Children today are being forced out of their homes far too early into schools where they are neither loved nor respected. For boys, in particular, rising five is far too young to be expected to read the subtle and sophisticated social rules of school, which is unlike any other social institution, except perhaps prison. School, in my opinion, handicaps children emotionally and educationally.
I believe that the increasing emotional dependence in adulthood of children on their parents is the result of too much forced independence at an early age in an environment that is neither caring or nurturing. Herding children into schools encourages them to learn attitudes from each other, rather than from loving adults. School offers too much independence for a four-year-old boy and too little for a 14-year-old.
Independence, if left to develop naturally, comes at a child's own pace. This is a lesson most parents have seen for themselves in the pre-school years - how many children can be forced to learn to walk to a timetable?
A school's inability to work with this was at the heart of problems my sons were having. One was ahead, the other behind the national curriculum timetable for learning academic skills, but they were both at the right point for themselves. My younger son's teacher, who I respected, said he wasn't saying all the words a seven-year-old should be able to. I told her I wasn't concerned as he was only aged six and one month. She said that as he was due to take his Key Stage 1 SATs at six-and-a-half, for the school's purposes he was seven.
At that point, I decided to home educate. But it is hard, when every adult they encounter on a school day assumes they are truanting from school, and then lying about it.
Moreover, many local education authorities regard home educators as dangerous subversives who are inflicting their unorthodox views upon their children. We shall see when my own experiments in this regard are available in seven, nine and 11 years.
