Not quite a home educator

The essence of home education lies in regarding your own child as being too special and precious to be treated like all other children. This is not in itself a bad thing, of course. Just because every other kid in the class is the victim of an unprincipled bully, there is no reason at all why you should accept that your son should be one of them. In my own case, I saw that all the children in the neighbourhood were attending lousy schools where they were receiving an inferior education and did not see why my own daughter should follow suit. Of course, this attitude on the part of parents who choose to educate their children at home does not tend to endear them to other mothers and fathers! It makes us look a little snobbish, as though we think that we are better than they are or care more for our children.

Now choosing home education is one thing; that is to say ignoring the local school and just letting them get on with it while you tackle the job yourself. Just imagine though, sending your child to an ordinary state school and then applying to the Secretary of State for Education to force them to teach your own kid to an entirely different curriculum to everybody else! This is the peculiar thing attempted by the woman who runs this blog:



http://parentsguidetoeyfs.wordpress.com/category/eyfs-exemptions/



This person was unhappy with the Early Years Foundation Stage; the curriculum taught to all young children in the country. I have reservations about it myself, as I am sure will many readers. The remedy is of course, not to send your child to a state school if you disapprove that strongly. What Frances Laing did though was to send her child to school and then cut up rough because the kid was expected to learn and achieve what every other child at every state school in the country was expected to be doing.

I cannot help but think that in her heart, Frances is really a home educator. As you will see from her blog, her request for her child to be freed from the constraints of the Early Years Foundation Stage was turned down flat. You have to ask yourself though, feeling as she did about state schools; why on earth did she send her child to one in the first place? I wonder of any readers know anything about this woman, of whom I had never heard until yesterday? I am sure that she is really a home educator, albeit a frustrated one who is unable actually to teach her own child at home for whatever reason. At any rate she certainly seems to have that bloody-minded and awkward streak that is the infallible hallmark of the true home educator.