The hippie guide

Hello from HesFes, the home educating festival, held annually in a field, where I am happy getting down with the hippies!

Actually, all types of people come to HesFes.

Exhibiting all sorts of behaviours.

Not just hippies.

In fact, I think hippies might be an unfair generalisation of the types of people who attend HesFes.

Why don't I offer a guide? After all, if you've never been here, I bet you're wondering, Could HesFes be for us? See? I am so very helpful! (And safely out the way.)

 Here it is then, Grit's (very dodgy but thankfully brief) guide to some of the lovely HesFes hippies!

The ultra-permissive.
A straight down-the-line liberal approach, taken as far as it can go. Parent bungs Tinkertop a sleeping bag, thirty quid, and bag of weed saying, Make it last the week. Actually, may not provide the sleeping bag. (You can always doss down with someone, somewhere.)

From the outside, this parenting style can appear, to the untrained eye, dangerously indistinguishable from the couldn'tgiveatoss approach. However, proponents of ultra-permissive will argue there are significant differences based on ideology. Feel free to come and shout about the distinctions while holding a wooden baton.

The attached.
Barely visible beneath piles of offspring. Wraps babies across chest, round ankles, papoosed on back. Has several toddlers dangling from necklaces. When not dreamy singing while staring into space, or discussing the miracle of the breast, can be found crawling about the floor making choo choo noises.

The free range.*
Demands Tinkertop sit calmly to consider endless personal-safety instructions suitable for all manner of everyday hazards (strangers, play equipment, parks, water cannon, breast enhancement surgery, kettles, food, plastic bags, cash machines, paper, sky), before suggesting Tinkertop (for whom it has all gone in one ear and out the other), should now go out to exercise her autonomy to play. Parent misguidedly thinks Tinkertop is now well-equipped to make a common-sense judgement if called upon by chums to combine a hosepipe with a cat.

(In my experience, a high incidence of this type of parent can be found at HesFes.)

The green.
A treasured heirloom from the sixties.Wears miles of rainbow-dyed organic cotton, has strange hair, talks earnestly of big pharma, one-world government, the practical problems of building cess pits, and travels about the country lanes of England in an old van with the exhaust dropping off. After two days, the sole child in their care is indivisible from a mud bath.

The spiritual guidance.
Uniquely bonkers, can be found tapping into the earth's energy flow while carefully avoiding setting themselves on fire with the open flames that become the womanly hearth. Tinkertop may have her own set of 500 healing crystals, talks chakras with ease, and can hold a lengthy discussion with a pine cone.

The welly.
Eminently sensible types carrying sun hats, wellington boots, jumpers, tee-shirts; seen hoicking large straw bags around, containing 20 litres of factor 50 sunscreen, 2 litres of insect repellent, spare hairbands, extra bottles of purified rehydration water, and two packs of sanitised handwipes because you never know. Child is nowhere to be seen, but is probably catching up on a little light George Eliot in the travelling library.

The disappeared.
Irresponsible type who dumps the kids, turns off the mobile phone by accident-on-purpose, and legs it to explore Stowmarket. I have no idea who this could be, because obviously, you can't find them, but let's all pray there's no emergency requiring the fire brigade, and anyway I have pitched the tent next to an earth mother welly type who is sure to have a plaster.

The authoritarian.
Control-freakery type parenting approach probably not found at HesFes.

The couldn'tgiveatoss.
One who, to all appearances, seems to have been driven to despair/madness with Tinkertop's outrageous ways. Ends the week by being banned from the camp site for ever and ever after telling the organisers to go pleasure themselves.

I think that might be it for now, or should be, before I get into trouble.

But, casual reader, do not think that home ed has a monopoly on these parenting styles! Yes, I know it looks like it when 500 hippies converge on a field, but you can find these parent-types in all ways of life, whether choosing home ed, the local comp, or dumping Tarquin as a boarder.

And you HesFessers are welcome, of course, to add your own observed types to the rich guide that is home ed life to be found camping in a field.


*Not to be confused with the business which supplies educational support services, probably requires the accountant to declare a loss and thus avoid paying tax and, basically, isn't free.

