I’m starting to loathe about half of our baby toys. The VTech ones, the LeapPad ones, and pretty much anything else electronic. They claim to be targetted at babies aged six months plus, but they’re not. They are entirely targetted at the over-pushy, socially ambtious aspirations of middle-class parents - or at the very least, at the companies’ perceptions of those parents. But they’re probably right, they don’t do these things without researching the market first.

The thing is, you can’t really blame the manufacturers. However noble their intentions, six month old babies don’t buy toys - their parents do. So their priority is, naturally, to appeal to parents, partly by appearing to appeal to babies*, but mostly by tapping into parental aspirations for those babies.

That is the only explanation that I can come up with, for why my six-month-old baby’s toys are endeavouring to teach him the alphabet. I mean, really. What is the point? Counting and letter work are for children, not babies. Three at the youngest, and only then if they’re both bright and keen. At six months, it should be all about music, and shape, and texture, and maybe some dexterity and motor skills. He’s still learning what happens when you let go of a toy over an empty space. Not only is it inappropriate to expect him to learn to count at this stage, 1) it’s never going to happen, and 2) it’s a distraction from the things he should be learning.

And don’t get me started on big statements about “Learning Fun”. That’s for my benefit, not his, and is to make me think “Oh good, this is an educational toy” - as if there was such a thing as a non-educational toy, and as if he would ever bother to play with it if there was…

In defence of VTech, LeapPad and the rest, I think they meandered into the baby market by accident, and exceeded their expertise in the process. Their older-kids toys are great - Daisy is genuinely learning the alphabet from her Leap Frog Phonics Radio, and seems to enjoy doing it, in a now-and-then, when-she-feels-like-it sort of way. Doing basically the same things in toys for babies, though, doesn’t make much sense to me.

* Fortunately, the effect is alleviated by this simple truth: the easiest way to appear to appeal to a baby, is to actually do so. If that wasn’t true, the toys would be even worse.

I promise, Daisy and Henry, here and now, in front of the entire internet, not to teach you to read a minute before you’re ready.? I will stop the minute it stops being fun, because reading is fun, and I would much rather back off for a week, a month, or a year, than put you off for life by taking the fun out of it.? For as long as I am taking personal responsibility for your education, I will make the effort to provide you with information sources that don’t require reading, rather than requiring you to learn to read, for as long as is necessary.? And if I ever do decide to send you to school, I promise not to buy in to the culture of excessive academic pressure that is spoiling the childhood of children up and down the country.

But learn to read, coz it’s great.

That’s all.

I’m glowing a little, today, with the glow of being a good mum. I mean, Daisy still watches too much telly, and my solution to that invariably means changing the channel rather than actually turning it off, but I like to think of it as one weakness in my otherwise excellent parenting.

Yesterday, there was paint. I’m always especially proud when there’s paint, but there was particularly faffy paint, yesterday, inspired by Doodle Do (yes, I know, but at least we watched telly, and allowed it to lead us into a non-telly activity). So, following the lead of Dib-Dab, Scribble and Stick, we made bubble painting picture frames. Incidentally, to do so, we had to go out and buy straws, so she even got some exercise. Daisy only sucked on the straw once, though she was pretty upset at the blue-paint-with-Fairy mixture that ended up in her mouth. She didn’t do it twice, though! And, since they’d stuck a photo in the middle of the painting and called it a picture frame on the show, we did that, too. “Who do you think the photo should be of, Daisy?” I asked. “Henry,” she said, without hesitation, so I printed three photos of Henry, and we glued them to middle of three large bubble paintings, and I’m actually rather pleased with the result, and little miffed at her natural inclination to destroy everything she creates, given half a chance.

Today, too, has been rather positive on the educating front, considering we’re all ill, and the telly hasn’t really been off. This morning we went to Musical Minis, which is music and rhythm, a story (English, surely?) and all manner of social interaction (”Daisy, give that drum back to that baby!”), to say nothing of a certain amount of exercise, though I admit to driving there, today, because of feeling ill.

