The question I guess that is one of the most important to answer is why we are choosing to take Merenia out of her State primary school and educate her at home. And the first part of the answer is because she's in the middle and its not ok to drift.
She is an average to above average student in most school curriculum areas and as such she will just drift along through school. Each year she will improve by a year and that will be that. Her teachers we are lucky to be able to say have all be very very good classroom practitioners and we have no complaints at all there. In fact as a teacher myself I have a pile of compliments for the ladies and gent that have schooled our girl so far.
But one teacher in a class of thirty can only go so far. And when that teacher is in a State funded decile 10 school in New Zealand that's not very far at all. Especially if they want to have the life they deserve. I know from experience that you could work all 24 of the hours given in a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year and still never actually do everything you possibly could for every kid in your class.
Of course no teacher has the super power needed to work all those hours and nor would I expect them to. So they do what they can (too much in a lot of cases where schools demand so much and then some more so that they can have pretty graphs and placate daft parents). And then they get in front of their classes and their attention gets pulled in 30 different directions. There are the 'bad' kids, the 'sad' kids, the dim kids and the bright kids too and there are the silly girls, the noisy boys, the kid with the demanding parents, the ADHD kid and the one with a medical condition too. It's never good to be around 'average' in any school... much better you demand attention for some reason, or other.
Merenia is one of those nice middle of the road average kids- I think she has the potential to be pretty smart- I see inklings of it and she has been identified for the capable learners group at school as well, but essentially if she continues to drift along the path that she is on she will never meet her full potential.
We know this.
We've known it for a while.
And the other day a couple of weeks back we realised as parents it's not ok.
It's not ok to just let her drift along and be what she ends up as by default.
And that's just the first reason.
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