Friday, October 14, 2005

Reports from the Classroom

Several previously autonomously home educated kids we know personally who have chosen to go to schools to do A levels and degrees at universities, are reporting that they are thriving in their new environments. They find themselves socialising easily and are effortlessly popular. They are also ahead of the class academically. They recognise that they are good at solution finding, that they excel at thinking outside the box and that they seem somehow less fearful than their classmates. They are are producing first-rate work which in some cases seemingly springs from nowhere, with no immediately apparent precedent from the HE years.

One of the parents makes the most interesting point. Her son led a completely autonomous life for several years prior to going back into school for his A levels. He spent most of his time on-line gaming, typing text msgs at great speed, playing guitar, and mixing socially with other HE teens. He has gone into a sixth form to find himself well ahead of the class in his chosen subjects. In his first week, he wrote a perfectly argued essay in exemplary English. He gets excellent marks in class tests with little effort. He is extremely popular with the other pupils. I would say this is the result of his cool, confident demeanour and his ability to address adults in a meaningful way.

And the point drawn by mum? She is of the opinion that it wasn't even Home Ed that necessarily gave her son such a good start. It was the Taking her Child Seriously. Of course this entailed doing HE at the time, but she credits this situation to the currently unrefuted superiority of TCS epistemology.

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