Episode 131
"I'd love to Home Educate but ... I'm not clever enough!"
Debunking Home Education Myths ...
So many people would like to home educate but feel that it is not accessible for them for various reasons. In this series, we will debunk some of these myths and counter some of the common reasons people feel they can't home educate.
Starting with ... "I'm not clever enough to home educate" - Emily, Charlotte and I discuss this common idea and why it's rarely parental education, cleverness, qualifications or knowledge that lead to a successful home education journey.
Transcript
Welcome to Home Education Matters, the weekly podcast supporting you on your home education journey.
Speaker A:Hello and welcome to another episode of Home Education Matters.
Speaker A:And today, Charlotte, Emily and I are going to be talking about one of the myths of home education.
Speaker A:And the one we're choosing today is I'm too thick to home educate.
Speaker A:I'm not clever enough.
Speaker A:I don't have a teaching degree.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I'm too stupid.
Speaker A:I don't know enough stuff.
Speaker A:And I think that that's what it boils down to, isn't it?
Speaker A:When we talk about cleverness, I don't think people are talking about not knowing how to do stuff.
Speaker A:I think they're talking about not knowing enough stuff.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:One thing that.
Speaker A:I was thinking about this before we started recording, and I was thinking about an example of why I think that actually it's worse to home educate when you're clever.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So bear with me on this one.
Speaker A:I've got a whole example in my head.
Speaker A:Imagine a scenario where you're driving in the car with your children, they're like 12, 13 years old, and you got the radio on and the news comes on and it says, oh, Israel has bombed Palestine.
Speaker A:And your children look at you and they go, that sounds a bit crap.
Speaker A:And you're like, oh, yeah, well actually I know all about this.
Speaker A:And you start telling them, oh, well, you know, after the Second World War, the world powers decided that Israel needed a little safe place that they could call their own.
Speaker A:And so they decided to give them back their homeland of Israel.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, there were people who were still living there and they didn't really like that.
Speaker A:And it ended up that, you know, the Palestinians were like shoved off their land and they were made to live in tents.
Speaker A:And then Israel kind of like kept.
Speaker A:Had a, like five day war or something.
Speaker A:And then they tried to take extra land.
Speaker A:And what you've done there is you've given them your knowledge of the event because you're clever in inverted commas.
Speaker A:And then I was thinking, okay, what about a scenario where you don't know any of that stuff and you're in the car and your child says to you, yeah, exactly right.
Speaker A:And your child says to you, oh, okay, like that sounds a bit crap.
Speaker A:Israel, Palestine.
Speaker A:And you go, yeah, I don't know, I don't know anything about that.
Speaker A:Why don't you go on Wikipedia and have a look?
Speaker A:And then you go on Wikipedia and they're like, that's really interesting.
Speaker A:And then you find yourself a couple of decent YouTube videos that tell you about It.
Speaker A:And then maybe you say, let's go to the library and see if they've got any books on it.
Speaker A:And that way your children have accessed that information, not through you.
Speaker A:And here's my controversial take.
Speaker A:I think that if your inadverted comma is clever, then your inclination is to get your child to access that information through your information about something.
Speaker A:And if you don't know about something, they access it through lots of other information methods of getting the information.
Speaker A:Ta ta.
Speaker A:That is why I am.
Speaker A:I have decided that in actual fact, we should all be very thick when we home educate.
Speaker A:The thicker the better.
Speaker B:The thicker the better.
Speaker C:The thicker the better.
Speaker B:That's my take, pun intended.
Speaker D:I think that's really interesting because actually reflecting on that, I grew up with very academic parents, very intelligent, and in actual fact, I found it much harder in later life to know.
Speaker D:I just accepted whatever they told me because they were clever.
Speaker D:So what they told me.
Speaker D:And so I never explored what I actually felt about things or made my own opinion about it.
Speaker D:And I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker D:If you feed too much to your children, you know, children, of course, you look up to your parents and what they say is gospel a lot of the time, and particularly if you think that they're cleverer than you.
Speaker D:You know, that kind of.
Speaker D:Let's just believe what they're saying and let's not explore it any further.
Speaker D:And I think that's the beauty of home education is I've learned so much alongside my children.
Speaker D:And when you can explore together, it's great because you also challenge your own beliefs and your own learnings because everything's changing all the time.
Speaker D:And what, you know, we were taugh years ago has changed, has developed.
Speaker D:There are new ideas, new sort of.
Speaker D:There's just so much that we can still discover, whether you were well educated or not.
Speaker D:And this myth that if you've got that education, therefore there's nothing you need to do other than impart your learning onto your child.
Speaker D:That's very limiting because actually there's so much more for you to learn and to develop within your home.
