The Badman review Part 1.

I was thinking about one of the recommendations in the Badman review yesterday, as I was painting my fence.
The recommendation on my mind was the one that would require parents to complete a 12 month plan of expected progress to be 'handed in for marking' each year as part of the application-for license-to-home-educate process refered to throughout the report as 'annual registration'.

For me. as for many other Home Educating families, this recommendation has always appeared not just difficult to comply with, but downright impossible without fundamentally altering the way we raise our children. It is high on the list of things that go to show that the compilers of the review have little, if any, true understanding of how learning takes place outside of a scholastic institution. Since the biggest benefit to home education no matter what method is used is that learning follows the child's own pace, with leaps ahead at times when something just 'clicks' while other times require constant backtracking and repeats and 'looking at it in a new way' - often in the same area - and changing and evolving interests can mean learning switches paths dramatically in a very short space of time, filling out a list of 'end of year expectations' is incompatible with this real form of individualised learning.
It is impossible to predict ahead of time what a child will know in 1 months time, let alone 12, even when following a curriculm. Even when the child attends school. And while teachers may be required to 'cover' a subject then mark it down as having been learnt by every child before moving on to the next subject, there are few home educators who don't understand the meaning of the saying 'You may lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink' and they raise their children accordingly.

Now, my fence. It is trellis fencing and takes quite a lot of time to paint. If I'm lucky and get a reasonable amount of uninterupted time, I can just about get one panel painted in a day. As I was painting away, listening to my little girl running around playing some made up game of her own, I had no idea I was about to give a science lesson.
I had no indication that my daughter would suddenly come up beside me and ask why painting the trellis takes longer than a normal flat fence panel and why it needed more than one coat. As I explained to her that the trellis has a greater surface area because it has more exposed sides and that the previously untreated wood absorbed the first coat of paint into the nooks and crannies on it's surface so additional coats were required to completely cover the whole surface, I considered the '12 month plan' recommendation.

I thought about how there was no possible way I would have even contemplated the possibility that I would have covered these things with my 5 year old prior to it actually happening.
I thought about how the opportunity to do so only arose because it was a nice day, we had no where else to be and painting the fence in the sunshine looked entirely more enticing than cleaning up the mess created in my living room by the living whirlwinds I call my children.
I thought about how, without my daughter coming to me and actually asking for the information because she was interested, I would not have broached the subject with her, then or at a future date.
I thought about how, even though she was interested and I had explained in a way I thought she could understand, I had no way of knowing if she did understand or if she would remember any of it.
But mostly, I thought about how the 'lesson' was, in fact, just a couple of minutes of casual conversation between a parent and child discussing an ordinary household task that had nothing whatsoever to do with chemistry (the school subject where I was introduced to these concepts by teachers) where either party was at liberty to change the subject or end the conversation any time we liked.

So much of our lives together are like this. I don't 'teach', I parent. My children learn constantly, not from being sat down and told things, but from asking questions, watching those around them, attempting things on their own and 'connecting up the dots' between past experiences and current situations to extrapolate their own theories and answers.

See, that day in the garden my daughter didn't just ask for knowledge, she displayed it too. Her mad game involved a toddlers ride-on car, which she was pretending was a lawn mower. During her game, she explained the bit that dragged on the floor at the back (designed to stop it tipping over) was the bit that cut the grass and the compartment under the seat was the place where the cuttings were collected. This told me she had a fairly good understanding of how a lawn mower worked and what it's parts were for.
Her game also involved attending 'Superschool' and being made to run up and down but not get to do anything interesting because "my teacher doesn't like girls". This told me that, not only had the all-pervasive culture of school affected the lifestyle of one who has never attended one, but that she had also expanded her social understanding to include an accurate idea of how a misogynist might think and behave.

Now, niether of these bits of knowledge were things I would have said she would know or be interested in the day before, any more than the fence painting and in at least one case I could happily have lived without her gaining that particular social insight for many years to come. However, they are important information about the world she lives in, probably more so than any science she will ever learn. Anyone with a lawn needs a lawn mower and a basic understanding of how they work is extremely useful. The majority of people she will meet in life have, will or are attending a school which is seen as their primary source of educational opportunity and very few will pass through their school careers without meeting a teacher who is less than happy to have them in their class. Prejudice against some aspect of a person that is outside their control is, unfortunately, a very real part of society and sooner or later she will undoubtedly come across it personally.
But, somehow, I get the feeling that the recommendation in the Badman review of having a 12 month plan would look kindly on one that included 'science - learn about the terms absorbtion and surface area' but would be less impressed with 'life experience - gain a basic understanding of how our lawn mower works and how blind prejudice can affect peoples actions and lives.'

but ultimately, it doesn't matter what would or wouldn't go down well on a 12 month plan. The problem really is that I, like many other home educators, am not so short-term in my thinking. What does or doesn't happen over the course of a year is insignificant, my main focus, my goal, are the adults my children will eventually become.
From 5 to 16 is a period of 12 years, and that is a long time, time enough to learn everything needed to live an independant adult life in our society without needing said learning to be broken down into chunks of information that follow a steady 'progression'. If my daughter wants to spend this year learning about how machines work, how people think and how the physical properties of different substances dictate the way they interact with one another, I am not about to stop her from doing so because some '12 month plan' says she should be spending her time learning addition and subtraction instead. We can do that some other time during those 12 whole years we have to play with.
So, if this recommendation becaomes a law, unless the powers that be are inclined to accept "They will learn whatever they wish to over the next 12 months just as they did last year." as a formal plan, the likelyhood is that the only possible way I would be able to accurately complete this 'assignment' would be to either use grandiose and incomprehensible sentances designed to impress without actually saying very much, or to simply lie outright.
My daughter is 5. She cannot read much more than her name yet. I have no idea if, in 12 months time, she will be reading chapter books or still be unable to comprehend more than she currently can. What I am sure beyond doubt of however, is that by the time she is 16 she will be able to read anything she wishes to. She has the whole of her childhood to learn.