Education and schooling are not the same thing Part 1
Education and schooling are not the same thing Part 1
The freedom to drop out of school to get an education
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My son has been living with a low-grade brain tumour since he was diagnosed at 6 years old. He was diagnosed as autistic, later, when he was 10. Throughout his time at primary school he had challenges around headaches, fatigue, noise, bright light, executive functioning, and bullying. It was hard, but somehow he muddled through five years, despite mostly being unable to attend full time due to feeling ill. His attendance was always ‘a concern’ to school, but we had support from neurology and oncology at the Sick Kids hospital for school to make allowances, to let him have breaks from the noise of the classroom, to skip PE if he was more tired than usual. There was also a classroom assistant that he made good use of. He was generally ‘keeping up' despite all the time off, and he had some friends to help cushion him from the bullying, at least some of the time.
Coping with school during a global pandemic changed all that. The school's policy of not saying who had Covid meant he could never tell whether or not he had actually been at risk and so assumed the worst - that he was always at risk. The fact that adults were hiding at home from the virus while children still had to go to school at all seemed dangerous and unfair. The ever changing routines and rules to comply with at school, and the random periods spent at home in lock-down, meant that nothing was ever certain about school. Except, that is, for the loss of the very adjustments that had for so long enabled him to cope, just about. He was no longer allowed breaks to escape the noise of the classroom. The classroom assistant no longer came to help. Lunch time and breaks had to be spent in bubbles of specific children doing specific activities in specific parts of the yard. As the months went by, increasing anxiety and lack of support exacerbated his challenges in the classroom, leading in turn to ever more headaches, greater fatigue and even more anxiety about being trapped in school feeling ill. I watched, helpless, as this feedback loop spiralled, my pleas for his support measures to be re-instated falling on the deaf ears of ‘the Council says we have to do things like this'. He finally broke in November 2020, during year 6.
By this point he could not face going in to school at all. Forcing the issue often caused light-sensitive headaches that left him pale grey and exhausted, retreating behind closed curtains and a closed door on his return home. It also increasingly led to meltdowns, where his panic at the mere thought of school, or even school work, led to him lashing out. He was withdrawn, irritable and depressed. Twice I overheard him talking to his friends about suicide. At the age of 11. After months of struggling along like this, encouraging him to school when I could, the cavalry eventually arrived the following May. Professionals from educational psychology, additional support for learning, child and adolescent mental health services, and social work were brought in on the case. I was hopeful that my son's autism diagnosis would bring additional support. After all, that was what we were assured would happen pre-diagnosis.
Instead, the focus of effort shifted markedly with the arrival of these professionals. Previously it had been on how to make reasonable adjustments for sensory and rest needs in school during a pandemic. Now the focus was on ignoring those needs and assuming that complaints of headaches and fatigue were fiction from a child with irrational anxiety simply wanting to avoid school. On assuming that it was my propensity to be hoodwinked by my child instead of setting firm boundaries that had caused our current predicament. On sending me on parenting courses instead of fixing the problem where it was - in school, where my son simply couldn’t cope any more. I was constantly pressured by the school and Council professionals to ‘just get him in’, as if it had ever been that easy, and constantly guilt-tripped about all the work he was missing, how far behind he was falling, as if this was a choice I was making. The autism expert from CAMHS made it clear, as did I, that we needed to change the environment in school, to support my son's sensory needs and to lessen his anxiety, before he could return. While the school had previously listened to advice from NHS professionals about my son’s needs around his tumour, NHS advice on autism was ignored in favour of the views of the Council's educational psychologist, additional support for learning worker and social worker.
Instead of attracting additional support in school, in practice, my son's autism diagnosis seemed to be used as an excuse to dismiss and be-little his experiences and my knowledge of them. And to subject him to a different set of generic approaches, this time for autistic children. These approaches were based on stricter rules, more routine, firmer control. They also seemed to assume total incapacity in executive function and social awareness. Every single part of my son’s day, from brushing his teeth in the morning to putting his pyjamas on at night, was to be mapped out and ticked off with animated pictures and explained with social stories. And we were told, in no uncertain terms, that these approaches were to be used at home, in his sanctuary, in order that we be consistent with how things would be done in school, where my son’s problems originated.
