Regular readers of this admittedly irregular blog will
recall that La Child is A Bit Clever™. In terms of intellectual ability she
falls somewhere between that annoying friend who seems to be good at everything,
and Einstein.
Did you hear the quotation marks there? “In terms of
intellectual ability”.
In terms of good old fashioned gumption, La Child
falls instead somewhere between Homer Simpson and a three toed sloth. Taking
her out of school coincided, by some freakish twist of fate, with the onset of
major league puberty, so what with her sudden appreciation of absolute freedom,
the realisation that late nights and even later mornings were an actual option,
and the dawning of the Age of Rage, you won’t be massively surprised to learn that
not much academic stuff happened for a while.
And that was fine. Everyone* will tell you that when
you take a child out of school there really has to be a period of
unschooling/de-schooling/farting about (delete as appropriate) in order for the
little cherubs to adjust to their new, less structured life. That period of
unschooling can take a few weeks, a couple of months or, in our case, about two
years, but however long it takes it’s an important step. And so we were fairly
relaxed about it all. La Child still did stuff. She climbed walls, she
perfected her Judo throws, she learned to do a triple Salchow**, she did all
that outdoors, activity type stuff that for whatever reason she hadn’t had a
chance to do very much of at school. And slowly, some more academic activities
started to emerge. She’d go on tours of the National History museum and do a
half day DNA sequencing course (the full day ended with you having to bring
home a cloned cow, didn’t fancy that); she’d attend a course on the medicinal
qualities of various herbs at the Chelsea Physic Garden; she’d spend a day
dressed up as Queen Anne at Hampton Court, learning all about the Tudors, and
so on.
Then, out of the blue about six months ago, she
suddenly announced that she was ‘ready’ and, even more amazingly, ‘willing’ to
start studying Maths, and English, and Science, and ‘other stuff’. When La Wife
and I picked ourselves up off the floor, we found a little group of other home
ed families who were keen to start some more structured learning, and we all
clubbed together to bring in tutors.
And now, six months later, La Child is about to take
her first GCSE, and by all that’s unholy she’s chosen Maths. She’s 11. Next
year she intends to take her English, Biology, Physics and Art GCSEs. Year
after that, who knows. ‘Other stuff’ maybe.
Two interesting things stem from all this:
1. If you happen to home ed, don’t let anyone tell you
that a relaxed approach doesn’t work. Children will learn stuff when they’re
ready to learn stuff. After all, we’re happy enough to adopt a ‘let them learn
at their own pace’ approach before they go to school, aren’t we? What does it
really matter how old they were when they first crawled, or walked, or spoke,
or managed to hold it in long enough not to make an almighty squelchy mess
doewn their trouser legs? By the time they’re adults no one will know or care.
So why are we so very paranoid about filling them full of facts once they hit
school age? “13 years old and you don’t how to factor a quadratic formula?
Shit, you’re fucked my sun.” Don’t think so.
2. La Child never quite seems to lose her propensity
to surprise. There are times when we forget just how advanced she is, with all
that cleverness lost in a sea of attitude and angst, but every now and again
she’ll do something to remind us why we went down this road in the first place.
And I refer the honourable member to my statement, made some moments ago
somewhere near paragraph three, to wit: La Child falls somewhere between Homer
Simpson and a three toed sloth. Typical teen, hours spent on Instagram and
facetime, but work is a rude word best left unspoken. And yet, here we are with
a child who has had to pick herself up by the bootstraps and not only learn all
that good GCSE level Maths stuff, but also (in order to catch up with her far older
class mates) all of that pre-GSCE level Maths stuff that she didn’t bother
learning when she first left school. She’s been sat on her bed all hours of the day and night poring
through the books, and bugger me if she hasn’t done it with a smile and a
determination hitherto unknown in Casa Branza.
I’m proper proud, I am.
*not literally, obvs.
**no, she didn’t.
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