Speaker D:Educating of your children.
Speaker A:I think limiting's the word, isn't it?
Speaker C:Yeah, I'm that example.
Speaker B:I didn't have, I didn't do.
Speaker B:I did my GCSEs, but I didn't really go to school and I didn't get that many.
Speaker B:And then I didn't really know what I wanted to do after school.
Speaker B:And then I went to college and did hairdressing and then it wasn't until very later on that I was like, actually I really want a degree and I really want to do this stuff.
Speaker B:And I had to teach myself everything that I then learned.
Speaker B:So even, even down to parents being not knowing anything at that moment when they're pulling their children out of school, I was 23, 24 by the time I even went to uni.
Speaker B:So I, you know, I had to then teach all myself that stuff.
Speaker B:Then you can teach yourself anything.
Speaker B:You can always learn anything at all.
Speaker B:So even as a parent, if you're 40, 50, 60, whatever, and you've decided to pull your kids out of school and then you're like, oh, I'm not, I'm not clever enough, well then you can learn too.
Speaker B:At the same time, you don't have to.
Speaker B:You, there isn't an age at what your brain caps off at of learning capabilities.
Speaker B:You can just, you know, learn whenever you want to learn.
Speaker B:And whether that be with your kids.
Speaker C:Or like sometimes I'll.
Speaker B:If I know I'm gonna.
Speaker B:If one of the kids have asked something and I don't know some, whatever it is, I can't remember what she asked me yesterday.
Speaker B:She asked me something to do with.
Speaker B:My 6 year old is very interested in the body, like physically, like inside.
Speaker B:And she asked me about something to do with that and I had no clue whatever it was that she was talking about.
Speaker B:And I'm like, okay, so let's figure out that.
Speaker B:So I went away and did a little bit of mini research first so that I could, you know, have a conversation with her on a level.
Speaker B:But then the rest of it will be her looking into videos and watching videos and getting books and et cetera.
Speaker B:So I, I think it can also be, it can be a bit of both.
Speaker B:You can teach yourself and the kids can learn or if you don't know stuff or you do know stuff, everyone's capabilities of learning is different, isn't it?
Speaker B:Of what they know and what they don't know.
Speaker B:And you might know more about one subject than the other, which you can bring to the table, but another parent might not be able to bring to the table.
Speaker B:So I think it's situation dependent.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Or there's, there's always some things as well that you are more interested in finding out about than otherwise.
Speaker A:Like for example, my son always was always into my maths and I would sit with him and we would do math because my maths is terrible.
Speaker A:And so I would sit there next to him and do maths.
Speaker A:And realistically I was kind of learning alongside him, but also kind of not, because I just frankly just didn't really care that much to learn about it.
Speaker A:Whereas in contrast, if it was something like the solar system, I was like, ooh, yeah, I really want to know this stuff.
Speaker A:Like, I actually want to learn your astronomy alongside you because I just think that's a cool thing.
Speaker A:So you can pick and choose as well.
Speaker A:You don't have to learn everything that your child is learning.
Speaker A:Like, there's loads of stuff my son knows and my daughter knows that I do not know anything about.
Speaker A:And that's okay, because I don't need to know that they need to know.
Speaker A:I don't need to know.
Speaker A:I'm not doing the GCSE in travel and tourism.
Speaker A:I don't need to know that stuff, Right?
Speaker A:So realistically, like, if they want to learn about Minecraft and obsidian and stuff like that, more power to them, but I don't care, right?
Speaker A:So they can do that, but.
Speaker A:So you can kind of choose what you start to get clever in as you go through the journey.
Speaker A:Like, you can see it as an opportunity.
Speaker A:Okay, like, my spelling is really bad.
Speaker A:So I'm going to learn spelling alongside my children when they're learning their spelling, because maybe it's something that's always bothered you, but maybe you just think, actually, do you know what, I don't care that I can't spell because I've got a spell checker and I don't need to, but I would like to do more maths.
Speaker A:And then it's almost like you have that option to grow your cleverness.
Speaker A:I'm doing lots of inverted commas here.
Speaker A:Grow your cleverness through their journey.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker D:It's really lovely when your children can teach you things.
Speaker D:And I think that's a really amazing life skill for them to learn.
Speaker D:And also, you know, this kind of concept that listen to your elders and they know best and you're just a child, is very limiting.
Speaker D:And actually, children have an awful lot to teach us and it's really great if they have the confidence to challenge your ideas and your thoughts or, you know, have that opportunity.
Speaker D:I mean, my girls love teaching each other as well, which is also a lovely thing and a lovely aspect of home education.
Speaker D:But I love sitting down and hearing what they've been reading about or.