I knew that my son fitted these new approaches even less than he fitted the old ones at school and I tried to explain that. He is smart, holds strong opinions, and values his autonomy above all else. Raising him is a privilege that I never tire of, and I have learnt more from him about how to parent than I have from any book or article. Or any of the four parenting courses I was sent on during those months. He has taught me how to make an environment bearable for him. How his tolerance and ability varies. How to get and keep his attention when he's hyperfocussed. How to listen to what he's not saying as well as his words. How to resolve conflict rather than escalate it. How he learns and problem solves best. When to offer help and when to leave him alone.
The generic approaches for autistic children foisted on us by the education system flew in the face of everything that I knew about my son, and everything that I had already told them about my son. None of it aimed to resolve either his sensory challenges or his anxiety while in school. It did, however, seem to be aimed at solving perceived problems at home. I hadn't asked for help at home because we didn't need help at home, yet the narrative spun by the Council’s professionals was firmly fixed from the very start around an anxious and incapable single mum. I resisted the most damaging instructions given, like ignoring my sons headaches and banning all screen time until he returned to school. We tried some of the less damaging ideas like the animated cards and social stories, which, as I knew they would, received raised eyebrows and contempt from a child who didn't need them. We tried, not because I thought their instructions might help, but because I was concerned about the potential consequences of not ‘showing willing’. Presumably it made sense to someone in Social Work to combine the role of supporting children with a disability with the role of acting against parents to protect vulnerable children. As someone who spent 18 months in care as a toddler while my own single mother, and my own wider family, were deemed incapable of caring for me and my baby sister, it terrified me. I engaged an independent child advocate from a local charity, and they, as well as CAMHS, supported my pleas for action in school. Still to no avail.
Despite, and in some cases because of, the efforts of the school and the professionals, my son's last attempt at being in school was in mid August of 2021, his second day of his last year in primary school. I officially removed him from the education system at the end of June 2022 - after he was turned down for specialist provision for High School because he is not intellectually challenged. CAMHS, and a few visits to the local High School, had made it abundantly clear that mainstream High School would be too traumatising for an already broken autistic child, so we have been home educating ever since. That was not, initially, an easy decision to make, but I know already that it was the right one. It will be a while yet until my son is fully recovered from his experiences, but since the cloud of expectations around school has been lifted, he has become relaxed and cheerful at home again. His headaches have disappeared almost completely as he can manage his own environment. I can’t remember the last time he had a meltdown. And instead of resisting anything with a hint of learning, he now inhales knowledge and skills like they were air. Yet, he has spent most of the last year watching YouTube and playing video games, both of which are deemed ‘bad' by the professionals. So how does that work? And is that really home educating?
I already knew that my son used YouTube and gaming to help regulate his emotions. They are both important for him to have access to, particularly when stressed or anxious, which is why I resisted instructions to completely ban them. After August 2022, when my son stopped attending school at all, I gave him free rein, and watched, entranced, as this traumatised child, who had shut down to learning entirely, slowly became curious and engaged in learning every day he was at home, feeling safe, and using these activities as a medium. I was convinced that he was learning more at home than he ever had at school, and to counter the constant narrative from the school about how much learning he was missing out on, I eventually decided to sit down and document exactly what he was learning. From the outside it just looked like ‘watching YouTube’ and ‘playing video games’, which did not please the professionals at all. He was having far too much fun at home. He would never want to go back to school. Now I started paying more attention to exactly what he was doing. I started listing exactly what topics he was covering and what skills he was developing. And I was pretty impressed. My son, who had repeatedly declared learning to be too hard and too boring, was voluntarily learning about science and history and geography and socio-economics. He was voluntarily developing skills in maths and reading and spelling and problem solving and planning and resource management. And he was having fun. He was determined to persevere. He was happy. Not an adjective either of us would ever use to describe him when at school. Ever.
Sometimes it is easy to see what he is learning about from YouTube if I pay attention, with videos about science or history or current affairs. Sometimes it is trickier to spot, perhaps only becoming apparent with discussion about what we watch together or something he has seen that particularly struck him. Art and literature criticism from movie and game reviews. Social commentary and current affairs from meme collections read out loud. Human rights, development of societal attitudes, and empathy for the human condition from channel owners who may be gay, trans, black, disabled, female, or just a plain white male, bucking the current stereotype by being a decent human being. Whatever he learns comes as a direct consequence of his own choices, his own interests, whether he actively follows rabbit holes down the internet, or allows the YouTube algorithm to suggest new videos, and new channels, based on his watch history. In this digital age, the entire world and all it’s knowledge can be explored at leisure from the comfort and safety of his home. And it’s fascinating watching it happen, learning new things alongside my son.