Weaseling

Shark is out all this week. She is weaseling with the Woodcraft Folk.

I am not even making that word up. Shark tuts and says Don't you know what weaseling is? She adopts the scornful and contemptuous tone you might reserve for anyone you wanted to cut off socially, forever.

So I learn what weaseling is. It is squeezing your face, gut, and bum through tiny cracks between rocks and hoping you don't get stuck or explode. Apparently it is very popular. Except with the morbidly obese and pregnant ladies. They don't find it so much fun.

I tell Shark I could be quite good at weaseling. Only yesterday I had to worm my way through your father's office. I had to reach the fireplace without getting stuck between the accounting pile (1986-1987) and the pile of manuscripts submitted by the academic elite living in the world of commas (2005-2006).

Shark lets out a little snort.

What does she know! Last time she visited papa's office was 2010, and it's got a lot worse since then. Excavating a two metre mountain of rock-hard paperwork, concreted together by a solid mix of mould, spider steel, petrified dust and inertia is no mean feat. And when I did arrive at the fireplace, guess what I found? A bookcase! It contained stuff like Tre Utomnordiska Perspektiv, the 7010CT User's Manual, and a folder of letters from an increasingly shouty publisher about a boring arse of a book (print run 250) only promised for December 1987.

Shark says she thinks I have a point. Indeed I have! Papa says he hasn't time to do the deep pile excavation because he has to look at it and decide. Well, it might come to court. Hmmm. I suspect he is merely driven by Mr Trebus psychology to pile everything up, floor to ceiling.

Shark says maybe we could all set out for a weasel in daddy's office when she comes back. I think that sounds like an excellent idea. I could set the weasels going at one end, and see if they make a complete circuit to come out alive! Shark is quite enthusiastic about that. She says she will have learned some techniques for extracting her left leg from the gap under the table and her backside from between two chair legs.

Yes, I say, let's do that! Wouldn't it be a lovely surprise for papa when he comes home, to know that we have been resourceful in his absence, solved all his problems in one fell swoop, and turned his office into a lucrative theme park, Weaseling Wonderworld!

Yes, that's what I want!

Yes! For the national cause of home ed! So that all parents know they have a choice!

I want a permanently maintained set of alternative education resources in the library.

A neutral, non-judgemental, open-for-all space.

We keen home-educating library-visiting types can help maintain it if you want! While we're about it, give us a permanent display board too, where we can stick up the artwork created by our brilliant otherwise-educated kids, then we can do what we do best: show off to every viewer the picture of Tinkertop's flower and brag off to the local Primary School, Na-na-na-na-na! We're doing it better than You!

But yes! A place for home education! And a display board! And folders, where we can pass on leaflets, legal information, pointers to educational resources, contacts for home ed organisations, information on exams for external candidates, people to contact if you need help for your child to sit GCSEs or A levels, pointers to helpful websites, contact names of people who assist FE and HE transfer, in fact everything education-alternative that the Local Authority can't ever know!

It would be fantastic. The Jesus for Education group would turn up first thing Tuesday morning, library opening time, and heroically leave a thousand Jumble Sale for the Lord leaflets. The secularists would get wind of it by Tuesday tea-time, come round, and dump the lot in the bin.

By Wednesday the happily innocent organiser of the LA-friendly home ed group will helpfully leave all the practical information any interested and observing party could possibly need - times, dates and places where your local home ed group is meeting, and for what purpose!

Word will get round about that. The folks on Backend Street who like to remain under the radar will come over, sabotage the information, and send the Community police officer, the EWO and Mr Spooky off to an abandoned city centre car park to stare at each other glumly a week come Thursday.

By which time there will be blood on the library carpet, spilling between the EO rep and the HEAS rep and the woman running the campaign against HSLD, and it'll all be made worse when the autonomous wing turn up, what with the Jesus for Education group, and the secularists, the flexischoolers, and the Marxist who believes that we surrendered our identities to the global corporate con when Janet added to the Official Home Ed Library Folder a leaflet advertising a BOGOF deal at Pizza Hut.