Speaker D:And sometimes they are teaching me things.
Speaker D:And yeah, it might be stuff that I'm not overly interested in, don't hang on to as information in my brain, but it's lovely to see that education, this, this kind of myth that you have to be taught everything.
Speaker D:But actually, you know, the, the thirst for learning is in us all.
Speaker D:And if you give them the right environment to do that, we've all got access to so much information now so easily and that skill.
Speaker D:I think I always felt a little bit limited as a child with kind of, I had to, you know, have this belief that I can't know anything unless I've been and got a piece of paper that tells me that I know that information from someone who's very, very well educated and has all the skills to do that.
Speaker D:And I think my, my children don't have that concept in them at the moment.
Speaker D:You know, they, they, if they want to learn something, they'll just go and find the information and then declare themselves an expert on it.
Speaker D:Yeah, and why not?
Speaker D:You know, we should be more confident in what we know and our abilities to go and find that information and learn it.
Speaker D:Absolutely.
Speaker D:It's really important to learn from the right sources and absolutely going to university and studying with people who've been studying these subjects years is really beneficial.
Speaker D:I'm not taking away from that.
Speaker D:But the information is there and you can absorb it and you can learn so much through your own explorings.
Speaker B:I think life experience as well because I, I did my masters in clinical child psychology.
Speaker B:Everything I learn on that bit of paper, like you say, that got signed by someone much more educated than me.
Speaker B:I'd already been doing with my kids for the last 12 years.
Speaker B:So they, they're trying to teach me stuff.
Speaker B:And I'm like, yeah, I know that.
Speaker B:Yep, I did that last Tuesday actually.
Speaker B:That was my living room.
Speaker B:Like they're telling me about ADHD and this, that and the other and this disorder and autism and I'm like, yeah, I've been doing this since I was 16.
Speaker B:I absolutely know all of this.
Speaker B:But you know, I don't, I don't necessarily think that the piece of paper, it means that you know the stuff, you can learn the stuff without the paper.
Speaker B:It just, it just depends on where you need to be and what paper you need to get where you need to be.
Speaker B:But the knowledge wise in your head, I genuinely believe that you can teach yourself and live yourself in anything.
Speaker B:It doesn't, you don't, you don't need to prove to someone that you know it to know it.
Speaker A:I think what you're both talking about there is this idea that there's this figure that knows stuff and that they are then imparting that stuff to somebody that doesn't know the stuff and that's the child.
Speaker A:And then the figure is this sort of hierarchical model of learning.
Speaker A:And I think that this brings us back to school because that's the school model completely in a nutshell, right?
Speaker A:You have one person at the front of the class, you have 30 children listening to that person.
Speaker A:Give them the information.
Speaker A:In actual fact, in actual fact, to be fair, schools are now much more like, you go and sit at the computer and find out the information.
Speaker A:I'm not sure like actually what the point of it is apart from sitting people's bottoms on seats for eight hours a day, because realistically they're not even doing a lot of that in parting anymore.
Speaker A:But I think that one of the things that I find really problematic about the school system is this idea that you have this one person who is in charge of the learning.
Speaker A:You know, that like they say, this is what you're gonna be finding out, this is how you're gonna be finding it out.
Speaker A:Or this is actually what I know, take that information.
Speaker A:This is the book.
Speaker A:Read this chapter, read that page.
Speaker A:This is how we're gonna do it.
Speaker A:And I think that this hierarchical system in school, as a therapist, I think it creates a whole barrel load of people pleasing issues when people get older.
Speaker A:Because I think they spend formative years desperately trying to please a teacher desp.
Speaker A:Having to do what they're told all the time.
Speaker A:And then you tell them they get to 19, 20, they get out in the real world and they're like, oh, no, you need to have boundaries and you need to, you know, sort of like not be all people pleasing.
Speaker A:It's like, yeah, but that's what you've been telling me to do for 15 years in the school system.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:In all your formative years, it's really difficult to break.
Speaker A:So this whole idea of being clever and one person being clever and the other people just listening to that person, I just think is intrinsically bad for humans anyway.
Speaker D:So I don't know if this is a bit controversial, but I am repeatedly shocked at the level of education.
Speaker D:Not the level of education they've all passed their exams, but the level of which teachers actually are imparting good stuff in terms of basic spelling, punctuation, grammar in both their speech and written work.
Speaker D:And I think actually it's a Russian roulette when you send your children to school as to the level of education they receive.
Speaker D:Because my mum taught teachers to be teachers.
Speaker D:And so I saw a lot into that side of things.
Speaker D:And most of what they're taught is behavior Management, the actual amount of time they spend on the learning side of things or you know, ensuring their educated their level of skills is at the right level is a lot less than the.