Unexpectedly, when we got back, Kevin was home, having gone to work and changed his mind when he got there. I’ve done that. You think you’re OK when you leave the house, but the commute is the most exhausting bit of the day, and by the time you actually get to the office, you’d sell your desk for a duvet and a quiet corner to sleep in. He spent the afternoon in bed, and Daisy and I got the laptop out.

One of the advantages of the new laptop, is that I’m doing more computer work with Daisy when Henry’s asleep. I’m generally against Daisy going upstairs when Henry’s asleep, but using the computer when he’s awake is a bit tricky in its own way, as I’m sure you can imagine. The other advantage is that Daisy finds using the mousepad easier than a traditional mouse, and she has come on leaps and bounds, today, in terms of controlling the mouse. We played lots of Tweenies mouse control games, and a few Charlie and Lola ones for good measure, and I really felt like I was seeing progress, and giving her real ICT skills. Then we printed some Postman Pat stationery, and she wrote a letter to her grandmother, made an envelope, stuck a stamp on it, and took it to the letter box with a huge sense of pride. I can remember letter-writing as educational activity, though admittedly, that would be when I could actually write words, rather than rows of circles.

So, all in all, boding well for the home ed, today. And this when she’s only three - imagine how great I’ll be when she’s actually of school age!

Lots of Daisy posts, this week. Just as well, it was starting to look like we’d lost interest in her.

Daisy has made a handful of developmental leaps, recently. The one which is currently impressing me the most is not the successful telephoning of her father when he was at work, but the attempts at writing.

She has quite suddenly changed the focus of her drawing to be about creating letteresque shapes, and then telling me that it says “Daisy” or “Mummy”. When asked to write in Daddy’s birthday card, she produced a neat line of such shapes, and seems to be very clear as to their purpose. I’m becoming more and more convinced of autonomous education as a theory. She just does this stuff, no-one taught her. And if I was trying, I’m really not convinced it would work.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot, recently, about fulfilling potential, and setting aspirations, and other related matters. I’ve been trying to work out what the fundamental difference is between intelligent, accomplished, creative people like me, and the ones who earn six-figure salaries. I mean, is there a difference?

On one level, I’m sure I have the capability to be one of those high-flying types. I’m clever enough, emotionally aware, academically accomplished. I have A Levels and degrees, and a proven ability to learn both technical things, and more philosophical ones. Somehow, though, I’ve never really seen myself as a six-figure-salary person. Why not? What am I lacking?

My mum says it’s an innate and genetic form of laziness. People who Achieve in this world pour their heart and soul into doing so, and I was never prepared to do that. What she means, to translate that into a slightly less insulting sentence (do you have to do that when your mum talks, as well?), is that I’m not actually motivated in that direction, because my priorities are elsewhere.

Put like that, I’m glad my priorities are elsewhere. I’m glad that I don’t believe in working sixty hour weeks, and changing jobs every twelve months, going hell-for-leather to Get On in that sense. I’m much more of a Stop and Smell the Flowers type, and I think my quality of life is much better as a result. I think that was just as true when I was out with my friends instead of revising for GCSEs, as it’s been at every stage since, including this one, where I ditched the rat race altogether to stay at home with Daisy.

I wonder, though, whether I grew of up with a sense of a limit to what People Like Me could achieve in life, and set myself fairly low goals as a result. At one point, when I was about seventeen, I went around telling people I was going to be the Director General of the BBC. It was a goal, and ambition, a stated direction to travel in. In the end, I never even attempted to get into the media industry, because that popular wisdom was that it was too cut-throat, and I just couldn’t imagine myself succeeding against ambitious people. In fact, by the time I was 21, I was in the university careers office, dismissing out of hand any graduate employers who asked for “motivated and ambitious” people, because I really didn’t think I was either. I couldn’t understand where the jobs were for the rest of us.

