*"Homeschooler /Anti-School C. R. Thread!"*

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The more i think about this, the more I realise that the prevailing attitude on here, that homeschooling is a last ditch choice, the last resort, ( even the version which allows that it might be the right choice, for the right parents ), is absolutely not respectful.

But that this isn't surprising really, as DW_a_mom said , the reason for this is that state schooling is for most people not a choice; it is an automatism, surrounded by social approval/validation, to the point that for many it is the only education they consider until are challenged by its failure, by their own child's direct/unmediated reactions to it, to think about it.

And even then the tragedy is that many people are still so in thrall to the great thing school that they will often more easily believe that the problems are their child's fault rather than of the school system. And/or prefer to medicate, and struggle with it. They even think it's normal, for children to suffer this much, for learning to be so difficult.

It's not as if I believe that homeschooling is the ideal in the long term. I see it as more of an interim measure until society changes to allow children to study with adults, to learn in freestanding centres whatever grabs them, to enter workplaces and learn hands on, to follow short intensive courses in things like languages and info tech, etc while books, internet connections, mediatheques etc are available to all, and people with experience pass on their know-how in small groups or one to one.

But until then, in view of the disastrous effect state-school has on childrens emotional and intellectual growth and development, and the difficulties this creates, I believe that avoidance of schools is the priority, if can possibly manage it.

Seeing as this has become a discussion thread about homeschooling, I will reply to your post after all. Sorry about virulent dismissal back there, but that was before I understood that it's not homeschoolers that need support!

That is what i did, lots of it, with disastrous results, because at school I learned nothing but a disguise for survival, surface/superficial stuff.

School is not the safest place to learn social responses. The safest environment for most, if not all, children, is at home, and/or with family. Small doses of social interaction, in a setting where the child feels safe, are much more effective than the extended marathon ones at school.

So my son has karate and fencing classes each week, and we meet up with another homeschooling family about once a week. Other homeschoolers have far more contact with other people. It depends on what works for the family.

From these little exposures to socialising my son is slowly, but steadily and surely, building up his social skills, and they are his, not a defence system erected to protect himself in the frightening/exhausting environment which school is for many, which would have little to do with his natural way of dealing with people, which is with natural confidence and self respect.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Mar 2008, 3:09 am, edited 2 times in total.

This is the reverse of what happens. For example, my son is more adventurous about what he eats than most school children, perhaps because he was breastfed, but also because he is not subject to the pressures of school dining situations, has time to enjoy his food, and is not presented with over cooked tasteless or oversalted junk that passes for food in most school canteens.
What is the point of numbing someone out with noise and lights while there are still, and increasingly many, jobs where can work alone, in front of a computer, or in a car, etc?

How do you know that this is not the way to live? What is wrong with it? Many of the greatest writers of all time spent/d most of their lives in one room, calling for take outs. "The right way to live" entirely depends on who you are. That is up to you. But I don't know why you think you "have" to go out. Actually i do, because i have the same thing, a socially constructed idea of what "the right way to live" is. Dorms are an american thing maybe; i went to university and always had a room to myself; in fact in england/UK the idea of sharing a room ( except with family, close friends for short periods, or a partner), is seriously out of the question!

Did you know that exams and tests, and even entire courses can be taken from home, or in one-to-one situations?

First of all, homeschoolers, as someone else said indignantly, need not be quiet, lonesome, sensorily deprived at all; it all depends on what works, and secondly there are some pretty great career opportunities which involve peace and quiet, and for which can prepare fairly independently. In fact numbing someone out so they could cope with noisy chaotic environments might quite possibly disqualify them from just those those careers which would most suit them. (my case!)

One of the most noticeable and reliable characteristics of people with Aspergers is that, if they are not numbed out, or investing all their mental energy in social skills/survival, they have "interests"; that they "stimulate" themselves; that they go actively in search of learning, and that they are not allowed to do this in school. Even at University most, if not all, work has to follow guidelines set out beforehand by teachers/profs, and original thought or findings are often actively not welcomed by profs ( unless they can steal it perhaps! ).

