The school boycott, organised by campaigners Let Kids Be Kids, was a protest against six and seven-year-olds sitting tough tests in Year 2. Tests that require hours of weekly homework battles and warnings from teachers that if they don’t work hard, they’ll struggle to get a job.
Yep, six year olds are being told to worry about gainful employment. I know because it happened to mine, last year. And parents don’t like it. Not all parents, obviously, but at least 40,000 of them who signed a petition backing the “kids’ strike” on 3 May, underlining their unease about “unnecessary testing and a curriculum that limits enjoyment and real understanding”.
Hippie nonsense, snort those who think kids need to get real and knuckle down, even – and perhaps especially – if it means learning to spell words like “characteristics” and “associations” Did I mention the children in question are only six or seven years old? Which, incidentally, is the age they’d have started school in Norway or Finland.
As for “harming” their education by missing a day, seriously Nicky Morgan? Let’s be honest, not all kids will suffer if they stay home; it depends on the home. Personally, I don’t think keeping skipping one day cuts it, which is why I kept my then six-year-old son off one day every week last year. And it’s why my Reception-age four year old misses school every Monday.
Our boycott last year wasn’t about the exams though, or really, if I’m honest, the homework; mine was the type to race through anything although his early enthusiasm has now waned. No, if anything, my son stayed home because I fretted the curriculum wasn’t rigorous enough. Drilling incomprehensible words into 30 disinterested children for a week of tests didn’t leave much time for anything else.
So I asked the headteacher if we could hang out instead, and she agreed. Admittedly, I promised we’d hang out in museums, and even do a project – on Steam – but the idea was to escape the confines of the classroom. And yes, I know he was lucky I could take the time; in fact, I was on maternity leave, so time wasn’t an issue.
Just like he was lucky to have the type of pandering middle-class parent who worried about his tedium threshold. But I make no apologies; just because others couldn’t and wouldn’t have done the same, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.
So we had a Summer of Steam, of the quirky Brunel, the mighty National Maritime, and the stupendous Science Museums. We ate steamed dumplings on the streets in Chinatown, and steamed our own carrots at home in a nod to a science experiment. We even sketched the Fighting Temeraire in the National Gallery, listening to a guide tell a group of (older) schoolchildren about Turner’s poignant tribute to the end of the sail era and the advent of steam.
If Nicky Morgan wants to see what we got up to, she only has to ask; I know his headteacher was happy.
suzeletter 