Speaker D:The amount of time is spent on behavior management and planning and making sure that their plans look beautiful.
Speaker D:You know, it was different years ago, but these days those are the focuses and you know, and, and rightly so in so many ways because when you've got huge classroom full of children, you know you need behavior management needs to be top of your agenda.
Speaker D:But yeah, it does repeatedly shock me that the expectation on home educators and actually let's look at teachers and what their knowledge levels are.
Speaker C:It would be interesting to see how many teachers know the stuff outside of the bit of paper that's got the curriculum written on it.
Speaker C:What do you actually know about World War II that is not written on that curriculum tick list?
Speaker C:What do you know about not what that book says?
Speaker C:Put that book down, close it and talk to me about World War II and tell me what all the facts and remembering the figures and all of that.
Speaker C:Do you actually know that or do you just follow the lesson plan that the government has given you?
Speaker C:Because that's quite a. I think the definition of knowledge is quite interesting because does knowledge mean that you have a bit of paper that says you ticked all of the exams or does knowledge mean there's a, there's a, there's a clip somewhere.
Speaker C:I'll have to try and find it.
Speaker B:And send it to you.
Speaker C:But it's a, it's a brother and sister, like adults.
Speaker C:One home educates and one sends their children to school and the sister is having a go at the man and saying he, they need to be in school, they need to go to school, they need to live in the real world.
Speaker C:Ra.
Speaker C:It's American, right?
Speaker C:And he calls down her sons and asks them what the Bill of Rights is and they go oh, it's that bit of paper that tells you that everyone can be equal and da da da da, like some fluffy version of what it is.
Speaker C:And then, and they're like 14, 15 and he calls down his 7 year old who's home educated and asks her what the Bill of Rights is and she recites the whole thing and then he says to her, no, no, no, no, no, don't.
Speaker C:I didn't ask you to recite it.
Speaker C:I asked you to tell me what it is in your own words.
Speaker C:And she then at 7 re like jigs it into her own words and actually knows it.
Speaker C:And I found that quite interesting.
Speaker C:That, that's the difference, isn't it?
Speaker C:Because school is just recite, remember, memorize, just go over it, write it, repeat, rinse, repeat, cycle.
Speaker C:But actually, do you actually know what it is that you're saying?
Speaker C:Because yes, you can.
Speaker C:You find it all the time with, like spelling, right?
Speaker C:Like they know how to spell a word because they've repeated the.
Speaker C:The letters that are in the word.
Speaker C:But do you know what the word means?
Speaker C:Do you know how to pronounce it properly?
Speaker C:Do you know what context to use it in?
Speaker B:Probably not, because you're not learning the word, you're learning to remember how it's spelled.
Speaker B:It's very, it's a very interesting way.
Speaker C:Up of, of how you can.
Speaker C:What's the definition of knowledge?
Speaker A:Basically, this is exactly it, right?
Speaker A:This is what takes us back to the beginning, which is where I said, like, being clever.
Speaker A:I think in this context means knowing stuff, right?
Speaker A:And realistically, in school, if you're saying, well, I'm not clever enough to home educate, well, all a teacher does is tell the child what they need to know to jump through the hoop, which is the gcse, which is literally all that school cares about.
Speaker A:They spent all that time making sure that you, the child knows the history that they need to know to do the history, gcse.
Speaker A:And they do all of that stuff so that the knowledge is about achieving that end.
Speaker A:Because it's like the culmination of school.
Speaker A:It's like in America the high school diploma is the culmination of your school journey, and in the UK it's GCSEs and then normally some sort of college course at A level.
Speaker A:So it's not about cleverness, like, it's not about, am I clever enough to home educate?
Speaker A:Because if you want to take the same approach to school, you just buy yourself a textbook, a GCSE textbook.
Speaker A:You do nothing until Your child is 14, then you sit them down with the GCSE textbook.
Speaker A:That's the cleverness that school has.
Speaker A:Well, we can all do that.
Speaker A:But actually what you're talking about is, am I open enough to learning and am I able to help my child care about their learning?
Speaker A:Like, be interested and passionate about what they learn and how they learn well, yet any human can do that for.
Speaker D:Their child and allow them to question it as well.
Speaker D:Because I was repeatedly labeled as difficult in school because I questioned what they were doing and I was often labeled as pedantic and all sorts of different things.
Speaker D:And actually then I started suppressing that part of myself.
Speaker D:I started to stop questioning things, because I was told that wasn't okay.
Speaker D:And how do you learn without questioning?
Speaker D:Like, that's, that's the.
Speaker D:For me, that learning is.
Speaker D:It's asking questions, it's challenging ideas.
