Home Ed: Don't Panic!

Okay, first things first. Make a cup of tea. Or coffee. Or, at this point - gin.

Next. Stick the kids on a game. Or in front of the TV. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It’s half an hour of peace for you, and they’ll love you for it and if you forget to get back to education today, it really won’t matter.

If you’re in a total panic, turn to the end of this article for ‘Emergency Things to Know’. If not read on…

Better? Right. Breathe! It was suggested to me that as a home educator by choice, and not by necessity, that it might be useful for me to write an article about how I do it. I don’t know how useful you’ll find the following. For me, it’s a long- term choice; for most of you, a temporary hell to be got through. You guys are educating with one eye on the school’s expectations – I have no one to answer to but my kids.

However, I’m going to try to reassure you that you will not terminally damage your kids if - in the middle of a global pandemic, while trying to hold down a job and feed everyone -you really can’t deal too well with educating your kids as well. The utter nonsense that has been spouted about the ‘tragedy’ of kids missing school for a few months has driven me to distraction. It’s been used to gaslight teachers and to make parents think that they’re completely incompetent and only someone with a teaching qualification can possibly be the saviour of their child’s future. It’s nonsense. No one knows your children better than you do. Kids miss entire years of school and it does them no harm in the long run.

Here’s the thing you need to remember. School is about education for large groups. Home education is way more efficient. There’s no register, no crowd control, no finding books or sharpening pencils, no mass mobilisation just to complete a daily mile, no enforced breaktimes and lunchtimes and no little shit called Ryan disrupting the entire proceedings. It’s you and your kids and that’s it. As such, you can get through what needs doing in a tiny fraction of the school day. Some of what I do may seem a little too ‘hands off’ to you, particularly if you’re used to endless homework and worksheets which repeat the same information over and over. But it works.

Here's the truth: My 10-year-old twins do an hour to two hours of informal learning per day. In that time we cover arithmetic, reading and writing. That’s it. One to two hours at P7 level and that’s me exaggerating so that I look good.

Here’s what we do: Reading is the key to all learning, and it’s the key to perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation. Read enough and you never have to use spelling lists or do endless worksheets about verbs – and I do mean this. You pick it all up through losing yourself in adventure stories and it never feels like work. If you have a child who doesn’t like reading, use this time to find a book that they’ll love and encourage, encourage, encourage. I had one child who was a bit of a reluctant reader. We left a copy of Private Eye on the table and told her not to read it because it was full of adult stuff and swear words. Boom. You can guess what happened. Read together. Read to them even though they’re 11. Let them see you reading. Reading is non- negotiable in my house and really, it’s the only education they need at primary level.  

We also write a lot. We write stories. I give a first sentence, and they carry on for a page or two. We write journal/diary stuff and we debate on the page – reasons why I shouldn’t have a bedtime and that sort of thing. For younger kids, making lists is great fun. For older kids, let them make the list, then turn it into a piece of writing. Get them reading newspapers and trying to write their own. Writing e-mails to friends counts as writing. Creating comic books counts as writing. We never do reading comprehension or spelling lists. There’s no need.

Arithmetic happens. None of them are particularly fond of it, but we do a bit each day. Times tables memorised is the non-negotiable primary school thing in this house and from there we jump around, ignoring the school curriculum and doing high school stuff like Pi and data, or spending all day doing practical stuff like measuring the garden and drawing a plan. If you want them to do something with maths and are out of ideas, try getting them to do the Fibonacci sequence for as far as they can in thirty minutes. If they are too young for that, make a long strip of paper at least two metres long and write an enormous addition sum on it, perhaps 50 numbers long. Try to get off the page with maths. Throw a ball back and forth while adding or multiplying. Measure stuff. Make graphs.

On Wednesdays when I’m lecturing and they need to work unsupervised, they research whatever questions they have about whatever subjects they’re interested in at the time. This week it’s been bison (don’t ask) Iceland (the country not the freezer shop, although I wouldn’t put it past them) and the Sun (hot thing in sky not newspaper) Areas of what is called the ‘curriculum’, like science, history and geography are covered through reading books and on their research day. They come up with questions: they seek answers. They proceed to bend my ear about all the things they’ve found out until bedtime. This is incredibly powerful. One thing school graduates are not good at is asking questions. They are taught to the exam syllabus, provided with the answers, but never het to set the questions. By the time I meet them in tertiary education, they’ve all but lost the ability to be curious and ask about stuff.

Other than that, my kids are allowed to be kids. They ride their bikes, skateboard, walk. They play piano and do ballet and spend too much time on Minecraft. They use Lego and do loads of art and make books and bake cakes and write and perform plays and build dens and play in the woods. Playing is hugely important. Benign neglect creates resilience and self- sufficiency. They never look to me to entertain them.