The Director General thing was never much more than a joke - I never really thought it would happen. Was I, deep down, pretty astute in my understanding of myself? Or did I limit my horizons? And if so, why did I limit them? Was it about the aspirations that were being set for me by my family? My mum shattered the aspirations and goals set by her family, by being cleverer than they could comprehend, and going to college, and becoming a teacher. Yet she’s always thought she’s stupid - at the bottom of the top class in the grammar school, narrowly missing the degree route of her teaching course, always feeling like she was running to keep up, and not quite making the grade. She was the first in her family to break out of the working class background into a profession, and that’s a huge achievement for anyone. I’m just not sure that, that done, there was anything comprehensible left for me to achieve. More of the same. I got a degree, I suppose, but so would mum if she’d gone to college twenty-five years later. She’s got postgrad qualifications now, anyway, so it’s all been superceded.

People would ask me, at school, if I was planning to be a teacher like my mum. Interestingly enough, no-one thought it appropriate to ask if I was planning to be a vicar, like my dad. I really couldn’t think of anything I wanted less - partly because I knew too much about the politics of state-sector teaching, and partly because… I don’t know. I wanted something else. Something more, bigger. I wanted to feel like I , as the next generation, was pushing the family’s collective achievement a step further. But I never knew what that thing might look like. And whilst I have, to some extent (there’s no-one else in my family with MA after their name…), I feel like I took the tiniest possible step in that Value Added direction, and went no further. Because that was my limit? Because I couldn’t be bothered? Because I was so afraid of failure, I was only prepared to reach a tiny way further on?

I don’t know. But it all makes it quite difficult to work out what to do with Daisy. If I was limited by a lack of confidence in myself, then I want to free her from the same trap, somehow. But the very thing that binds me, will affect the messages I pass on to her, and that’s a hard cycle to break. On the other hand, if my material achievements were basically limited by a fairly unmaterialistic value system, then that’s tied in with all the things I do want to pass on to her, including my faith. That makes it all a bit of a paradox, really, and I’m not sure I’d ever know whether I’d successfully resolved it or not.

The Today programme did a piece, this morning, on home education.? It wasn’t exactly news, more of a filler to act as relief against all the “will the children get a place at their chosen school?” hype of the week.

Several things struck me.? One was that it wasn’t exactly balanced.? I mean, it was, in the sense that they had a pre-recorded bit with a home educating family, talking about what they do and how it works for them, but not much about why they do it, or their relationship with the authorities.? Then they did a John Humphrys vs interviewee bit, with a chap called Tony Mooney, who described himself as an “inspector” of home education for “a couple of” local authorities.

The chap was pretty negative.? He implied, but didn’t say outright, that the relatively light legislative touch on the subject was the source of no end of problems, and should be fixed ASAP.? He certainly suggested that the vast majority of home educators are deceiving the authorities, as an alternative to court over a persistent truant. De-register the child, and the problem goes away - I can imagine it works pretty well, actually, particularly if you’re dealing with an older teenager.? It takes a certain amount of time to conclusively demonstrate that you’re not providing an education, and if the child in question is already fourteen or fifteen, there’s every reason to hope that they’ll be too old for anyone to care before the situation is brought to a head.

However, the “inspector” chap (and I suspect the seasoned political types in the HE community would want to discuss that title…) followed this up with the information that (due to the lamentable weakness of the law) he sees most of the families on his list just once a year, unless there is believed to be a serious problem with the educational provision, in which case it might be as often as every two months.? So, erm, yeah, you spend six times as long with what Humphrys was pleased to call “a problem family” as you do with the people who are just getting on with it.? Perhaps that skews your perception of the problem just a little?? For every “problem” family you deal with, you’re fitting six ordinary home educators into your week.

I have it on the authority of a source I’m choosing not to name, that there is a rise in the number of truants being encouraged to de-register from school, and declare themselves home educated - and that this is partly as a result of encouragement to do so by Educational Welfare Officers, who would deny any such conversation if asked.? Behind closed doors, though, the LA in that area are mending their truancy stats by getting truants off the school register.? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I suppose.? Apparently, there is also a notable parish priest in the area, who is similarly encouraging families to pursue this route - presumably on the basis that forced attendance for a child who can’t bring himself to face going, and a court for the parents, benefits the family as a whole not one bit.

