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What are they doing now

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Saved by starkfamily1@...
on April 23, 2007 at 12:22:13 am
 

to edit this page or add your story, click the "edit page" tab at the top of the page. If you are not already a contributor to this wiki and would like to contribute see below.

 


 

See also Home Based Education Works!

 

What Are They Doing Now?

 

What do electively home educated young people do when they grow up?

 

What is this page for?

 

First of all it is for us home educators to celebrate home education in all its guises and have some record ourselves of what home educated adults are up to.

 

Second, with the impending consultation in mind, it is to gather evidence, even anecdotal, of the 'outcomes'/ 'successes' (see below) of home education.

 

Who can contribute?

 

Home educated young people of 16 or over and parents with a home educated child over 16 - adult are invited to add to this page.

 

How to contribute your story or edit this page:

 

1. Join AHEd at www.ahed.org.uk/join.html to receive an invitation to join this wiki

OR

2. Write to enquiries@ahed.org.uk to ask for an invitation

OR

3. You can send your story to me: lesliebarson@yahoo.com and I will up load it here for you.

 

More specifically can you let us know

a. How long you/they were home educated?

b. Did you/they take any government examinations?

c. Are you/they where they want to be?

 

You can remain anonymous if you like with only an initial and a town under your story.

 

Pass it on!

Please pass on news of this page as widely as possible and encourage everyone you know who is a home educated adult or parent of a home educated adult to let us know what they are doing now.

 

Success!

 

Success can mean anything at all, and it is up to the individual to decide whether or not they are succeeding. To me, if your child gets to adulthood happy, confident and able to make choices about their own life and then carry them out, then they are successful.

 

Cal.

 

A Life of Our Own

 

Barbara. Nottinghamshire.

 

Adults who did not go to school because they were home-educated are in the world living their lives like the rest of the population. Maybe there is nothing spectacular about them, not to you or the person who passes them in the street or serves them at the supermarket. Maybe they are serving you at the supermarket or teaching your kids at school! And as long as they are law abiding, their lives are their own to live as they see fit.

 

Children who do not go to school because they are home-educated are in the world living their lives like the rest of the population. Maybe there is nothing spectacular about them to the passing eye except, perhaps, that you are surprised to see them in a public place in "school" hours. It is simply that the family has exercised their choice to provide for the education of the child outside the school system. As long as they are law abiding, their lives are their own to live as they see fit.

 

Here is my daughter who was home educated for eleven years. The methods we used were not in the least like school. There is so much more to life than schooling for us. She is 32. She did not like academic studies or exams as a child and so she chose to take none. She is self motivated and followed her own interests most of the time. All of her later qualifications for work have been through her work. She has worked in retail management for a department store chain. Managment skills led her to the prison service as a prison officer with Adult males which led her to taking up a position as a social worker with young offenders and for children and young people with challenging behaviors. Currently, she is taking a sabbatical and is working as a legal claims advisor.

 

She is also a wonderful daughter a dedicated friend, and a loving mother of two beautiful children. All we want to do is to be responsible for our own lives and families. That is all I wanted as her lone mother in subsidised housing trying to do what was suited to the needs of my child. That is why I believe that parents from all walks of life want what is best for their children, can home educate and that the government should have faith in the people. We have cherished our freedoms to live our lives as we see fit.

 

 

Being who you are

Leslie, London

 

My Son, 24

A friend of mine said, in the early days of my home educating, that she was doing it so her children could try out lots of things and then know who they were and what they wanted to do when they were 20. Too many of us have breakdowns at 40 saying I never wanted to be a .... but went into it due to pressure from others or becuase I didn't know what I wanted to be. Then we have to re-think our lives dramtically.

 

My son, who has never been to school, seems to be a good example someone who knows himself. Through a series of coincidencesour family is very close to Japan and spent 6 months living there when he was 11. He did Maths GCSE on his own at about 14 and then went to Southgate College for A levels. He found college difficult as most poeple did not want to be there and he nearly left to do the exams externally. He also found the writing difficult as he had choosen not to write much before this period. But he got two A's and one B. One of the A's was in a written exam. He spent his gap year in Japan teaching himslef some Japanese before he left, travelling to gain eperience in Japanese drumming. Although a good musician he decided to do a degree in Philosophy. He got an unconditional acceptance from King's London where he attended gaining a first. At King's he started and ran a taiko drumming (Japanese drumming) including making the drums.

 

Through his own initiative he found a scholarship from a Japanese bank to live in Japan studying Japanese intensively for 12 months and then studying Japanese philosophy for 6 months. He had to go through a number of interviews with all sorts of people to get the award.

He has now finished that scholarship and is teaching english to make enough money to stay in Japan until he goes to Hawaii to do a PhD in Eastern Philosophies. He is fluent in Japanese as a speaker and reader.

 

He is someone who knows what he wants and seems to be able to make the world work for him.

 

My Daughter, 18

My daughter, who has never been to school, is her own person. For example, she gave up maths at 9 as she said she knew all she needed. At about 14 she did a maths book we had around the house called 'Maths for Life'. The book was relitively easy for her. She wanted some GCSEs so she went to college at 15 and did in one year English Literature, English Language, Art and French at home as an external candadate.

She got into a popular sixth form college and has been accepted unconditionally to a very competitive college, part of London Art's University, to do an art's foundation course for one year. This is what she really wanted to do.

 

I most proud that she had something she really wanted to do. At her age I had no idea of anything I wanted to do. Even if she changes in the future away from art, she is still able now, at this young age, to know who she is, pursue what she wants and then compete with others for places and be accepted.

Both my children exemplify a successful outcome of what I think of as real education for life; finding out who you are and making changes in the world to that effect.

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