But yes, truly, I think a non-judgemental, neutral space in every town library (with display board) is a very good idea.

I just can't control my naughty side.


Probably not for laughs.

The questions every parent should ask of an education

People on earth! I may be a late-comer - and the following wisdoms already discovered and exploited by the world's economic rulers, political leaders, and tele-evangelists - but I feel I must do this job.

Consider the Words of Our Lord John Taylor Gatto; he who brings knowledge on humanity and education for our humble planet via this video link.

I take from his talk (okay, I am only 23 minutes in) that those children set to rule Planet Earth will attain the following 14 wisdoms; endowed with these knowledges, they can grow society, pervert us all, or kick some ass (I bet he says that).

Note! If you send your child to school, Lord Gatto's wisdoms are far better questions to ask of your child's institution than whether the teaching staff meet any government's poxy list of attainment targets. Targets are a smokescreen to keep you fretting. This is the real knowledge your kid should have if you want them to enjoy a life of ruling, perverting, or ass-kicking.

Wave these questions, and demand, Will the school do this?

If you are home educating, then we need only join together in prayer.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. These questions are for you.

1. Can you learn what makes people tick?

To my children, I advise, continue observing and experimenting with the buttons on your sister. Some, you already know. Stop pressing NUCLEAR and DESTROY.

Press the other ones. Buttons which are activated by KINDNESS and which provide your sister with consolation and support.

From this knowledge, you will learn better how to empathise. You will learn how to help, or inspire. Even better, you will learn how to reach that place where your sister willingly offers you the last slice of double choc-chip cake, even though she wanted it for herself.

But do not consider these experiments as manipulation. Consider them lessons in human nature.

And attend to five subjects in particular. Without them, we are uneducated, and lost. History, philosophy, literature, theology, and law.

(Leave Mama in charge of law. She controls access to the biscuit tin.)

2. Can you learn how to write and speak?

Not bad spelling and mumbling! No! My children, make it your ambition to possess effective writing skills and good spoke-stuffing.

Think! With these techniques you might persuade your reluctant sister to give up her best clothes/best friend/rights to chocolate cake forever.

Learn how to persuade her with spoken eloquence and proper punctuation! You will reach this goal by:

a) observing the impact of what you say and write,
b) reflecting on your successes and failures,
c) presenting her ideas kindly, maybe in ways that encourage her, or the calm and logical set of practical steps she can follow, especially in giving up the cake.

Essentially, learn how to give back to her what she already said to you, only better. (If you follow that.)

3. Can you develop insights into how institutions work?

Can we discuss what factors drive the justice system, commercial business, political clubs, and military?

(In our case, yes; we need to, because we might yet be up before the Old Bill.)

Please note: Mama would prefer you did not learn the justice system from the wrong side of the dock in the magistrate's court, neither by your active involvement in prison. But if you cannot avoid it, then so be it. You won't be the first family member I visit in the clink.

4. Can you learn some bleedin' manners?

Remember. Graciousness, politeness and civility are the basis of your relationships, even close ones (although thank goodness we can take a few liberties there).

As Our Lord Gatto explains, civility is the means by which you gain access to 'places you might want to go'.

(Let's assume he means places like the Oxbridge Club, and not places like behind the bins on a Friday night.)

5. Can you learn how to work independently?

Have you the self-reliance and ability to be resourceful? To proceed without instruction? Have you the perception to use the work of others? To nick their stuff, then credit yourself with the glory? I think so. Ironically, academic life might beckon.

6. Can you enjoy the grace in your body?

Children, I have noticed that people who endure physical endeavour or who suffer physical misery also develop a confident body. Sports, exercise, climbing trees; they all teach you how to handle yourself.

(Our Lord Gatto also remarks how a commanding physique can translate into power and money. Hmm. As you can see, Mama has the body of a goddess but remains piss poor.)

7. Can you develop 'a complete theory of access to any workplace or person'?

Remember, nothing prevents you from looking to wangle a meeting with a person who can assist you. Never be cowed by title or place.

