I created an alternative to the GCSE art curriculum
Because teaching art should include debate about controversial topics
A teacher says bananas are yellow not purple and instructs the student to throw away her artwork and start again. She was wrong. Purple bananas do exist and anyway, it was the teachers dismissiveness that irked me. The child was in my daughter’s primary school class. The same teacher also told the class that they must colour within the lines of a picture. These are not the only things that nudged me into home-educating, of course.
A year before, my daughter was eight.
It was the summer holidays and we were en route to forest school. It was the A41. I was gazing ahead, lost in the usual preoccupations of parenting. Suddenly, a sentence that changed our lives:
“I think I’d like to be home-schooled” she said.
I was over the moon. And sort of stunned. There’s a sing-song voice adults use when they are trying to self-sooth during a significant parent/child moment. It comes out when their head is spinning. My head was spinning, and I was using that voice.
“Really darling? That’s an interesting idea. How did you reach it?”
Now we are entering our sixth year of home educating and I’m writing this because things have gone well and I’m guiding her through GCSE’s. She’s achieved certain markers in her art journey, but that’s not the point.
So what is the point?
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