Educating your children at home

[Scottish Business Owner]

Further to Alisons press release I thought it would be a good idea to get some discussion going on the merits of home education etc. We have people of all ages on here and from all over the country so i'd like to think we get some good discussion and I hope Alison doesn't mind if I try and get something started.

I've been out of education around 8-10 years. Incredibly the internet wasn't even a tool we used to any great extent at school. I was very academic achieving almost the best possible grades at both standard and highers but I still feel that education puts you into an employee mindset and there was no element of entrepreneurship in anything that I done.

One area I feel really strongly amount is the lack of financial management in education. I've seen to many people get caught in credit traps pretty much becuase they dont really understand how things like credit cards and mortgages work. Financial management and responsibility should be a fundamental part of education.

I would love to hear other people's views on what they thought education gave them or similarly how it failed them in anyway. Would home education be something you would consider for your own children?

 

[frockery]

Thanks for encouraging interest, .

As some of you know, my three were all home educated and are now grown up, so I can answer any questions people might have.

We have decided to include a workshop on Educating Entrepreneurs at our conference as schools fail to prepare young people for anything but future employee and avid consumer status. A significant number of home educating parents are self employed and a lot of the offspring decide on the same course. Any volunteers from here to facilitate it?

I agree with about the abysmal failure of the school system to educate children in good financial management and we have seen spirallling debt levels in recent years. The advent of student loans rather than grants seemed to lull people into believing that high levels of debt are acceptable if not inevitable. The majority of people of my age simply would not have considered the level of borrowing we are seeing today, even if it had been available, and I could never have gone to university in the 70s had I not got a grant.

The credit crunch seems to have come as a shock to many, but some of us have been preparing for the inevitable downturn for a couple of years. House prices in particular have reached unsustainable levels as investors price ordinary folk out of the market and sub-prime borrowing has become the norm.

Interestingly, the Scottish Daily Express alluded to the effects of the credit crunch on private schooling in this article they wrote from our press release.

 

[fantasycouriers]

I think that Home Education can be very beneficial to some children, but I get concerned when certain types of parent choose to Home Educate as a way to seperating their children from society, and selectively choosing their children friends.

One of the most important things that children learn at school is how to get on with other people, and how to cope with social situations. Sometimes these situations may not be at the top of parents lists of the most desireable, but in the adult world people are faced with all matter or sometime uncomfortable situations, and learning how to deal with a child that you just don't get one with, is the start of this important process.

It's all about balance, and as long as the children have a good balance in the people that they see and mix with, and the social situations that they get to integrate in then I would say that home schooling is as sensible as state schooling.

However, I worry for the children where their parents are members of certain churches encourage home schooling, and only allow their children to mix with other children from the same church (I have known a few of these families, and always feel a bit sad for these children).

 

[Employer]

It is a little disappointing to say the least that many people have used this thread to promote their own businesses rather than actually help answer the question. Ironically, as a consequence of the coronavirus more and more people are now educating the children at home with many expected to wait until the new school term before sending them back. There are numerous online facilities available at the moment many of which are free of charge as a means of protecting the younger of society.