I am assuming the presence of internet in this hypothetical homeschooling situation; therefore any deep probing questions a child has don't need to be answered by the parent. That would be medieval!

I have no idea what a standard homeschooling curriculum looks like, because i don't think one exists. Even homeschoolers like us following a correspondence course use it the bare minimum possible, ( about 5 hours a week) and the rest of the time my son just "has fun". During which fun he reads, writes, counts, thinks, finds things out, works out solutions to new problems, etc.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Mar 2008, 3:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

I never said anything near this.

Are you aware that my county has two "state" schools that run on completely alternate ideologoy? That the parents in those school districts asked for an alternate way of teaching, and were granted it? That these schools actually match the ideal you have outlined? You don't consider it possible, do you? And, yet, those schools exist. And, yet, you would apply your broad brush to them as well as all other "state" schools everywhere.

Again, you cannot and should not make the broad sweeping statements that you insist on making until you have visited every last school in every last country on this earth.
You only "know" what you have seen and read about. You need to stop presuming that you "know" about absolutely everything else.

The thing is, whether or not you like it, the world of work, of earning money to pay the bills, ALSO works this way. Are you under the impression that it does not? Then you are incorrect. While Aspies make up our greatest inventors and thinkers, they are also face huge challenges obtaining and keeping employment, as you will discover if you read other forums at this site. A very high percentage have been homeless, and accept that at some time in the future they may be again. So is it really so terrible to have them learn the skills they will need to make it through adult life independly? Some can learn those skills, and become comfortable with them; some cannot. As parents, we try to work with our children to sort through that, what they are comfortably capable of, and what they are not. For those who cannot adjust to the environment, your ideas are completely on-line. They need a different life. But for those who can, and who can use that experience to succeed in life, why not? Shouldn't it be their choice to do so? Don't you, as a parent, prefer to see your children grow up into adults who can keep a job, instead of ones who cannot? Note, I am NOT about to say that "state" school is the only way to acquire those skills, since I know many homeschooled children who acquire them well. I am just wondering if you see the connection, that the practices you dispise so much in what you call "state" school, are also the practices common in the world of work?

I have a question. Would you send your child to a "state" school if that is what the child told you he wanted?

Ouinon, I understand that you are passionate about homeschooling, and I do appreciate that. What I dislike is that you insist on expressing that passion by knocking down other parents and their choices. Instead of showing us all the beauty in homeschooling, you insist on telling us our public schools are harming our children, when we can see clearly that is not always the case. I agree with you that social skills can be acquired in a homeschool environment; I have NEVER advocated the teaching of social skills as a reason to send a child to public school.

Plus, have you ever considered, that almost everyone exposes themselves and their children to real harm almost daily, the minute they enter a car? Does that mean we stop driving? No. We all must constantly weigh benefits against risks. It is all about balancing the choices in the way that works best for each unique family.

Sometimes I wonder if you read my posts at all ...

ANYWAY, I MUST MUST MUST get my work done. I do not, unfortunately, live in a world that will pay the mortgage on my house while I engage in intellectual debate on the internet.
I am not, sadly, free to simply pursue my interests without constraints. Few people in real life are. It doesn't pay the bills.

And, no, I am not a huge mindless consumer. Small house, old car, an effort to really live just with what we need. And some fun things thrown in because their feed our minds and allow us to pursue SOME of our interests. When I say "pay the bills," I'm talking food, health insurance, housing. And eating out, sometimes - because I would rather spend time more time with my children than spend every night cooking (their idea of helping for fun does not run to every single day).

I was thinking of something you said on my other thread:I do read your posts you see, but perhaps retain only an overall sense of them!
I will go back and erase ref to you if you like.

I would like to know more about them, before accepting that they match the description I gave of the ideal learning web/network. For instance are the children free to come and go as wish, to study only what they wish? What age children have these freedoms, if they do? Are there both adults and children learning? Who provides the guidance and aid when "students" need any? What assessment policy is there if there is one? etc.