Speaker D:It's, you know, new ideas, new findings, scientific developments.
Speaker D:And things only happen from people questioning what we know to already be true.
Speaker D:In inverted commas.
Speaker C:Someone's perspective as well.
Speaker C:Right, like, of it.
Speaker D:Yeah, exactly that.
Speaker D:And if we're not able to question that, how do we.
Speaker D:Like you say, we're just learning something in rote form so that we can pass these exams.
Speaker D:That say what?
Speaker D:That we've managed to get through the school system.
Speaker D:You know, it doesn't really tell you much more than that.
Speaker B:An attendance certificate.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, the one I find.
Speaker B:The one I find.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:Now go with me on this.
Speaker B:So if someone said to you, here is this person that speaks no English whatsoever, please can you teach them to speak English?
Speaker B:Most people would believe that you need some form of teaching degree or, you know, French degree, or whatever language it was that you needed to speak to that speak them in from translation degree something.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Every single parent on the planet teaches their children to speak.
Speaker B:Every single parent teaches their children to speak.
Speaker B:The same with physio, right, you've had someone that's lost the ability to walk.
Speaker B:You now need to teach them how to walk.
Speaker B:But you need a doctorate in physio to be able to teach.
Speaker B:No, because every single person teaches their baby how to walk.
Speaker B:So we as parents are teaching these babies, these little beings that know nothing when they come out.
Speaker B:We're teaching them to eat, to breathe, to feed, to look after themselves when they're.
Speaker B:When they're ill, to regulate their body.
Speaker B:We're teaching them emotions.
Speaker B:We're teaching them just the.
Speaker B:The world, just how to navigate the world and speak and communicate and do all of this stuff.
Speaker B:But then it gets to education and then parents go, oh, I'm not clever enough.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:You've literally taught a human being how to be a human being, but when it comes to learning some stuff about World War II, you don't know anything.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:It's like they're diminishing their ability as a parent because someone and I, and I saw a thing before and it was like, if in the next 20 years, it sort of socially transpired that at six months you need to send your children to nursery because they need to learn how to walk at nursery, no one would question it.
Speaker B:You just send your kid to school because someone's Told you that you aren't capable of doing that.
Speaker B:Someone else needs to do that.
Speaker B:But school is the same thing.
Speaker B:They just tell you that at 5, they no longer can be taught by you.
Speaker B:You're not good enough.
Speaker B:You need to go and go to school because that's the only person that can teach your child something.
Speaker B:But it's, it's an absolute myth.
Speaker B:Exactly the point.
Speaker B:Because you've done five years of teaching your child everything.
Speaker B:Potty training, speaking, feed it all of navigating, sharing, you know, and sharing.
Speaker B:Teaching a kid how to share, I reckon is the hardest thing that we teach our children.
Speaker B:I will pick educating GCSEs over sharing a toddler because that is horrible.
Speaker B:And it's, it's just mad that I just want parents to be more confident in their ability to teach their children because they've already done it.
Speaker B:You've already done it, You've already been there, you've got the T shirt, you've won the stamp, and then now you're not good enough.
Speaker B:It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker B:It's not, it's not lining up with the actual truth of the matter.
Speaker D:Even if you don't actively teach your children to learn those things, even reading and everything, they will pick it up because children mimic and that's how they learn.
Speaker D:You know, animals in the wild that they learn from watching other animals and copying, and we do that too.
Speaker D:And it's almost impossible to go through a day where it is impossible to go through a day without your child learning something.
Speaker D:Yeah, they, they are sponges and they will absorb the information.
Speaker D:And you, it's.
Speaker D:I feel this myth around the number of hours you need to be educated.
Speaker D:What is education?
Speaker D:Basically, because learning is happening all the time in so many forms within your home.
Speaker D:And you know that they'll be learning maths.
Speaker D:When you talk about teaching them to share, you know, if you're sharing out a snack or something like that, that's basic maths, you know, and, you know, they might read the back of the cereal packet and they'll ask you, what's this word?
Speaker D:And things.
Speaker D:And you can start teaching them to read without sitting down with a book and knowing how to, to teach phonics or any of those kind of things.
Speaker D:You know, it.
Speaker D:They naturally will pick everything up.
Speaker D:And we, we kind of put this pressure on ourselves and, and I know that, you know, so many of my home educating friends and things, we go sort of up and down of this kind of freaking out.
Speaker D:Oh, my God, I'M not doing enough.
Speaker D:I need to be doing more.
Speaker D:I'm not, you know, we.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's just constant.
Speaker D:But actually, I have found that whenever I've taken my foot off the brake with things, my children make huge leaps forward because I've given them the space to process everything that they're sor.
