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Agree with these, my Y9 daughter has needs that mainstream struggle to meet so she doesn't thrive there. Educationally she has really enjoyed me teaching her as she feels she is learning much faster and things making more sense ( not surprising given the teacher has to deal with 30 kids at a time rather than me dealing with 1.) However she is really missing friends (guess this is where clubs come in and it is really time consuming as I have to teach myself the subject first to then be able to teach her. I actually find it interesting and realise how much interesting stuff they taught us that I didn't appreciate at the time but yeh, trying to balance that with work is super time consuming, I am far from an idiot but I haven't had to think about how mitochondria work or the underlying themes in Romeo and Juliet for twenty years so takes some revising. I have had had to neglect some subjects as I just don't have the time to do this around work and know she won't be taking them for GCSE but it is a loss to her general knowledge.
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We are going a bit off tangent on home schooling.
The thing with off-grid is how far do you want to take it. Some of the people on New lives in the Wild have taken it so far, you can't see how they will ever reintegrate with society which seems to be OK up until ill health and/or old age catch up with you. At least in the UK we have the NHS always available but if you have limited national insurance contributions you are looking at a limited pension and if you do step out of the rubbish UK housing market, it is hard to see how you could ever get back in it several decade's later if you decided you wanted to do.
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Good to hear a first hand account. All of my mates kids are much younger.
This is why we're thinking about just a year and trying to choose a time when a) it won't impact the run up to the secondary education system here, and b) we are capable of teaching everything.
If we can do it, we would also be in the extremely fortunate position of splitting the work between two parents, not to mention my OH being exceptionally strong at maths and me being ok on the arts.
The only concern would be how well they reintegrate back into mainstream education.
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My point was more, "don't complain about schools not teaching x, y, z when maybe that should be your responsibility and they struggle to find the resources to teach a, b, c".
If home schooling is your (not you personally) solution to that then fill your boots, but I wouldn't be as confident as you about most people's ability to teach at primary school level. Early years numeracy and literacy isn't easy to teach well (there's a reason teachers qualify) and I don't know your experience, but I found supporting my kids' in maths in particular became more difficult as they approached year 6 - more related to the way it is now taught, so I guess I could have learned that with more time. A level chemistry, forget it.
On the extra curricular stuff, mine did loads of free or cheap as chips activities - swimming, ballet, boxing, football, horse riding, drama, art - outside of school, but I'm sure it is more easily available in London with free (for them) public transport.
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Well it's a big part of it. Especially if you're not off-grid in a community. But point taken.
To answer your question, your kids and community look after you or you die slowly of exposure after falling collecting wood.
Elements of this do remind me of the selfish/individualistic flip side to the hippy communes back in the day. Interesting when you look at the Kibbutz - probably the closest real communist model there is - the most successful ones make money from supplying some niche product /similar are pretty mainstream.
Something like C19 had also made many reassess the importance of relationships. So going full Life Below Zero only works if you're a loaner.
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My comments were probably misleading, she isn't full time home schooled, just I have picked it up since Covid so only been doing it a couple of months as her school haven't been great and I have been wfh, they basically set some tasks online each week and that's it teach yourself and answer a quiz which doesn't work for her as she has missed large chunks of Y7 and 8 so a lot of the work makes no sense to her. So I have had to fill those gaps, I hope to keep it going through the summer holidays a few hours a day and get her back to where she needs to be, with solid foundations that she is currently missing.
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The thing with off-grid is how far do you want to take it. Some of the people on New lives in the Wild have taken it so far, you can't see how they will ever reintegrate with society which seems to be OK up until ill health and/or old age catch up with you.
There is so much about modern life I'd like to delete, but paracetamol and antibiotics are two things that just about make up for the absolute disaster so much the rest of the modern world is. Break a leg while living off grid? Dead, or stop living off grid.
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Yeh the Richard Perkins farming videos I linked to highlight to me but rarely address that many of the permaculture ventures that he visits seem to only work as they rely on 'interns' of free/cheap farm labour who work all summer in a supposed exchange of learning the permaculture principals in exchange for food and accommodation. The 'businesses' would stand up if they paid a market rate for the labour. The flip side is the farms always seem to have a nice summer community of like minded individuals and imagine many great friendships are forged that last a life time.
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If you've got a spare Mil
https://www.privateislandsonline.com/europe/ireland/shore-island2
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Subbed for my inner DHT
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Hockerton is another interesting eco vilage, I visisted over a decade ago when all the origional founding families were still living there and a couple were just thinking it was making enough from visits/ education seminars etc. that they could quit there normie jobs.
https://www.hockertonhousingproject.org.uk/One of them sold last year for £450k
https://www.hockertonhousingproject.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2-Mystery-Hill-three-pager-2019.pdf -
There was a thing on Mull a few years ago where you could buy land affordably if you could prove you intended to live/work it sustainably. Woodland ownership is a nice dream but reality of land prices will sadly keep it a dream. If you're thinking seriously about sustainable land use and production consider wood pasture and agro-forestry. Using and manipulating natural process in a sustainable way without putting too much pressure on where ever you end up is going to be more sustainable than closed canopy woodland.
(speaking as a conservation land manager and arboriculturalist) -
There was a guy a few years back on Grand Designs who built pretty off grid, think he managed woodland, made charcoal etc. but if I remember rightly it was a nightmare to get permissions etc. was thing guy https://ben-law.co.uk/
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Sort of related.
I've enjoyed watching this series of a guy, mostly single handedly building a log cabin from scratch in rural (I think) Slovenia
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Mh08dMZMVwB0nhsI6mkfq7kYOb5Tu4T
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Break a leg while living off grid? Dead, or stop living off grid.
Anyone read this story about six schoolboys who steal a boat, get shipwrecked and manage to survive and, seemingly, thrive on a deserted island?
Anyways, one of the breaks his leg and they strap him up and it heals. Not trying to disagree with your point strictly, but it triggered the thought of this.
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I keep thinking about using a hub dynamo built into a wheel, with fairings, mounted ontop of the shed to charge a battery...
I reckon you could relatively happily charge anything upto a modern laptop with this kind of setup trickle-charging a large usb cache battery for the house. It's not going to give you a hot shower or fry your falafel though, so it's barely going to dent bills/dependency
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Off Grid Living
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@sbbohr
One the first, there is a bit of disingenuity to the HS argument in that by enlarge they still teach the curriculum. The basic framework as I understand it is still piggybacking off the national curriculum.
Re your second point it's hard to know isn't it? Parental attainment is the no.1 indicator of a child's outcome.