Why is it difficult being around schooled children?

Here's what a mother who home educates told me:-

It is a common experience that children come back home after a school day exhausted, having been nagged and bossed about by several figures of authority who they cannot question, having to be quiet for the best part of six and a half hours, having all their personal needs and aspirations relegated to second or third plane unless they align with school's objectives, and whatever other issues they may be experimenting in with their peers (of which schools are mostly unaware of) as could be fights, bullying, being in love, etc.

This means that when they arrive home they often display an 'attitude': They're rude to their parents and siblings; they are angry for no apparent reason and they can't be bothered to do homework because they see it as meaningless. Parents press, they argue and it all blows up.

I'm not saying this is everyone's experience but it seems to be pretty common. At the end of the day, those children are now in a 'safe place' and they can finally say 'no' and exercise a degree of autonomy, even at the cost of an argument with their parents. This 'negative' behaviour is (I will dare use a systemic term at the risk that I may have it wrong!) an emergent property of the system they currently operate in even when they can't see it.

As we know it's always very difficult to see our own situation. It's way easier to see other situations we are not part of! And this is one of the reasons parents dread the holidays. This is what they experience day in, day out. Imagine this every day during two weeks at Christmas, Easter and half term or two months in the summer!

What they don't know is that once you leave the school system and start your journey into home education as a family, all that vicious cycle slows down and eventually stops. The children calm down, they de-stress, they emerge again, they smile again, they want to share, they're not angry anymore.

The relationships within the family only improve both with the parents and between the siblings. It becomes much easier. It's a joy to spend time together, not a horrible negative experience as can be the case with schooled children.

So, I wouldn't blame the mums who had children and not want to spend time with them. I think it's to do with these dynamics and it's a place nobody thought they'd find themselves in...

Boredom and lack of agency

Another observation (and I believe there's some literature written by some psychologists like Peter Gray who research home education), is that the standard educational path through schools doesn't really allow for much (if at all) student independence.

Virtuous or Vicious?

Children are not allowed to take control of their own education and steer it in the way they want. There is no trust in children to know what they need/want to learn. Children are hammered every day with one message in many different ways. the message is: "you don't know what is valuable and important for you, so you need an adult to tell you. Your needs, wishes, desires and curiosity are not important - leave them for your free time - here you come to learn what's really good for you, but of course you don't understand that. We'll guide you step by step, you just follow and do as you're told."

And so they give precise instructions for each class, step by step, even when they're running experiments at the lab! They're not really experimenting, they're reproducing someone else's experiment step by step. They are 'micro-managed'.

And then after school they have more 'teaching' in the form of tutors (to 'catch up' with certain subjects at school) or as extra-curricular classes (music, swimming, martial arts or whatever). Nothing wrong with doing extra-curricular classes, they can be great, home educators participate in lots of clubs of this kind. The problem is that schooled children have very little or zero time to be independent, to really give themselves a chance to explore their own needs and curiosity, to follow their interests. It's not surprising so many lose all drive to explore or do anything by the time they reach high school, they've been neglected, their needs neglected, their person subdued.

But these children have been educated to follow orders and to be 'entertained' in the sense that they never have time to involve themselves in their own doings. They're always being provided with an itinerary of their every day, so when the school holidays arrive, they don't know what to do with themselves, they become terribly bored, which puts them in a mood, they become irritable and the whole experience no good.

So parents feel they have to cram the holidays with things to do, to entertain their children (they work harder that at work providing this tight schedule of activities where they take them to here and there and at home there's this to do and that to do etc.

Parents are terrified to allow their children to be bored...but boredom is the beginning of curiosity and deep thinking, and it's a life skill to learn to manage your own time!

Parents must let their children experience boredom and solve it themselves). So at the end of the hols parents are exhausted and the jokes begin pouring out again in social media and chats as 'they can't wait to send the devils back to school'.

A headteacher agrees...

“(Children) will not progress in thinking this way (systemically) unless the vast majority of adults she comes into contact with follow this lead. Many will close this lead and close down her choices. She will be expected to acquiesce and unquestionably asked to “tow the line” often without explanation both in the home and the school situation. They then become unable to make choices – the choices are all made for them”

Read a great article by John Taylor Gatto on boredom at school [http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm here].

And another "A Thousand Rivers" by Carol Black [http://carolblack.org/a-thousand-rivers here].