Educational Matters
I have passed my Childcare NVQ, I am informed today. Ironically enough just a fortnight after giving up part-time Nursery work to fulltime homeschool my ten-year-old.
The daughter is on a bit of a roll this week - yes we've had the rellies down from the land of Mills and whippets which disrupted work in the beginning part of the week, but on the other hand she has produced a stunning piece of work on American Isolationism in WW2 this morning after watching the World At War episode on that subject yesterday. Lindbergh, Willkie, Roosevelt - all the major personalities are there, with a damn accurate timeline of events as well. She is now upstairs reading about the Battle of Midway, the first naval battle in history which exclusively consisted of air-ship combat.
She worked late today to finish a piece on Mummification (our current Religious Studies/History area is Ancient Egypt). That's a work ethic you dont find either encouraged or present at school - she went some twenty minutes over time but got a 10/10 for Content which is almost unheard of from me in the ten weeks or so we've been doing this, fascist taskmaster that I am.
We have our first 'inspection' tomorrow morning. The LEA (which wouldntbe there under a UKIP Government, maybe best not to mention that) likes to make six-monthly checks to see what resources/methods are being used and to check progress, apparently. Some of the more militant homeschooling parents of our acquaintance have advised us not to let anyone into our home, which true enough we dont have to do. However we are quite confident that a ten-year old who spends two hours looking at Wikipedia records of US Presidential Elections and asking questions about the personalities involved isnt going to be deemed not to be fulfilling her potential...
Its scary how fast she is coming along at home. Last week she scored 80% on a Maths paper intended for children 18 months further along, and Maths is her poorest subject! Huge improvements in handwriting, grammar, and general presentation. This in ten weeks. Is this a compliment to our teaching methods? Not especially I suspect. Its much more an indictment of the first degree murder of British Education in the last thirty years of Politically Correct Leftist lunacy.
The fear? Not that we aren't doing a good enough job educating her at home, but that she will be so far ahead of the curve when she goes back for High School that she gets bored.
What a country.
The daughter is on a bit of a roll this week - yes we've had the rellies down from the land of Mills and whippets which disrupted work in the beginning part of the week, but on the other hand she has produced a stunning piece of work on American Isolationism in WW2 this morning after watching the World At War episode on that subject yesterday. Lindbergh, Willkie, Roosevelt - all the major personalities are there, with a damn accurate timeline of events as well. She is now upstairs reading about the Battle of Midway, the first naval battle in history which exclusively consisted of air-ship combat.
She worked late today to finish a piece on Mummification (our current Religious Studies/History area is Ancient Egypt). That's a work ethic you dont find either encouraged or present at school - she went some twenty minutes over time but got a 10/10 for Content which is almost unheard of from me in the ten weeks or so we've been doing this, fascist taskmaster that I am.
We have our first 'inspection' tomorrow morning. The LEA (which wouldntbe there under a UKIP Government, maybe best not to mention that) likes to make six-monthly checks to see what resources/methods are being used and to check progress, apparently. Some of the more militant homeschooling parents of our acquaintance have advised us not to let anyone into our home, which true enough we dont have to do. However we are quite confident that a ten-year old who spends two hours looking at Wikipedia records of US Presidential Elections and asking questions about the personalities involved isnt going to be deemed not to be fulfilling her potential...
Its scary how fast she is coming along at home. Last week she scored 80% on a Maths paper intended for children 18 months further along, and Maths is her poorest subject! Huge improvements in handwriting, grammar, and general presentation. This in ten weeks. Is this a compliment to our teaching methods? Not especially I suspect. Its much more an indictment of the first degree murder of British Education in the last thirty years of Politically Correct Leftist lunacy.
The fear? Not that we aren't doing a good enough job educating her at home, but that she will be so far ahead of the curve when she goes back for High School that she gets bored.
What a country.
Labels: Amber, Brittish Educayshun, Homeschooling
posted by Dangerouslysubversivedad at 7:11 PM
9 Comments:
Battle of Midway, the first naval battle in history which exclusively consisted of air-ship combat.
Not quite "exclusive". Submarine sunk a detroyer and delivered the coup-de-grace to the Yorktown
Bless her.
Lets just say hypothetically that my GF was pregnant and i was going to home school the kid. What book would you recommend I read to help form an overview?
Im thinking to help me structure it. What is legally required but more importantly, well what works. Overview stuff. A starting point. Hypothetically you understand.
http://www.vnunet.com/computeractive/software/2184377/review-battlestations-midway
BTW, there is a new game out about that battle. I havnt played it and dont know much about it, but you can see it at the link above.
Anonymous,
True enough, my bad. LOL, I'm sure she would have corrected me if she'd read that :)
Gareth,
I havent read any books on homeschooling - I would visit www.education-otherwise.org for a lot of good info and the legal aspects. Apart from that, most areas have a local homeschooling group of one sort or another and they are usually happy to correspond.
Thanks. Reading something on the site you pointed me to actually inspired a post on my blog.
"However we are quite confident that a ten-year old who spends two hours looking at Wikipedia records of US Presidential Elections and asking questions about the personalities involved isnt going to be deemed not to be fulfilling her potential..."
I wouldn't be so sure. LEA Inspectors (and similar) measure quality and success not by what your daughter knows, understands and can do, but by adherence to central diktats, which change from day to day. The ZanuLabor mob appear to believe that if *only* everyone followed their wonderful ideas then everything would be magically brilliant. (Hence most monitoring is about bullying staff into following them)
So what if your child is fluent in seven languages, writes poetry in Ancient Greek and can do calculus at age 9 and has split the atom ?
Have they had appropriate citizenship, anti-racism and diversity training ? Are you correcting her work using a red pen ? Do you encourage a variety of learning styles ?
This sounds like sarcasm ; it actually is this bad. Teachers in state schools stick to the incredibly rigid curriculum ; they'll get slaughtered if they don't. That curriculum is, generally, total sh1te.
This causes problems in Private Schools, where children are frequently sent to avoid NuLabour's cr*p ideas on life and education, so they can do dreadful things like reading, writing and sums. Schools are bullied by OFSTED (using threat of adverse reports) into doing the same rubbish as state schools.
The cynics viewpoint is that they are trying to drag non-state education down to the same standards as state education.
More on this please.
Midway phooey. How about Taranto (Nov 1940) and the attack on the Prince of Wales and Repulse (10 Dec 1941)?
DSD - so glad to hear that you are homeschooling! It's just unbelievable, isn't it? The experience of spending that time with your kids and watching them learn and respond? Amazing. I love it. I am positive that we, as parents, expect more from our kids. We are not into just squeaking by. They will know the subject, or they will not continue on. Congratulations to you and your family!
As for high school - many of the homseschooling families that I know with high school age children are sending them to the community college for a couple of courses per semester. They are that far advanced in their studies. There will be plenty out there to challenge her if the government schools are unable to rise to the occasion.
You'll be fine. She'll be fine!
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