We have been doing some homework today. I have a violent headache and hands covered in felt tipped pen wounds as a result. I am amazed by how green ink seeps into the backs of my wrinkly hands. It reminds me of doing chromatography in second year chemistry. How depressing.
Before today I had mulled over the idea of taking Tallulah out of school too and homeschooling everyone in a giant free for all. I thought it might be bonding and inclusive and nice. I thought: ‘How hard can it be? Grit does it with triplets.’
I don’t know if I am just making excuses here, because I have, as you can already tell from the apologetic air of the post, failed spectacularly at this, but maybe it is easier if your children are all the same age? After all, at least they are roughly at the same level of understanding, even if they are all intent on pursuing different ideas and projects. After two hours huddled across the kitchen table with Oscar (3) who wanted to draw animals from my new animal book, but actually ended up drawing on the table legs because he was taking advantage of being comprehensively ignored, Tallulah (7) who was making a gigantic fuss about the Egyptians, and Tilly (11) who was steadily colouring in a fourteenth century plague victim liberally encrusted with buboes, I feel like I have had my head in boiling oil for a week.
I know I am very old fashioned about such things, but I do think it is important to write whole, well constructed sentences wherever possible. I am also a huge fan of punctuation and spelling, capital letters and the like. This does not sit well with Tallulah, who thinks that it is perfectly acceptable to spell the word pharaoh fourteen different ways from Sunday despite me having written it out twice and being the proud possessor of an entire book with the word typed in it hundreds of times. I know I am draconian, but I don’t hold with this idea that what matters is to get their creativity out on paper regardless of any other consideration. It is all very well, but if I cannot read or understand it, what was the bloody point in doing it in the first place? When even she cannot read it back to me I know that things are not going well.
We reach the point of glaring at each other over the kitchen table. She complains that she does not know anything about Egypt, so how can she possibly write about it? I show her the library books we got together a few weeks ago, ancestors of the library books we got together a few weeks before that. I point to the book I unearthed from our own shelves that she has had since the last week of the summer term. I gesture casually to the Heiroglyphic stamp set I unearthed from my own childhood treasures last week so that she could use it. She looks at me as if I have given her pooh on a plate.
I comment that we had this conversation last week, and the outcome will be the same.
She looks at me like I have made her lick the pooh.
I say: ‘Nobody is born knowing everything there is to know about ancient Egypt Tallulah. The main part of the homework is to find out things about Egypt using the resources available to you, of which you have many. Why not read this book and then we can talk about it?’
Her lip sticks out, she wobbles. Tears well up: ‘I CAAAAAANNNNTTT. You don’t understand.’
I look at her suspiciously: ‘Why can’t you?’
She realises that this is not working. She returns my look beadily and says: ‘I just can’t. I can’t explain it.’
I send her away to read her book. She comes back with some pictures of a temple that she has done on a notelet. It says: ‘Tempul’ It has clearly been executed in thirty seconds as an effort to deflect attention away from her total failure to read anything whatsoever about Egypt.
I ask what happened to the reading. She makes excuses:
- I am allergic to Egypt
- The dog ate my homework book
- I have been blind from birth. I have just been making up the bit about being able to read.
I point out that I am not doing it for her no matter what she says, and that school is a fortnight away. The last week of that fortnight we will be on holiday. If she wants to do her homework she needs to do it now, and she needs to do most of it herself. I will help, but I do not want another certificate of commendation (I did a stunning project on mosquitoes last term. I thank you).
She flounces back upstairs and comes back down to announce that she has read to page fourteen. She flings the book at me. I look through it and ask questions. Here is what I glean:
- Some people in Egypt wore clothes. Some people didn’t.
- Some people wore shoes. Some people didn’t. The ones who wore shoes wore things that look like flip flops.
- It was hot.
- Some people ate fish at night. Other people put them in jars with water in and ate them in the morning.
Right.
In the meantime the buboe encrusted victim is beginning to look like Mr. Blobby, and Oscar has moved onto the second table leg because the first one is finished.
Eventually we get a page of writing about pharaohs which is not too terrible. I have transposed the idea of pharaohship to what would happen if Jason were suddenly made pharoah of Glenfield. I like this idea. I may take photos of him in his crown later. I may possibly get the children to fashion him a canoe out of reeds and launch him on the stream at the back of the Co-op while we attack him with Oscar’s inflatable alligator for verisimilitude. We’re all about the role play in this house.
I would have been fine with there being no writing. I have pointed this out. I am more interested in her understanding what she is doing. She is convinced that this approach is even more old fashioned and a waste of time than my previous ideas about sentences and spelling. It is clear that it is the quantity of pages that she has produced that bothers her, rather than what is on them. She is the sort of person who would be more thrilled with a copy of the Phone Book than with a short, original pamphlet by William Blake. She would look at the Blake, point out that it is only ten pages and that he has gone out of the lines, and toss it in the bin contemptously.
I shelve the idea of embracing home schooling for the masses. I start thinking wistfully of Malory Towers. Does such a place exist in real life? Will they take Tallulah? Cornwall is far enough away that she would have to do her own homework, or pay someone else. I wouldn’t mind if she paid me actually. I will charge by the page. I should make a killing.
