Today was like yesterday except in reverse. A really good day that should on the surface have been dreadful.
It started unpromisingly I had had very little sleep and had picked up my other half from the airport at such an ungodly hour that a headless chicken could have got us back to the North Shore before rush hour. Unfortunately my sense of direction is inferior to a headless chicken, so we spent a hour or two circling bits of the city we really DIDN'T need to see. Home, and having happily played in the Mcdonalds we stopped at for, um, breakfast (please don't slate me, parents who don't feed their children rubbish), my son seized up when we got home and couldn't manage to get out of the house. Sigh. Second child had tantrum at school drop-off: then third child had tantrum on way to kindy (he was either VERY keen on the Superman outfit in their dressing-up kit or not very keen at all, such was his state of despair I couldn't work out which)
I had coffee with a friend, came back to the house and braced myself. None of us had slept enough. Today was going to be a tough day.
But it went swimmingly, and I'm still trying to work out why. (Yes, I know, gift horse in the mouth). Partly I was cheered up by a nice conversation in the school carpark with a senior staff member (This is why I can't actually bear the thought of de-registering my son. I like all the teachers far too much). But partly I think, my son and I had just got the hang of this home education thing. We both knew what to expect from each other. I told him he needed to do half an hour of spelling and half an hour of Mathletics, and he did what he was told. Then we messed around on the computer together and had fun, I mean I did an ART lesson.
This was because we'd watched an episode of the Simpsons where Bart does graffiti, I mean street art. I thought "Ha! An original idea for an art lesson!" I found a website that lets you write your name in, like, cool graffiti-style. (I have never been the slightest bit cool. I think I may be overcompensating). My plan was to show my son the website and then spend a few minutes pontificating to him about what "street art" and "graffiti" actually is.
He took one look and said "cool, I'm going to do street art?" Pushed me out of the way and started to fiddle with the controls. Then as he worked he asked me questions about street art, just the sort of questions I was planning to discuss with him, only he brought them up so that I didn't need to.
It was lovely. Just what you think education should be like. Hooray for the Simpsons. I didn't have to be Superman, swooping in with my knowledge, because he was leading the questioning. Interest-led learning, etc. All good. And - for the first time ever - he didn't clockwatch, obsess about when the lesson was ending. He was enjoying himself so much he didn't desperately want class time to end.
And I was relieved, because when I went for a walk by the beach yesterday afternoon I realised that something very strange was happening to my thinking. I was repeatedly coming up with reasons why home education (of some variety, part-time, correspondence, flexible school attendance) was not right at all for our family: and finding that my reasons were actually really rubbish, unhealthy and prejudiced. They were nonsense. Oh Lordy, I thought with alarm. This is one of THOSE times.
This has only happened to me once before in my life, when I started to feel as a young woman that God was calling me in the direction of the ordained ministry, and pushed the thought away very firmly, because I was very sweary and not at all patient with others, and more importantly I didn't like church. You will guess what happened next. A similar experience happened to a priest friend of mine, a senior cleric in the Church of England, a leading light in the fight against women priests. A sort of misogynist's Superman. Nice guy. He sat down one day to write a strongly worded article to his parishioners on the reasons why he rejected women's ordination, and to his alarm and embarrassment realised that he didn't actually have any reasons worth writing of, because all the reasons he could think of were complete nonsnse. He then had the courage to stand up at the next Synod and announce with sonorous rigour "I have changed my mind."
It is a conversion experience when you suddenly realise that all the deeply held opinions you have had on a subject are wrong.
Now I'm still rather desperately hoping that this is all a short-term blip, and home education is NOT right for our family. But I rather think it might be, at some point, in some way, in some degree. At least a little bit. (Maybe just on Saturday and Sundays?) But anyway, even if it isn't a path we end up walking I'm going to be a lot less dismissive of the ideals and practice of home ed now I've had to think seriously about it. For the time being it sounds as if the Northern Health School are going to get involved. I have no idea whether they are good or rubbish, but they are the people who specialise in working with kids who are too sick to be in school. That's good, because hopefully they will tell me what to do and I can just mindlessly follow their instructions. They probably won't be involved longterm as they have a tight budget (don't we all) and are apparently reluctant to be a longterm substitude for school, but hopefully it will give everyone enough breathing space to work out how I can best claw back some semblance of a life for myself, er, I mean what is best for my child. They feel a bit like superheroes, soaring in through the window to save my sanity and shopping time. Perhaps they'll even be able to work out whether my youngest does or doesn't want to dress up like Superman.
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