your next impulse is to commence the battering, go and take it out on the bathroom door.

(Not the wardrobe door, please. It has a dodgy hinge.)

18. Do not use physical violence.
No threats. No intimidation. No coercion. These do not make the point you want, they only measure the levels to which you can sink.

Exploring the dynamics of power will be an attractive option, but save this for when you are married.

19. Do not be pushed into defending yourself.
No! Just hold your head high and steal the moral high ground. That'll really piss her off.

Excuse me while I SAY NOTHING but merely pick up the crayons you have thrown, while adopting my saintly face of suffering.

20. Explain how this situation, and not the person, makes you feel.
If you personalise the argument by You stole my crayon, you fat fish face it all quickly descends as you can see. A battle of wills, a conflict of power, and a general fist fighting. The Wars of the Roses without the laughs.

Instead of howling how your sister tried to stab you through the hand with a compass, say how the loss of a pink crayon makes you feel.

21. Acknowledge your own weaknesses, failings, and shortcomings.
Kiddies, take my word for it. Sometimes we might seek to defend an indefensible position just because we won't give in. We go on and on if only to maintain the idea that 'we were right' or 'we were justified'.

If you feel yourself adopting an indefensible position, then acknowledge it. This is not 'giving in'. It is about being in charge of who you are.

The pink crayons belonged to everyone. You can bet I regret that. I should have bought three sets and written individual names on the bastards. But it is not about the sodding crayons is it? You little mobsters.

22. Be trusting.
We all have vanities and aspirations, foolishnesses and weaknesses. We make what we will from those.

But if someone points out a weakness, then be brave. You may as well say, On that one, you're right. Trust that your family will not exploit this vulnerability. We will try to live up to that trust.

23. Imagine the argument will do some good.
Imagine that you are trying to let your sister know how you feel. Say, in this case, about how it will make you feel easier if there were equal rights of access to shared stuff.

In this, dear battered and bruised children, consider how the argument helps. You are helping each other come to a closer understanding of your unique personhood; the people closest to you are helping you discover your needs and wishes and your who-you-are.

24. Work together as a team.
If you can find any common ground at all, work on it. Think, How can we solve this problem of the crayons together?

Can you offer an idea about where to locate them, and how better to access them for next time, while I try and get your sister out the bathroom?

25. Be kind.
Forgive the crime. Forgive the criminal. What does a poxy pink crayon matter?

We all want to be forgiven for something. And, as you broke all the rules along the way, you may as well be kind, and forgive yourself.

Love,
Your perfect mother.

P.S. Dear children, if you fail these rules, do not beat up either your sibling, or yourself. Consider how you'll have another opportunity, soon, to break these rules all over again. There are two chocolate cup cakes in the fridge.