Off Grid Living

Thanks!

We definitely will be at minimum pursuing a home ed life, saving for a van now to travel Europe over many years etc.

The woodland would be a dream, just got to work out the realities I guess

Fairs dos. I think a school is the best place for kids. As you say, we can disagree.

Can talk about it endlessly!

Teachers mean well, but from our experiences they are often very mis-attuned to children’s needs.

The system doesn’t allow time to play, learning begins too early (age of child)

Most children do not learn well 9-3, try 10-12, 1-2.

School generally doesn’t actually teach you real world life skills!

Bla bla bla

The education 'system' is particularly poor in the UK, though. It obviously fails people in other countries, too, but the stories I've heard and experienced here, and much of the way it's set up, are definitely worse:

* Children can't concentrate in the afternoon. To have school in the afternoon just to force parents into work is shit.

* The examination system is absolute nonsense and should be abolished entirely.

* Further education is poorly organised. It's not perfect, but much better, where there is an expectation that people do a proper course to learn a job. It gives security and works far better for the economy in the long run.

That's not to take away from the work of teachers who have to operate in this system, or indeed to imagine that the difficulties in, say, heavily multi-lingual schools would magically be conquered by a better system, but there are so many obvious problems with it, many of which are only maintained because of 'tradition', that reform is urgently needed.

Tend to agree with most of that,

I’m not against the idea of school, in theory it makes sense. But the application / system doesn’t work for us.

Art of Manliness

do not want

Sun Tzu’s less popular sequel.

What are real-world life skills?

In my schooling at least, emotions are not touched on. That’s a big issue... understanding emotions, feelings and so on is a massive part of humanity.

“Formal” things like paying taxes, writing cvs, how to work with money and so on may only be covered in a very basic sense

Cooking, an hour a week in the first few years of secondary? For us, every meal is an opportunity to learn; our little human is now fairly competent at grating a carrot, peeling a stock cube, picking strawberries/pea pods - school never taught me how food grows!

I’m sure there are many more, and of course I’m sure there are things that schools offer we can’t, but if kiddo is anything like her parents, the school system probably won’t suit

School generally doesn’t actually teach you real world life skills!

Happy and interested to listen to differing views on education, but this particular statement really gets my goat. I worked with a non-UK carpenter who used to say this all the time (although with a different bias):

School teaches a whole host of skills that you apply to life. Geometry. Percentages. Literature. Learning. Working in teams. Coexisting with cunts. I feel people miss this concept as well as parents' responsibilities in learning.

The hours thing I do find interesting though as I was fortunate enough to go to private schools. The hours were much longer than state school. That said from the sounds of it there was a broader range of classes and SO much more sport. It's disheartening that price increases mean it's unlikely I'll be able to do the same for mini-H as I'd like them to have the same breadth and physical activities I had.

We want to take a year off at least once and travel and home school. A camper van is what we're thinking at the moment. People we've met who were doing something similar were doing half days and further ahead in the curriculum. What appeals most though is giving a different perspective on learning and being able to apply learning in a different and potentially more immediate way - geography and language being obvious examples.

Captain fantastic is a decent film about this.

The points about education are interesting. I’ve never used trigonometry, critical analysis of literature but perhaps the point is not to only learn skills per se, but to expand a childs capacity to think.

On the other hand it’s pretty hard to not reach for the tin foil hat and think the government doesn’t want all the masses to have a grasp of banking, personal finance, stocks and shares etc.

Also if the price increases for private schools are driven by richer foreign parents how long can they continue to receive charitable status ?

giving a different perspective on learning and being able to apply learning in a different and potentially more immediate way

I totally agree with this notion;

School teaches a whole host of skills that you apply to life.
but the way they attempt to do this is a big part of the issue we find, yes the things mentioned are covered - but trying to teach trigonometry in a class of 30 with no real world application is madness, unless you are going into a certain job role, you may never use this; but everyone has feelings, emotions and needs to know about the role we have in the world within the economy and climate

Everyone, every family, every school is different, but the general system is the same

hard to not reach for the tin foil hat

Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that education has been carefully thought out to encompass everything necessary. The limited / basic level of critical analysis, lack of philosophy of thought, etc.

Debt and compound interest is really odd though. Idk about everyone else, but we learnt probability with dice. Why not percentages with credit cards and loans?

Also if the price increases for private schools are driven by richer foreign parents how long can they continue to receive charitable status ?

Maybe, but it won't make any difference to those sorts of private schools. So Idk there will be a change in demand pressure on less expensive private schools, just an increase in fees pushing out middling earners.

Everyone, every family, every school is different, but the general system is the same

That's the challenge with a comprehensive system. It also highlights the structural issues out our class dominated society - any alternatives will be graded by the heard - eg pollys and GNVQs are for thick people.

Interestingly I do see hypocrisy here on the left - academies are evil Vs. we need multifaceted schools.