Speaker D:Taking in and learning and to apply it and giving them that space.
Speaker D:They zoom ahead at their own pace and with their own sort of motivation.
Speaker D:It's quite fascinating when you kind of watch it sort of unfold.
Speaker A:And there is.
Speaker A:The one thing is for certain, is there very little space to process in the school system?
Speaker A:Because it's full on, you know, one lesson, then another, then another, then another.
Speaker A:And what you're both talking about is really interesting, this idea of immersion learning and learning through modeling, Right.
Speaker A:You know, mirroring your parents, what your parents are modeling or what your family is modeling.
Speaker A:And I think we're increasingly moving into a world where we don't need to know stuff, Right.
Speaker A:What we need are skills that we have as people.
Speaker A:And if you think about, okay, so if you think about, okay, so you need some GCSes in order to get a job or whatever, that's fine.
Speaker A:That's a separate thing.
Speaker A:That's later in life, right?
Speaker A:But let's take those first 10 years when you're home educating, like age, you know, 2 to 12, 3 to 13, that kind of age.
Speaker A:What your child is learning from you, regardless of how clever in adverted commas you are, are things like sharing, empathy, emotional regulation that they are learning.
Speaker A:Tolerance.
Speaker A:They are learning all of these kind of soft skills.
Speaker A:Patience.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:They're learning all this stuff from you through immersion and through modeling.
Speaker A:Now then, let's pause for a moment and think about.
Speaker A:Instead, they're in the school system.
Speaker A:They're in school for eight hours a day, five days a week, most weeks of the year, right?
Speaker B:What.
Speaker A:What are they learning there in the school system about these things like patience, emotional regulation, tolerance, empathy.
Speaker A:You are.
Speaker A:You are then giving all of that power to a bunch of children that you don't know.
Speaker A:They're your child's peers and a teacher that you barely know.
Speaker A: hey can learn the facts about: Speaker A:They don't need to know that.
Speaker A:What they need is to sit with you and understand what emotional regulation is in the safety of their homes.
Speaker C:Yeah, they don't learn.
Speaker B:It's funny how much the mindset of school gives children.
Speaker B:My, my six year old only went for six weeks to school and she had started obviously doing, you know, the phonics, the read, the sounds, that nonsense.
Speaker B:And she now, so she's nearly seven and she doesn't think that she can read because she can't sound them out and blend it together.
Speaker B:She doesn't think that she can read.
Speaker B:But like this morning she's looking at the sat nav now, the words were Sudbury, which makes absolutely no phonetical sense, and gymnastics, which also makes absolutely no phonetical sense.
Speaker B:And she went, mummy, does that say Sudbury gymnastics?
Speaker B:And I went, yeah, I went, so you've just read that she went, no, I didn't, I just guessed.
Speaker B:I'm like, that's reading.
Speaker B:But in her head, because she doesn't do the sound, which is what school told her is reading.
Speaker B:She doesn't think she can read.
Speaker B:So when she's asked, oh, can you read?
Speaker B:She goes, no, I don't know how to read yet, but she can read.
Speaker B:She just, the school have told her that reading is doing it phonetically and sounding it out.
Speaker B:And in her head she's like, well, I can't do that, so I can't read.
Speaker B:And that's really like damaging for a child to tell them that because they aren't doing it the way that it's taught in school, that they can't do it at all.
Speaker B:And the real sense of the matter with her is you probably touched on it, on your neurodivergent episode is that she's ADHD and she can't sit and read a book, has absolutely no capacity to be able to sit and read a whole book.
Speaker B:She doesn't want to, she has no interest in it, she doesn't care, she doesn't like reading, but she can read the things that she wants to read.
Speaker B:Like she very much needs to know when the sat nav is telling us that we're going to get there.
Speaker B:So she has taught herself how to read the sat nav to know when we're going to get there.
Speaker B:So it's not that she can't read, it's that she just can't do it in the way they told her that she has to do it.
Speaker B:And I just think how horrible is that for a four year old to be told that actually you can't do the same thing that everybody else is doing when she, the end result, she can, she can read.
Speaker B:It's Just she didn't get there in the same way.
Speaker B:And that's that for the school system to be in part in that on children of four is very, very dangerous mindset to have moving forward, like for the rest of their life.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker D:And also, you just talking about phonics, I think that's a prime example of how the education system has developed and changed.
Speaker D:But we, when I went to school, phonics didn't exist.
Speaker B:I didn't learn like that at all.
Speaker D:Yeah, we learned to read.
Speaker D:And also, are we saying that now if you don't know phonics, you're not a teacher who's been taught how to teach phonics.
Speaker D:You therefore can't teach reading.
Speaker D:But we learned to read without phonics.