What is possibly harder to see from the outside is the educational value that he gets from video games. Yet here too, it proved worth paying more attention. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that video games can have a number of cognitive benefits. Improved spatial skills. Enhanced processing of often fast-moving visual information. Increased ability to keep track of multiple pieces of information at the same time. Improved problem-solving. Enhanced creativity. Increased hand-eye coordination. Improved executive function. The list is lengthening all the time. The content and focus of games can also educate gamers about any topic that the game developer can conceive - history, geography, mythology, physics, genetics, evolution, politics, financial management, resource management, project planning, city planning, road planning, human relationships, cooking, driving a bus. All these and more are covered within my son's existing game collection alone, and, like the YouTube videos, he can dive into different topics as the mood takes him. Sometimes I get invited along, and I have watched, over the years, as playing these games, overcoming challenge after challenge to reach his in-game goals, has helped him to build his emotional resilience and his ability to plan and execute tasks. It became apparent that where YouTube allowed an avid consumption of educational information, gaming allowed my son to both gain new information and to practice and develop key skills. These included the standard reading writing and arithmetic, but went well beyond them.
Too many adults, including the professionals we were dealing with, have a tendency to dismiss children’s chosen activities as a waste of time. It is time that we all recognise the value of what children learn at home, entirely unprompted. It is time that we stop just walking past with our adult blinkers on. Bizarrely, the school's guilt-tripping had forced me to do just that. And to take our first step towards home education.
So, I knew that my son was actively learning at home, just not what was on the national curriculum. I knew that school had never been a comfortable place for my son. I also knew that his burn-out was not going to resolve quickly, and certainly not in the same environment that caused it. In short, I knew that going back to school was not the best thing for my son - unless the professionals involved suddenly had an impressive change in attitude. But, as a single parent, I needed to work, to keep a roof over our heads. In my mind at that point, home education meant teaching my son at home. What I would teach him and how I would teach it were questions dominated by an even more important one. Where would I find the time to teach my son at home? Although leaving the school system seemed increasingly like the only way to save both of us our sanity, this felt like a massive barrier to home educating. The next step on our path was my learning about self directed education.
Slowly, over the months, in between feeling desperate, I scrolled home ed Facebook groups and searched on Google. I found articles about learning through play by Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College. I found references to earlier work by John Holt, an American author and educator, and proponent of the unschooling approach to home education back in the 1960's and 70's. I stumbled across a book by Dr Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist, called ‘Changing our Minds’ that set out in stunning detail how children can successfully direct their own education. And I found hundreds of parents facing similar challenges with burnt out children who simply could not face school any more - many of whom had invented unique versions of home education that suited their families and involved little, if any, formal learning.
I slowly realised that home education does not need to involve the national curriculum, or indeed any curriculum. That it did not need to involve formal teaching at all. That in fact, the whole idea that children are empty vessels that need to be shut in rooms and force-fed information by adults in order to learn is erroneous in the extreme. That children have always learned best through play.
I also realised that I could trust my son to decide for himself what he needs to know in order to function in the modern world. That I could trust him to seek out the information and skills that he needs to achieve his goals, when he needs them. That I could trust that his goals, while that of a child at present, are stepping stones in his development, and that they will grow and mature naturally as he does. And, I realised that I could become my son's facilitator rather than his teacher. That I did have time for both my work and my sons education. Home education suddenly became a real option. A valid escape route from the stagnant mess we were both embroiled in with the education system. So when my son was turned down for specialist provision within the school system, we took that escape route gratefully.
In the future, as he recovers further, I hope that my son's learning can be expanded again, with visits to zoos and exhibitions and museums, perhaps with shared learning opportunities in subjects that interest him within the home ed community, maybe even courses and exams at college once he has decided what he wants to be in life. But for the moment, he’s not ready. Crowds of people and many places outside the home are still anxiety provoking, to be eased back into slowly, over time, with support, and without the pressure that traumatised him in the first place. YouTube and video games are still the only media that my son can interact with comfortably, though I notice that he is now making forays into written information from Google. All of this is ok. He is still healing. And though he may now be a teenager at 13, he is still a child. Play is how he learns best. It is not ‘wasting time’. It is how he is learning how to educate himself, and how he is beginning to love learning again. Both of which are much more crucial to his future than any schoolwork could ever be. And I wager he will remember us staying up late to watch live coverage on YouTube of Space X launches far longer than he will remember anything from school. Except his distress.
(Please note that this article was published with permission from my son. If he ever changes his mind I will take it down.)