It may take planning, time, and work, and you may suffer some prejudice. And the result might be less than satisfactory when you achieve it, but it will have taught you something.

8. Can you take responsibility?

Not only take it, but deliver more than is asked for, because by this method you learn leadership.

9. Can you arrive at a personal code of standards?

Okay, don't follow me on this one. I am still working on the dodgy ethics, suspect behaviour and doubtful morals. And don't press me for a result by next Tuesday.

10. Can you become familiar with the arts?

OH YES. Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. We are slowly cracking this one, what with the literature, painting, dance, drama, sculpture.

'The arts transcend the animal materiality of our lives' indeed. (Until you get to Gilbert and George.)

11. Can you develop the power of accurate observation and recording?

Think of the instruction, 'draw what you see'. Drawing is a means of sharpening perception.

12. Can you deal with challenge?

As Our Lord Gatto explains, each person's challenge is different.

Shy, Tiger? Your challenge is public presentation! Loud and opinionated, Shark? Your challenge is to develop a razor-sharp, merciless edge, then use it only when necessary. On another planet, Squirrel? Enjoy it, because this earth-bound one is utterly over-rated.

13. Can you 'develop a habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions'?

I think Our Lord Gatto means, think out the debate from all sides and don't believe what anyone tells you.

(Ahem. Given our politicians in Britain, Lord Gatto, I think we might have reached this point some time ago.)

14. Can you continuously test your own judgement?

Were your intuitions well-founded? Were your assessments and predictions far off, or accurate? Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. You should reflect to better calibrate your ideas, fine-tune your judgements, and develop your capacity for good decision-making.

There. My work here is done. I must now study the remaining two hours of the Lord Gatto's video; and I must steel myself for any comments about how these are the very techniques by which we are better controlled from a ruling elite with their endless merciless mastery over our lives of miserable servile drudge.

After that, I can return to plotting how I might steal secret kisses from the perfectly tiny toy fox terrier that is not even mine, aka, The Dog of Loveliness.

Amen.

Because you're worth it

Oh, I've had a fun day, catching up on those home education discussion lists!

You school-choosing people who imagine that home educators cannot socialise?

Pah! How wrong you are.

Those lists remind me how socially skilled home educators need to be. They must possess the diplomacy, tact, and social negotiating powers of Kofi Annan simply to navigate a route from one taxing minute to the next, and thus avoid a big bust-up before bedtime.

Fortunately, I am unimpeded by social skills, so here's a quick guide to some character types you can meet in home education discussion land.*

See if you can spot them by what they might say!**

The autonomously righteous.
'We simply need to keep the true spirit of home education, which is pure freedom, unimpeded by control, state, or funding.' (Approach carefully. These people may actually levitate on the power of an educational theorem alone. And don't ask if they draw child benefit because you will be struck dead.)

The paranoid-conspiracists.
'Didja see that? The state is out to GET US. Sure you know why. Shh. This list is monitored. We sussed the trafficking. Schools, children. See? Those education officers? In league. Just watch. Adoption agencies, welfare, police, courts. High ranking officials? Sewn up. And don't go near the shed. They can do things with lasers.' (Whisper Bilderberg, then stand back and watch them run.)

The ylang ylang brigade.
'Let us go back to our wisdoms here and tap into our natural energies. Remember, our mother teaching state is intuitive. Children grow and learn in peace and harmony with all the world if only we relax and let our mindsets go free.' (And next time they set themselves on fire with a scented candle, please don't sit and watch. It is not part of the energy flow.)

The lawyers.
'Hey, folks! Reading through the Education Guidance to Authorities (clauses 3 to 5) I note that the reference in clause 2.56 to the 1978 Act may or may not affect the clause 7.8.9 in the amendments to the 2004 Act. Can we have an opinion on this please? England and Wales only, obviously!' (How I wish these people just had big, scary, tattooed arms, plus a couple of rottweilers.)

The philosophers.
'Has anyone thought about this? Surely now is the point to consider the constraints of individual education and empowerment within a controlled system experiencing hierarchical societal pressures.' (No one else knows what they're they're on either. Freaks.)