Does it work? None of my kids have ever set foot in a school. My eldest child is now receiving unconditional offers at top universities to study Law. She passed GCSE’S in English and Law at 14, a full two years early and got top grades in her A levels. My middle child (15) is studying for a mixture of Highers and GCSE’S and trains with Scottish Ballet and at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire. The 10yr olds have reading ages far in advance of where they ‘should’ be and are on track to do exams early too – if they want to. There’s no expectation.

How is this possible? Because home ed is efficient. You get peace, so you can get work done much more quickly. Because you get the work done more quickly, you have more free time to do the things you really want to do. And because you have loads of time and freedom, you really don’t mind doing a little bit of work that is challenging and gives you a sense of accomplishment when you achieve it. If the difficult stuff (and work should always be a little challenging otherwise what is the point?) is rewarding and doesn’t take up the whole day, then you do it happily. And I do mean happily. There’s no moaning.

Don’t try to do school at home. The expectation that your child should ‘do school’ from 9 -3 is completely unrealistic and, in my opinion, pretty unhealthy. You don’t want to live in a school and neither do your kids. If you’re working from home (as I am) you have to have a serious conversation – even with little children – about what your job is and what their job is. Agree that there will be a little work that happens every day, but that you trust them to come up with really good fun stuff to do the rest of the time. Limit screens. Limit noise if you need to. But say yes, embrace the mess and relax. If the school isn’t sending stuff for them to do, then see how you feel each day. They don’t need a routine. This capitalist worker bee society is obsessed with routine, but freedom is much more stimulating. Don’t be afraid to say ‘No work today, but no screens either.’ You’ll be amazed at what they come up with.

I’ve concentrated here on primary school because by the time they get to high school, your kids will be on a fixed curriculum and are on the countdown to exams. They are old enough to take responsibility for themselves and to work without supervision. Let them take that responsibility. Everything they need to know is online. Trust me. We’ve covered N5, GCSE’s, Highers and A-levels in this house: the materials and explanations, the videos and worked examples are on there. Don’t let them kid you into thinking they need you to explain a physics formula. Set them up with a Khan Academy account and have another mug of gin.  

 

Emergency Stuff to Know!    

1. Always walk away and make a cup of tea. There’s a reason schools have staffrooms.
2. Kahn Academy is really good for Maths and Physics at all stages. Set up an account just in case. Look ahead in their maths book. Kahn is full of videos that you can watch when they are in bed and then you can spend the next day pretending that you know what you’re talking about and that you knew it all along. This is literally how I teach maths.
3. You Tube is amazing. You can learn any subject and any skill on You Tube. Never be stuck. The answer is always there, often presented by a reassuring middle- aged bloke in a bad jumper. You Tube is your buddy.
4.   Reading is all you need. If they’re reading, they are learning. This goes for comics, trashy magazines, tabloid newspapers and crime novels. It’s all fabulous stuff and counts as education on speed. If all you do during lockdown is feed them and supply books, you’ve done better than any school ever could.
5. The curriculum prioritises English and STEM subjects, but this is a political and ideological position. If your kid is amazing at art and wants to spend three hours a day drawing, or loves music and wants to play the piano for an entire morning, then let them. Encourage it. They’re talented and that needs supporting. Take advantage and watch what happens to their mood.
6. Try to be aware of whether you are getting them to do an exercise or work because you think it will be helpful, or if you’re just doing it so that at the end of the day you feel like you’ve done your ‘job’. Sir Ken Robinson spoke about how most school work was ‘low grade clerical work’. It is. It’s about filling time and keeping kids occupied. There’s no way my kids would stand for it and it would break my heart to see them doing pointless pages of repetition. Life and learning should be much more interesting.

 

(Post script

 

As a home educator I’m always asked the same questions! Here are my answers. Yes, it’s legal. No, we’re not inspected. We don’t follow school hours or any curriculum. We don’t pay for tutors. We can have holidays and days off whenever we want to (we took the whole of December off) Yes, they can do exams and yes, they can go to college or university. They are incredibly sociable, can talk to anyone, have friends and are generally, just normal, happy kids. No, they don’t have a routine, but what they do have is dedication and discipline: you don’t self- teach yourself A-levels or get into Senior Associates at Scottish Ballet without a fantastic work ethic. Yes, you and your kids could do it too.)

 

I hope this has gone a little way to reassure you that you can do this. Any questions? Stick them in the comments or ask me on Twitter. @verbisan