Saturday, February 07, 2009

Thoughts, if rather incoherent at times..

Taking the car or walking? There’s not much competition in my book. Walking gets the blood circulating, saves petrol money, helps environment, you get to notice small things along the way e.g. a blackbird deciding how close it’ll let me come to it before flying off. It also gives me time to think. I was thinking about the irony of authorities wanting us to stick kids in school. If all the home educated children in the UK were suddenly turning up at their local schools to be ‘schooled’ could the authorities cope? This led me on to thinking that whether schools could be seen as being more ‘efficient’ as one teacher is teaching maybe 30 kids. If home educating that could be potentially 30 adults out of ‘gainful employment’. The recent snow has shown the reliance of parents on schools as child-care providers. But is it efficient? From my experience not at all, the amount of studies they do a day could be achieved in a fraction of the time at home.
Then I see H at nursery doing activities I might not have thought of/ had energy to do/ equipment/ resources to carry out. I think I’m happy with the situation at the moment, S still moans, and I still find it hard to believe that nearly all the boys his age or thereabouts are so poorly behaved that he doesn’t want to hang around with them, but it is true. Social skills being learnt? Well maybe more like sabr and putting up boredom at break time, and being hassled in class.
Note, since I initially scribbled the above, S has had quite a bad experience at school involving the perennial shower after P.E: problem. So I am not so happy actually.

3 comments:

ummrashid said...

Surely the main point is that there should be a choice. Share and learn from each other's experience.

ummrashid said...

Also, sorry to hear of yet another bad experience for S.

Anonymous said...

Actually, after I'd posted and switched off the computer I remembered that the lack of freedom of choice was the main thing that got me down. Sometimes school can work well, like I mentioned nursery sometimes has quite positive experiences. It's the compulsion in it I hate, and I cringe when I read the translated documents which say 'Compulsory school' begins at age 7.
S is over it I think alhamdulillah.just have to keep perssure on teachers/ headteacher, UmmSuhayb