The naive.
'Wow! I've discovered this amazing group! It's like, incredible! Have you seen these people? They don't send their kids to school! Can you imagine this! They're like one big happy family!'

The Marxists.
'It's clear now, how capitalism wrought education. We are nothing, nothing more than slave animals trained to better perform tricks for our masters. We are nothing, our children are taken, their futures are sold, we are only the powerless mutants chained to service greed. God, sometimes I get so depressed.'

The disciples of specious pseudo-educational theories.
'Hey everyone! I need to share this with you! My child fits perfectly into the Associative-Introvert-Judging personality type which requires the intertwining of gross motor activities at intervals with reflection in a non-combative group where the walls are best painted yellow. Why don't schools seem to know about this?!'

The people who really wish Tinkertop was at school.
'Would anyone like to review this curriculum I bought? It has eight stages, assessment, and 12 controlled assignments. I have to put in place a timetable and what we've called homework study period (she does that 7-9pm, otherwise no TV!). Say, has anyone been to the Local Authority with this model? I think it would be very good if they gave us funding!'

The wolf (entering discussion stage left, in costume).
'Hi! I'm new to this group! We've home schooled my daughter to Grade IV. We are so delighted that she is now accepted to medical school! She is aged 14 and we achieved this incredible result in a three-step teaching programme available to download at only $33.99 monthly subscription over here!' (Moderator has deleted link.)

The people we all should worry about.
'Actually deriving problems from loopholes to gain the acceptability of authorities with common organisational goals requiring new approaches for the fundamental organising in systems for underpinning of social structures. That means sometimes we all have to wear the hat.' (You can guess that schools are so very happy they don't have to deal with this one.)

The judgemental.
'No, I'm not saying everyone should educate like me. Really, it's not a problem, not at all, it's just that I think what they are doing is wrong and maybe misguided and let's face it, who are they to impose their ideas on me? I mean, what they choose is affecting me. I am only saying this to share my concerns and is not in any way negative.'

The offended.
'Was it only me? Did anyone else find that word offensive? Actually, I found the whole d... post offensive.'***


*See how varied we are out here? And I never get on to the religious, political, nor founding-father types.

**Not drawn from the lists, obviously. Would I be that WRONG?

*** Just before the offended get offended and the lawyers take me to court, I am proud to say, that in my time, I have belonged to nearly all these groups. Which is why I love 'em, this big, happy family.

Grit is time poor

Thanks to having organised, at the last minute, a week's holiday.

The holiday is to be locked up in a concrete bunker with two kids on the Isle of Wight, England's smallest county. I will be unable to get off the island during peak holiday season and a swine flu pandemic. Come Tuesday I see myself weeping, holding an ear thermometer, a bottle of Calpol and the swine flu hotline number. Dig will be at home preparing to leave for India. The other misplaced kid is abandoned somewhere en route at the back of a horse with a pot of glitter.

It's all less exciting than it sounds.

And a week's holiday with two of my offspring WILL BE a lot of FUN.

I have gritted my teeth in preparation and packed the portable DVD player. By Wednesday, forgive me if I am drinking heavily, kicking myself, and effing and blinding, and the latter no longer under my breath.

Because why and how I have contrived this absurd set of circumstances I am not sure. It is one of those happenings that made perfect logical sense while it is all unfolding and in retrospect now feels like a bad script that I can't get out of, but in the next Act, there appears a burned out Volvo, three snakes and a pygmy. Perhaps then, the Dyson will drive us home.


But while I am making love to the Dyson, tackling the fire, trapping the snakes and defeating the pygmy, I will be internetless and out of communication.

On the bright side, I have made time for a holiday haircut. This is not at the local salon with Kylie, but is upstairs in the disused bathroom with Grit, thrashing around hacking at her head with a pair of scissors, because life is just too short to fit everything in.

And I will leave you with this delightful scrap of almost-conversation which passes for tenderness in our household.

Grit: (Big Burp)
Shark: Mummy! You are not blaming me for that again.

Home educators are sexy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is Grit's cunning plan.

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

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

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


to this...


...and then break out those Jammie Dodgers.

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


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