Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Home Education in the Papers

From the Telegraph, a piece from Cassandra Jardine on the pain of going to school, which is accompanied by a photo of a miserable child, subheaded "School daze: upset children will settle". Into what? seems to be a legitimate question. Longterm depression is a perfectly reasonable answer for some.

She explains why she is pleased she didn't HE.

"Her dramas took me straight back to the days when some of my children were so wretched in those first weeks that I seriously contemplated home education. I'm glad now that I didn't - not just for my own sake, but for theirs. Aside from the nightmare of being my own children's head teacher, they would have missed out on all the friendships that occupy 98 per cent of their time."

Derisive snorting isn't elegant, I suppose, but it is the only sane response.

(Just in case she is still wondering: HE children have infinitely more opportunity to indulge their friendships than any school kid. Mid-week sleep-over midnight feasts aren't a problem for HEks, for example.)

If you need cheering up, go to the Daily Mail for an HE piece with prevailingly positive comments.

1 comment:

Wobblymoo said...

Thats why we have to continue to work on the perception of what home education is, I have never seen this vision that most people have of it. Do these socially isolated children actually exist?