But even if the institution(s) do match up they are only exceptional exceptions, splendid privileges in an area of unusually wealthy parents who have considerable clout/pull compared to most school counties.

In the same way as the californian family abusing their children under cover of homeschooling, this example of "alternative" school institutions in the state system is insignificant in the wider scheme of things. It does not persuade me that state education is a good thing, just that it caters better to its rich clients than to others, thus perpetuating privilege, which is what I said it was partly in business to do.

Yes. I know there are a few ( v. few ), homeschooling parents who refuse their child(ren) the choice, but I would always allow my son to decide. And in fact at regular intervals I ask him, and we discuss the possible benefits to be garnered from school attendance.

I think most homeschoolers allow their children the choice; it is part of the homeschooling philosophy, to listen to and trust our childrens feelings about things.

Last edited by ouinon on 21 Mar 2008, 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We're fine. It's been clarified adequately in this thread now, I believe.

I need to work.

It's been interesting.

Have a good day with your children.

But these are people who have been through the state school system!

I know only too well, and precisely, in what way school cut me off from exactly those talents with which I could actually have made a good living if I had been allowed to deepen and strengthen and develop them at an early enough age, when one is learning "work rhythms", gaining confidence, honing skills and practicing.

It is in fact state schooling which i believe "robbed me" of the opportunity to do what i needed to, at the age I needed to do it, in order to be able to work productively in adulthood, for money, at something I was actually good at and maybe even enjoyed.

Instead i was cutting out squares of graph paper, doing another long multiplication sum, writing out yet another example of how to use the word "lengthy", copying an nth something or other off the blackboard, listening to another child droning her way through a paragraph of some book, or holding my hand up in the air for the tenth time in half an hour waiting for the teacher to decide whom to honour with her "yes?".

Years of my precious time, the best years for developing talents, intensifying interests, exploring possibilities; years wasted on "nothing", nothing of any importance.

I'm just wondering whether i could make a case for a claim for compensation; compensation for the waste/loss of the most important years of my life. It is disgusting, scandalous, horrifying. The deprivation enforced on children in school. When I could have been writing my stories, drawing and painting, thinking, reading, instead I was sitting at a desk obliged to pretend to listen to a teacher telling me something of no use to me.

The utter and total lack of respect for the importance of a child's time is almost too extreme to see ( I think it's called not being able to see the wood for the trees ). The rage ( and sadness ), grows as I write about it on here, and read more and more of Holt and Illich, and Gatto, as understand more and more fully what was stolen from me by those all those years of school.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Mar 2008, 3:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ouinon, you are talking about a whole cultural mind-shift. Work/school/home/community are all interrelated, but it isn't productive to focus on one element without thinking about the whole. Children aren't the only ones who aren't allowed to spend all their time being their greatest selfs, and I honestly don't know how society could provide that gift to eveyone and still get things done.

In the workforce, one thing will never change: stuff has to get done that is tedious, dull and wholely uninspiring. That will be true no matter how great one's childhood is; that person will have to be able to perform tasks that they find uninteresting as an adult. Hm, perhaps I should have been BETTER trained at that, lol, so that my kids didn't have to live in such a messy house! Honestly, it isn't even all imposed by others: much of it is the simple business of living.

And I don't know how you plan to completely avoid heirarchy. Someone has to decide who is going to do what, or nothing can be accomplished. If the task assigned to you is repititive and dull, you still have to do it. SOMEONE has to. There isn't much left that is "make work." Some, yes, but for the most part people have gotten smart enough to rebel against it, and if the task really needs to be done.

