Home schooling

is not for everyone. 

I really feel for those parents in the UK who are once again trying to get their children to do some schoolwork during the lock down there. If you have not chosen to teach your children at home and you don't have a dedicated space in which to do it or the materials with which to do it, let alone the internet connection to connect with the school and the teachers..... yes, we all know the problems.

I know people who have been home schooled. Some of them have fared better than others. My second-cousin-once-removed home schooled her six children. The last of them still has two years to go but the others have all ended up at university. Two of these have their degrees and one of those two is doing post-graduate research. Yes, they have done well - with some help from their grandfather, a former teacher and school deputy-head, and people like the Senior Cat.

I know other people who have likely done about as well as they would in school. They also come from devout families for whom attending school did not seem to be an option.

I also know people who have not been able to attend school or who have been in and out of school due to illness or disability. There are four young people I know well who have serious medical conditions for whom the past year has been really hard. They have been in almost permanent isolation. They know one another well and are a tight little group. They met in hospital and, all being just a few months apart in age, they worked together there and then elsewhere. Now they meet over the knitting needles and other  issues, two boys and two girls.  

One of them recently had major surgery and it will be a while before he is well enough for them to physically meet but they are in touch with one another through other means. Their friendship will survive not meeting for several months because they are now really young adults and they have been through so much together that people outside the  quartet do not understand them in the same way. Yes, they have other friends - mostly from church youth groups - but their life experiences are different.

One of my closest friends is someone who did not go to school until she was thirteen.  She is a brilliant scholar and linguist - and she is also disabled. School was not a happy experience for her. "I still remember how much time they wasted there." 

But all these experiences are quite different from those of children who are used to going to school each day, used to sitting in a classroom and learning in school-based ways. Their teachers are finding it different too. Distance teaching, even with all the modern technology available, is different. Learning is different too. A good classroom teacher will be getting the students to stimulate each other. If you are at home alone and your parents have no time or no ability - or both - to help then it is not the same. 

Someone asked me how they could best help their own two children through the current UK lock down. She is trying to work from home at the same time. Her husband is too. "We are fortunate. We all have our own space but the schooling issue has been largely left to me. What else can I do?"

One of the things I suggested was reading to the children at night. something they had stopped doing when two children learned to read for themselves. Her husband has taken on that responsibility. 

I had an email yesterday telling me, "It's made a difference." 

I suspect that the current need to home school also needs to include the need to read each night.