I've been doing some Internet reading in the past few days, and I'm pleased to report that I now have a much better understanding of how to home-school. (Part-time, obviously, when my son is in pain). To sum up:
If you're having a bad day, take the day off. If you're not having a bad day, remember that home-schooling should take place at home, in a structured environment, with a formal curriculum. Pre-packaged curriculae are the antithesis of what home-schooling should be about. Home-schooling should be about freedom to move, a road trip, days out learning in the real world. Real-world learning is a dangerous distraction from the real business of home-schooling, which is about protecting innocent and impressionable young minds from the sinful real world out there. If your child is struggling and you are unhappy, take the day off. A good homeschool parent lets the child lead the way. A good homeschool parent is a firm leader. Your child will learn as naturally as they breathe, if you don't get in the way. Your child will never succeed in life without Latin, Greek and the formal study of rhetoric. Experience beats textbooks. Home-schooling will fail without this [insert name here] course or textbook. Make sure your child gets up early or they will never develop a true work ethic. Let your child stay up all night so that they learn to listen to their body. If you're having a bad day, take the day off. A dedicated study room is absolutely essential for effective homeschooling. To express the true joined-up nature of study and life, make sure your child's education takes place in a space cleared on the kitchen floor between the dustbin and the potatoes. Do not limit screentime or your children will never learn that there is more to the Internet than Facebook. Remember that screentime is of the devil. If you are having a bad day, take a day off.
Phew, glad we've got all that straight. Obviously I'm still working out some of the finer details, but as far as I can see the only area of universal agreement is that days off are the answer to every crisis, and that home-schooling is much better all around than learning in school.
Which would be great if I didn't want to send him to school on his strong-and-walking days. Hmm, that means that the only piece of common ground I share with every other homeschooler in the universe is days off. Well, it's a start. Buoyed by enthusiasm from my research (and the kind support of you lovely friends on FB) I am slowly working out a few rough-and-ready home-schooling principles.
1) It doesn't really matter what I teach him. The national curriculum is arbitrary anyway.
This is a huge relief. I have stopped staring into the black hole that is Google wondering what age he will start reproaching me for never covering planetary magnetism at primary level, and if I have made a huge mistake by never studying Mandarin Chinese.
2) The point is to pass on a sense of the life-long adventure that is learning, not pass exams and stuff. Now, don't get me wrong. I rather liked exams. So does my son, that is why the best way we have found to motivate him to pay attention is to promise that if he is REALLY good and works hard all week, on Saturday he can sit a test with his father on the subjects we have studied, and we'll see who gets the highest mark. Hmm, not a natural candidate for unschooled education then. But therein lies my point: I would like in the next year or so to give him a sense that it is fun to learn stuff just because it's there, not just because you can get a pat on the back for doing well in the class or home test. If possible I would also like him to learn that you can enjoy learning about stuff unrelated to dinosaurs, but I accept that may be a little unrealistic.
3) The resources I give him are less important than the person I am.
I've been thinking about this good teacher business, and I came to the reluctant conclusion that actually home-schooling was not about being a good teacher but being a good parent. And being a good parent means, for me, modelling and pushing your child towards a healthy interdependence in relationships. (This is particularly important for children and young people with additional needs, who may have a different level of achievable independence than the average). The interdependent ideal is they learn to accept help where they need it, but also be independent where they can.
I am trying to apply this approach to homeschool too. I do not want the freestyle independent learning mode of unschooling, but nor do I want the extremely structured top-down approach of a child totally dependent on their teacher for curriculum. The way I see it, learning for a child should be about moving closer to the parent at one moment to listen to an explanation, then further away to explore stuff for themselves, then finding that there is a gap in knowledge or an unanswered question, and moving back towards the parent for assistance. A natural cycle of need and independence, then need again, but with the hope that gradually the need lessens and the independence grows.
Now at the moment - when my eight-year old son quite regularly needs help to wash himself, put on his trousers or rearrange the duvet on his bed, when he asks me to clean his teeth for him because he is just too sore - I am rather conscious of his physical needs being more than the average child. Half the time, he's like a newborn baby. All the more important to work on a healthy sense of emotional independence. So when I'm moving him around or bathing him, I try to do it with the same respect I would show an adult - "is this OK?" "Which T-shirt do you want?" "Tell me if it hurts." "If we tried getting you down the steps this way, would that be easier?" I try to remember that this situation could be reversed in forty years, and that relationships work best when they are not based on dependency or aloofness, but interdependence. So I try to look at our physical challenges as an opportunity for creative problem-solving. (Sometimes this Pollyannaish approach fails, so then I just scream at him to do it himself if he thinks I'm so hopeless. But you know, I'm trying). If possible, I'd like to transfer this attitude to home-schooling. Note to self: must consider further whether developing interdependency as a positive family outlook is compatible with bribing child to sit still with the promise of marshmallows in hot milk.
4) I do not have to do it well.
This was hard for me to grasp, but it was one of the most reassuring things. Fundamentally, let's face it, my son is a bright cookie who can already read and do basic arithmetic. If I manage to teach him anything at all, great, but it's not really essential for his longterm career. All I'm really doing is babysitting, on the days when he can't do "proper" school. That means I can have fun, be playful and experiment, I can read up on different homeschooling styles and try different bits of each. I don't have to get it right.
5) Er. That's it.
Right, must go off and polish my halo. All home-educating mothers are saints, didn't you know that? Totally dedicated to the cause of their child's emotional and spiritual wellbeing at the expense of anything and everything else. And they all have tidy houses and publish beautiful pictures of their child's independent artworks on lavishly illustrated blogs.
Or something. They're damn intimidating when you read them online, anyway.
Or possibly they're not a scary bunch at all. Perhaps they're just muddling along and doing the best they can, day to day. Perhaps they're really less self-confident than they seem. Perhaps, you know, they're learning on the job. Intimidated by the responsibility and trying to do the best they can. Just like me.
Gosh, all that thinking was hard work. I think I need to take a day off.
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