We all end up finding a balance that works for us. My sister holds down a job she doesn't care for, but it's 9 to 5 and she lives her passions on the weekends. That is the balance she choose. I actually find my paid work really interesting, most of the time, and I get a lot of satisfaction from it. But it only utilizes a fraction of my skills, and I've found a lot of joy in seeking out volunteer work that utlizes many of the others. Sure, my dad told me I couldn't study art, because it would never pay, but I long ago came to terms with that. It's not like he robbed me of my talent. He just asked me to find a different place for it. Over time, I've come to realize that a career in art would not have suited me, I tie up a lot more of myself in my art than in my business, and that is very draining. So, I just painted out an amazing banner for my daughter's softball team. It was a blast. It was my choice. And it doesn't matter if anyone is willing to buy it.

You cannot blame society or an institution like school for opportunities you feel have been lost. For the most part, we all make our own opportunities. But, if my husband and my father are any indication, it may be very Aspie to not be able to see the road to that. I don't have an answer for you on that; you will have to find it for yourself. It may be that the inability to confront the mundane barriers is a necessary part of being able to think as far out of the box as many Aspies can. The burden to the gift. I have no idea, but I do know that when my husband and I pair up, I guide him through the stupid roadblocks and free him to be himself, well, really cool things happen.

I am sorry that you have had experiences that have left you frustrated with the efforts your parents and school made to try to raise you. It is always difficult for someone else to know what is best for another. All you can ask is that they give it an honest and understanding effort.

All our children have the best chance to be who they were meant to be than multiple generations going back. The world understands so much better. The process continues.

I would have liked that, very much, but instead I learned what it took to survive in school, which involved a mass of social skills, and used up almost all of my time energy and attention, so that although I finished by being, ( after several years of concentrated effort, and attention to the subject ) socially "successful" ( still odd/different but with enough smiley charm and self deprecation, and carefully applied clothes etc rules, to get by), there was no longer very much going on behind that.

After I had transformed myself into a social machine I was no longer very interested in anything. I no longer had any idea what I wanted to do in life apart from socialise, get stoned, watch films/read escapist books, ( which i had done increasingly from age 12 onwards) and fantasise.

A job was a tedious necessity, but I got one, which I sleep walked through as I had at school.

And I carried on drinking, smoking, having sex, buying clothes, running up a super-sized overdraft, until I read a book which forced me to think, for almost the first time in 10-15 years, and I rediscovered with joy and excitement, that I had a brain, and how wonderful it was to use it.

After this my fake/false me rapidly fell apart, though in stages. First of all I left London and moved (with a proper job to go to), to Cornwall, which is where, I suddenly remembered, I had dreamed of living as a child, ( until about 12).

In the space of a few years I uncovered the "me" which I had covered up and left behind, ungrown and unskilled, in order to survive school.
Yes, so long as it is not just a fragile and artificial carapace which allows them to "fit in" but at massive cost to the rest of their being.
I answered yes on the last page. Would you let your children homeschool if they wanted? Would you even ask them? Do you give them the choice?

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Mar 2008, 5:20 am, edited 3 times in total.

I find it very disturbing and saddening that your argument for sending children to school is that adult life/work is boring, dreary, frustrating, restricting, etc.

Apart from being illogical, ( there is no proof at all that children cope better as adults if spend most of the first 18 years of their life being bored, frustrated, and restricted, in order to sort and select them ; certainly not so that they learn; there are much quicker, pleasanter, and more longlasting and effective ways for children to lean to read, write, and do maths, etc ), it also sounds like the expression of a classic psychological mechanism, so common that even you would not be immune , which is of repeating with one's own children exactly those things which most suffered from oneself as a child.

Which is why it is so difficult, I do recognise that, to think outside the rut, to see clearly the harm. Almost all abusers do not think that they are abusing, they are so alienated from their own childhood memories of suffering that they do not feel the suffering of their victim.

I really struggled to ignore my conditioning, which made me afraid to step outside of the school system, which made me believe that "it couldn't be as bad as all that, ...surely", and made me carry on half believing the teachers even when their error/misguidedness/incompetence was unmistakeable, because they were all smiling and friendly and well intentioned, as if school would be alright if nice people taught there.

You are right, it is a "cultural mindshift", but it is not necessary to wait for the revolution to do something about it for thousands/millions of children.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Mar 2008, 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.