Speaker A:I did a whole podcast on phonics and it was funny because for anyone who wants to listen, I'll put the link.
Speaker A:Because I didn't realize before I started the podcast how controversial phonics is.
Speaker B:Oh, phonics is.
Speaker A:No idea.
Speaker A:It was like, okay, this is a thing.
Speaker A:I did not even realize was a thing because apparently, like they just introduced phonics almost overnight.
Speaker A:Like, this is like an edict from above.
Speaker A:We were doing phonics.
Speaker A:And as Charlotte says, for a lot of neurodivergent children, phonics is an absolute disaster.
Speaker A:My daughter's dyslexic.
Speaker A:If she'd been in school, she'd never have been able to learn to read.
Speaker A:With phonics, it was.
Speaker A:Would never have happened.
Speaker A:And she would literally be like 12 and crying if that, if that had been the case, if that had been her experience.
Speaker A:And as it was, I tried phonics.
Speaker A:Biff Chip Kipper did one book and she was like, nah.
Speaker A:And then we did Peter and Jane and that was absolutely fine.
Speaker A:She just memorized the visual look of the words.
Speaker A:And then she was reading at 5.
Speaker A:Being dyslexic in the school system, I dread to think what would happen.
Speaker A:So now people are saying, oh, you're not clever enough to home educate your child.
Speaker A:Well, I kind of think we all are, actually, because we know our child, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, they changed it through the middle of.
Speaker B:I think it was.
Speaker B:I think it was my 10 year old.
Speaker B:I think they changed it.
Speaker B:Like she learned how to read the other way.
Speaker B:And then all of a sudden it was then phonics and she was then being taught how.
Speaker B:So actually the method that she learned first was completely scrapped.
Speaker B:And no, that doesn't count anymore.
Speaker B:And now you need to do it like this, which.
Speaker B:Imagine being five and then Being told everything you ever know.
Speaker B:Absolute turd.
Speaker B:Not happening anymore.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:Like, it's just crazy.
Speaker B:It's mad.
Speaker A:This is also part of the issue, if we take the discussion slightly more global, is that you're relying, when you put your child into school, you're relying upon the school curriculum, teaching your child the correct in inverted commas, facts.
Speaker A:And actually, if you just look at the American system, for a start, the American school system, some of their history books and science books would make your hair curl, you know, and yet that is being taught as the.
Speaker A:These are the facts and I am clever and I'm at the front of the class and I'm telling you.
Speaker A:But this is government decided.
Speaker A:I mean, you don't need to live in North Korea to be in a country where you're being taught extremely selective facts.
Speaker A:Let's look at the UK and its history of colonialism.
Speaker A:I mean, what you are doing is you're putting your child into a school system where somebody else is deciding what the truth is.
Speaker A:And actually it's for your child to be asking those questions and deciding.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:Yeah, they, they, they had it with.
Speaker B:My son's when he was still at senior school with.
Speaker B:They call it pshe.
Speaker B:Physical something.
Speaker B:Health education.
Speaker B:And the thing that came home of what was the truth of what's going on, he came home and he was like, mum, what?
Speaker A:What?
Speaker B:I was very upset and I don't know if this is too topical on here, so delete me if you need to, but they were actually cancel me.
Speaker C:They were talking about abortion and my.
Speaker B:Son was 12 and came home and telling me what abortion is and when you should have one and when you shouldn't.
Speaker B:And I just thought that's a really, really personal subject for a family to.
Speaker B:You don't know what views that family have got.
Speaker B:You don't know what religion that family's got.
Speaker B:You don't know what things the parent has been through for you to then be teaching their child.
Speaker B:I think that things like that, you need to teach your child what your family believes and what you hold close to you.
Speaker B:But to generically teach 30 students or 100 students in that year, that abortion is this, and this is when you have it and this is when you don't have it.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:Like how.
Speaker B:Why are we allowed to teach children this?
Speaker B:It's, it's, it's insane.
Speaker B:It's crazy.
Speaker D:And also they're deciding that your child's.
Speaker C:Ready to learn about that as well.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:You know, again, we've touched on neurodiversity and, you know, there's different levels of maturity that children have.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:And you're saying at this age, every child needs to know this information, but they might not be ready for that.
Speaker D:My children are very different in their ability to accept information or be affected by it in different ways.
Speaker D:And I know that about them and therefore I can tailor the information that they receive.
Speaker D:And in a classroom situation, you can't know that about every child.
Speaker D:You can't know what that child's going through at home.
Speaker D:You know, what if their family has just gone through the loss of a child or something, and then you are teaching about abortion or miscarriage or those kind of controversial issues.