Fun YouTube channels to dip into
Some of my son's favourites
Bill Wurtz - quirky, creative videos on a variety of topics, including our favourite, ‘the history of the entire world I guess'.
Brick experiment- experiments with lego technic.
Dr Mike - Covers the importance of health literacy and battles misinformation in a practical, yet fun way.
Gamology - Real-life experts in a variety of fields react to how their area of expertise is represented in relevant videogames.
Kurzgesagt in a nutshell - animation videos explaining science and the world around us.
OverSimplified - Animated and fun explanations of history.
Real Civil Engineer - a UK civil engineer building amazing things in a variety of videogames.
SciManDan - flat Earth de-bunker using science, reason and logic to promote the proven natural history of life, Earth and the Universe.
TierZoo - presents information on zoology and evolution in ‘game speak’.
Vsauce - explores a variety of topics, from philosophy and psychology to pop culture, the internet and technology.
Further recommendations from Bard, Google's AI
Crash Course - short, informative videos on a wide range of topics, from history and science to literature and art.
SciShow - covers all things science, from the latest discoveries to the history of science.
MinutePhysics - uses simple animations and explanations to make complex physics concepts easy to understand.
Khan Academy - covers a wide range of subjects, from maths and science to history and economics.
MinuteEarth - simple animations and explanations to make complex science concepts easy to understand.
SciShow Space - covers all things space, from the latest discoveries to the history of space exploration.
Veritasium - uses experiments and demonstrations to explore the world of science.
Crash Course Kids - offers short, informative videos on a variety of topics for kids.
Fun games to dive into
Some of my son's favourites
Cities: Skylines - designing, building and running a city from scratch, including public services and civic policies.
Trailmakers - design and build cars, planes, boats, submarines. Learn about the forces on them and how to design them to work well.
Mars Horizon - control a space agency from the dawn of space flight through to landing astronauts on Mars. Learn how to build spacecraft and manage resources for colony base growth, solve problems at mission control.
Bus Simulator - get behind the wheel of a bus and transport passengers safely and punctually to their destinations.
Stellaris - govern a galactic empire and secure power through manipulating internal policies, factions and traditions; interacting with other empires; researching new technologies; managing resources; exploration and strategic campaigns.
Kerbal Space Programme: Enhanced Edition - assemble fully functional spacecraft from an array of parts, which fly, or not, based on realistic aerodynamic and orbital physics.
Jurassic World Evolution 2 - build, manage, and grow your own dinosaur theme park franchise; dig for fossils, extract DNA and use bio-engineering to create new exhibits; keep dinosaurs and visitors safe and your company financially viable.
Victoria 3 - World-map-based game spanning history from 1836 to 1936. Govern the infrastructure and economy of your country; create alliances and trade deals; wage campaigns to expand your influence across the world.
Further recommendations from Bard include:
History and geography: Civilization, Europa Universalis, and Age of Empires cover different cultures and historical periods.
Mythology: God of War, Hades, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey introduce different myths and legends.
Science: Kerbal Space Program, Spore, and Minecraft cover science, engineering, and maths.
Design: The Sims, Cities: Skylines, and Animal Crossing involve design, architecture, and urban planning.
Emotional control: Celeste, Journey, and Undertale can teach about emotional resilience, empathy, and compassion.
Creativity: LittleBigPlanet, Dreams, and Minecraft involve creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration.
Teamwork: Overcooked, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and A Way Out require players to work together to achieve a common goal.
Problem-solving: Portal, The Witness, and Braid challenge players to think critically and solve puzzles.
Creativity: LittleBigPlanet, Dreams, and Minecraft allow players to express their creativity and build their own worlds.
Communication: Among Us, Town of Salem, and Diplomacy require players to communicate effectively with each other in order to succeed.
Leadership: Civilization, Europa Universalis, and Stellaris allow players to take on the role of a leader and make decisions that affect the outcome of the game.
Math: Math Blaster, Carmen Sandiego, and The Oregon Trail can help kids learn math concepts in a fun and engaging way.
Map reading: Games like GeoGuessr, World of Goo, and The Witness help with reading maps and navigating around the world.
Cooking: Games like Overcooked, Cooking Mama, and LittleBigPlanet can teach how to cook different foods.
Further reading.
Non-attendance of autistic pupils and trauma
Parental blame and the PDA profile of autism
The Joy and Sorrow of Rereading Holt’s "How Children Learn"
Cognitive Benefits of Playing Video Games
Why fears around children playing video games are counterproductive