The second thing that struck me, is that if the fairly robust legislation about obliging registered pupils to attend hasn’t worked, to the point that the family have de-registered the child rather than get into serious trouble, why does this chap think that increased legislation regarding home education will help? What looks to him like a parental cop-out, and a sinister ploy to dodge the rule of law, looks to me like a way for parents who are struggling to cope with their teens anyway, to avoid a series of events which will only make life worse for everyone involved.? The child is going to get no worse an education through a lack of home education than s/he was already getting through a lack of attendance at school.? In the meantime, beefing up the rules has a significant impact on home educators who are conscientiously doing the job to the best of their ability, but whose ability might well be encumbered by the new levels of bureaucracy required.? It would completely fail to solve the problem, whilst targeting the wrong people.

Then again, I feel the same way about the Children’s Database, Identity Cards, and most of the anti-terror legislation.

It also occurred to me that since this Mooney chap inspects for “a couple” of local authorities, that makes him a contractor, which in turn could well mean that he gets lumped with all the awkward cases.? His perception of the ratio of “problem” cases to other home educators may be far from accurate anyway.

At the end, when pushed, the most positive thing he could find to say about home education was that it was too much like hard work, and he couldn’t be induced to attempt it.? Well, maybe he lacks the commitment, but that’s no reason to try and stop other people from having a go.

In short, I wasn’t very impressed.? There’s a moral panic rising up about home education at the moment, and I expect the BBC to be able to see past the cheap ratings to the fact that the only real research available says it’s a good thing.

Probably the most exciting development in the Jump household this week was arrival of our membership pack for Education Otherwise - not least because I’d forgotten it was coming, and I had no idea what the parcel I was collecting from the Post Office might be, and that’s always exciting.

I’m EXTREMELY conscious that our regular readers include some people who are shouting “No!!! Don’t do it!!!”, and some who are cheering and opening bottles of champagne. I should make it quite clear that this is far from a made decision. Daisy is still a full three years away from what they like to call Compulsory School Age, and I have a strong sense that this sort of decision isn’t really made until she’s five and not in school. However, I have done oodles of research, and can certainly see the advantages.

I have read essays, case studies and blogs on home education, and got a sense of the wide variety of approaches that different people take. It really seems to work for the people who are doing it. I can see overwhelming educational advantages, particularly with reference to teacher-pupil ratio, and the freedom to work at the best pace for the child, and to persue her interests in an order not dictated by the management needs of a class of 30. Frankly, I have two degrees, and Kevin has another one in a diametrically opposed discipline, and I am pretty confident in our ability to offer an education.

I have also read the academic research (not that there’s much), and that, too, seems to be very positive.

The bottom line, as far as I’m concerned, is that everyone who is on the outside, in terms of home education, worries about the social development of children who don’t go to school, and everyone who is on the inside is adamant that their children are absolutely fine, if not rather better than average. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? We all think our own children are better than everyone else’s - we’re preprogrammed to be biassed in their favour, it’s how the species survives.

So I figure I need to meet some Home Educated kids. There’s no other way to make an informed judgement over whether it makes them weird - or at least, weird in a bad way. With that aim in mind, I’ve signed up, and I’m looking to make some friends. And then decide if I think their kids are weird. And then decide if I think their kids would be any less weird in school (which might be a bit trickier). And then decide if I think their kids grow into weird adults. And then decide which is more important - wierdness in childhood, or weirdness in adulthood. The deeper I get into rationalising this, the more obvious is becomes that nothing is going to prove anything, but I intend to try.

This is a fairly brief post, that can’t hope to summarize the volume of what I’ve read, and learned, and thought about it all. I wrote that one last week, but didn’t post it because it was nearly 3000 words long. The bottom line, though, is that I can see great advantages to teaching Daisy at home, over sending her to school, but I’m terribly, terribly scared. I’m scared of breaking her by keeping her at home, and I’m equally scared of breaking her by sending her to school, but neither of those things count for much compared with this: I’m utterly terrified of not following my gut, for no better reason than I fear the disapproval of other people. Because that is a pitiful and pathetic reason to do anything at all in this world, and I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror again, if that was what it came down to.