Youtube Red Poppy Ranch - I got a bit obsessed with it for a while - its US of course but it does give a window into the realities of: Clearing land, building a house, building solar and water 'off grid' systems, keeping animals etc. Essentially what the guy has done (virtually single handed) is bloody impressive in my book but he has mysterious passive income which is something to do with direct marketing / pyramid schemes or some shit. He also has a "homemaker" wife that basically does all the domestic/kids stuff / clearing up after him etc. He is shooting for a fair amount of civility of course - ie, big family ranch house with most mod cons. He has budget and time and space and kids that either seem to play happily with the goats or help him build (WTF ?- my kids wont even pick up their lego!). It still doesn't look exactly easy. When i've gone down the same dream route as you I always come up against the reality that if we sold up our pot would not be enough to buy land, build a house, build energy systems, buy tools machines etc pay for tradesmen - and keep my fam sustained / sane whilst doing all this. I think if one is more flexible or modest about living conditions - ie less grand designs woodland lodge - more ersatz hippy eco hobbit assemblage its probably achievable in the more far flung reaches of the uk - deepest Cornwall, Wales or Scotland.

The US is different. TBH I feel like the majority of youtubers probably start from the position of being fairly independently wealthy so it's always best to take their life examples with a handful of salt.

Have you looked at the various places where you can get heavily discounted land for building eco/sustainable homes? A mate's bro and GF are doing this somewhere in SE wales. Can' t remember the figures of details. But if you're after that sort of life, it looks like an excellent option. Importantly IMO you're near a community.

Obvs check this before you move: https://www.floodmap.net/

All three of the issues you mention were covered at the state primary and secondary schools my three went to. And being at school didn’t stop me from spending time on this kind of stuff with them, isn’t that my responsibility as a parent?

My partner teaches early years and is frustrated and resigned at the number of parents who drop their kids off expecting staff to teach them how to wipe their arse and nose, hold a knife and fork and put their shoes on.

Good thread. Interesting.

On a kind of off-grid vibe I used to really enjoy https://www.youtube.com/user/mrintegralpermanence
Is all about a permaculture/ regenerative agriculture farm run by a Brit in Sweden but he often travels to other farms around Europe to see how they do it and quite often the farms are run on a low impact/ off grid tangent

isn’t that my responsibility as a parent?

agreed, people complain about a,b,c, isn't taught at school but education doesn't have to end at 3.30 on a weekday.

School teaches a whole host of skills that you apply to life. Geometry. Percentages. Literature. Learning. Working in teams.

This I agree with very strongly, numeracy and literacy are the fundamental building blocks to communication.

Geometry, percentages etc are tools to use in life, and it's hard to argue that picking up such a variety of skills is more likely out of the school environment is a hard sell for me.

Having said that, the ability or willingness to learn new skills is probably going to be fostered better outside of a formal education. It depends on picking up the basics I suppose.

A lot of what we want kids to look like at 18 has been outsourced from the home to the state.

These are two episodes of new lives in the wild (both happen to be in New Zealand) that I remember both address the impact of home schooling on the children involved:

https://www.my5.tv/ben-fogle-new-lives-in-the-wild/season-11/ben-fogle-new-lives-in-the-wild-9b552c29-285a-493a-a880-e40c995ccbe1

https://www.my5.tv/ben-fogle-new-lives-in-the-wild/season-2020/ben-fogle-new-lives-in-the-wild-revisited
Episode 3

100% this.

Schools are underfunded, teachers criminally underpaid, ministers have no proverbial skin in the game having overwhelmingly been privately educated and sending their kids to private schools, so the system that many choose to criticise continues to creak. In the circumstances, I would prefer schools to teach what they are eminently better at doing than I am, and I'll spend time on the other stuff.

But to bring it back around to teaching your kids from home, given the issues you've raised, teaching your children yourself would give you the time to do both. The 1-on-1 nature means you'd bosh through it faster too. (obvs I do get where your original issue stemmed from)

The challenges for me from listening to peoples personal accounts are:

1. Skills: you need at least one parent to be competent enough to teach all the subjects. Most bright people could do this up to secondary school, but past that? GCSE's probably, but not necessarily all the subjects. A-levels?
   
2. System: if you can't do 1. then, in our system, what is jumping into secondary school going to be like for them? 6th form college would probably be less brutal I'd guess? How/when do you make that call?
   
3. Costs: Everyone I've heard talk about it says they did loads of extracurricular / after school activities and subsequently had a great number and more varied mix of friends. No one ever mentions how their family afforded to send their kids to all these clubs and live on one person's income. Maybe I'm naive and you can do 5 d/w of free clubs.
   
   

Lammas is an interesting example of an off grid community in Wales that came with planning conditions around the community having to be able to feed and sustain (trade goods) itself within five year. It is open to visitors.

https://lammas.org.uk/en/welcome-to-lammas/

One of the families was on Grand designs a couple of times.