Speaker D:When someone, maybe one of those children, maybe that may be their lived experience right now.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:And what are you putting in place to support their needs in that moment?
Speaker D:You're not.
Speaker D:You're just imparting a load of information, potentially triggering them and then walking away.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I, I find that fascinating as well.
Speaker D:I mean, even just with history, you know, my children at about the Great Fire of London and then had Nightma about it, but I was there to support them through that.
Speaker D:And I knew what I had, what we'd talked about and what they had learned.
Speaker D:And I knew to then avoid.
Speaker B:Avoid that.
Speaker B:I don't know, I'm out.
Speaker D:But imagine if they'd come home and then we're having nightmares and they might not have been able to even know where that was coming from.
Speaker D:For me to know what they'd been taught or what had happened in the classroom that was causing that emotional response from them.
Speaker D:And I, you know, you don't.
Speaker D:For some children, they're going to be like, yeah, great, Great Fire of London.
Speaker D:It's not going to affect them at all.
Speaker D:But other children are sensitive or, you know, it, you know, may have had a fire in their, in their home at some point.
Speaker D:And so it scares them.
Speaker D:There are so many different.
Speaker D:You just.
Speaker D:We all develop at different rates.
Speaker D:We all, you know, cope with things in different ways depending on our lived experiences and things.
Speaker D:And children are the same and we don't allow for that within our school system.
Speaker D:We don't allow for, you know, there isn't a level of, of personal approach which, you know, if you've got a classroom full of 30 children, how can you deliver that?
Speaker D:You.
Speaker D:You can't.
Speaker D:I'm not suggesting it's the teacher's fault, but that we're, you know, it's.
Speaker D:That, yes, it's important to impart knowledge and for children to learn but it's more important, in my opinion, for them to be, you know, nurtured and supported and for their emotional development to be nurtured in the right way.
Speaker C:I think that's exactly what we're saying.
Speaker C:I think that's how we are clever enough to home educate.
Speaker C:Because there is.
Speaker C:And I'll put my, my I die on the hill.
Speaker C:There is nobody on this planet that know each one of my children more than I do.
Speaker C:Inside out, back to front.
Speaker C:I can tell you every single emotion, every single feeling.
Speaker C:I can tell you when they're getting ill, before they're ill.
Speaker C:I know that because I can see it coming.
Speaker C:I can tell you whether they're tired, hungry, whatever it is.
Speaker C:There is nobody on this planet that knows each.
Speaker C:I have four children and there is not one person that knows any of my four children better than I do.
Speaker C:And that will never, ever happen.
Speaker C:So that, that is what makes the parents clever enough to home educate.
Speaker C:And that's the benefit that you have that the school doesn't have, is you know your kid inside out, back to front.
Speaker C:They do not know that information.
Speaker B:And that's why you are clever enough to home educate.
Speaker C:There's no, there's no other.
Speaker C:You don't need anything else.
Speaker C:It's just that.
Speaker A:That's exactly what I was going to say to wrap up the podcast.
Speaker A:So, Patam.
Speaker A:Well done, Charlotte.
Speaker C:M. Sorry, that's it.
Speaker B:Well, end of.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:We are going to be doing a little series of looking at home ed myths.
Speaker A:So if there is a myth that you get spouted at you a lot, do let us know wherever you're listening to this and we will do a controversial podcast where we bat it back.
Speaker A:But there are so many myths around home education.
Speaker A:I think it is in.
Speaker A:I think it is just built into a system where you do something that other people aren't doing and they don't really know that much about.
Speaker A:There's a lot of myths around it.
Speaker A:I think Covid helped a lot because before COVID you would not believe some of the wild myths that people had about home education.
Speaker A:But now everyone thinks it's basically Covid learning.
Speaker A:Oh, you just sit there with Oak Academy, do you all day for like seven hours.
Speaker B:We've got to do the socialization one.
Speaker B:It's that one.
Speaker B:I've got so many stupid comments that come out of that.
Speaker B:I can't, I can't even cope with people with the socialization.
Speaker B:That one makes sense.
Speaker A:I'm looking forward to the socialization one because I, I have controversial opinions about socialization.
Speaker A:It comes to home education, and it isn't going to be the opinion you think I'm going to have.
Speaker A:So there we are.
Speaker A:So that's something to look forward to.
Speaker A:Well, Charlotte and Emily, thank you so much for joining me on today's Home Education Matters.
Speaker A:And for anybody who's listening, tell us your most annoying myth that people give you about home education.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:You, too.
Speaker A:We should continue with our beautiful, glorious days.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining us for today's Home Education Matters podcast.
Speaker A:See you at the next one.
Speaker A:Have a lovely day.
Speaker B:Sam.
