Well, we’re back from the dreaded inspection. Thanks for all your supportive messages. It took place in an atmosphere of great civility and friendliness, and utter disrespect for the law! Antonia did wonderfully, especially considering that they subjected her to two hours of schoolish tests. She was a credit to homeschoolers everywhere. She was polite, friendly, forthcoming in her answers. Even to stupid questions like “how many friends have you got?”, which I think she took to be a maths problem. Later, in general knowledge, the tester really pressed her quite hard to see if she couldn’t think of the name of just one artist. Names are not her strong point. She didn’t freak out totally as she would have in the past. Instead she fixed the inspector in the eye, with a knowingly ironic expression on her face and said “OK then, me!”. I was so proud (wipes away tear)!

She did fine on the actual tests. She has ‘one of the’ typical homeschool child profiles. She reads well enough to draw admiration from a tester who wasn’t particularly out to give us positive feedback. I dare say she writes slower and spells less well than the reading might have led them to expect, we just potter along slowly with writing in two languages. Just fine with all the rest. I doubt the tester knows just how fragile her French comprehension of some of the questions was. Some of her answers that seemed ordinarily eccentric or reticent for her age were due to incomplete understanding as I later found out. So no worries about their perception of her learning… they’ll find something to bitch about if they’re looking to, but they can’t call her uneducated. But the tester could hardly believe that she had no siblings, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how much time she spends outside the house. Now, I know that it’s a rare afternoon that she spends at home, but you wouldn’t have got that impression from interviewing her, and I had been entreated to silence.

You could say that all was pretty reasonable… except that 30 minutes after we left, we were driving along and suddenly Antonia began wailing with terrible stomach cramps. We had to make an emergency stop in a dive of a bistro. After using their toilet for quarter of an hour, I just ordered a couple of drinks, but what I hadn’t packed in my emergency kit was some loose change. We waited for Mike to come and bail us out. After that she was fine, we went to a restaurant, I got her that medal she wanted and she got to watch Harry Potter all afternoon. All the treats she requested, and boy did she care about getting them. I could go on about the psychology of all that, most of which is barely positive, but we all just did what we needed to do.

Since then, she has been feeling proud of herself, obviously, and also letting out plenty of agression and nervous tension. She’s been making the beautiful moral narrative drawings that she used to make just after she left school. They’re full of violence, sorrow, fear, love and justice. They are truly amazing, but… they reflect something going on inside. Less positively, she isn’t quite the sweet easy-going Antonia we’re used to yet. She had a massive row with Mike at lunchtime over whether her lunch was to be served in a bowl or a dish!!??! She had a massive row with me at the park because I took a slightly different path from her, and failed to call her and tell her ‘which way she needed to go’!! Everybody is a bit tired, ratty and niggly at our house just now, for various reasons, but everyone will be fine, and we’re getting back to the real business of homeschooling.

I said the inspection took place in perfect disrespect for the law. That is because it is the teaching that is supposed to be inspected, not the child’s level of achievement, and certainly not their achievements in relation to the school curriculum. But that’s all they wanted to check. They did not allow any time to look at her work, or to interview me. They also have big blinkers on and have not got a single, solitary clue what homeschooling is all about. The tester asked Antonia “who corrects your work?” and she had no idea what to say. I tried to explain why not, but the tester let me know politely that she only wanted Antonia’s answers. I was pleased with myself for preparing a document with examples of Antonia’s real work and a little explanation of my educational philosophy and methods. I left it with them, and if they don’t read it, at least they can’t say they don’t have it.

I should emphasise that they were friendly and polite, very, very sweet to the children, and I really believe they were not setting out to ‘fail’ any of us. But they sure wanted to retain total control over the situation. Maybe I should wait till I get the report before I jubilate, but in fact, I think they were just much too busy to trouble to get a clue what to do about three homeschooled children, once a year. They have to do something, and they chose to use the method that seems simplest to them. Overall, in our department (county?) there are far more homeschooled children than three, and we’re getting a variety of experiences. None of them have been really negative so far, but few of them have been genuinely respectful of the laws relating to homeschooling. We’re cogitating what if anything to do about it. Their approach would be sort of tolerable, as long as it’s understood that they can’t actually fail anybody on the basis of it. Because they haven’t looked at what they’re supposed to looking at! I wonder if they do understand that? But if they don’t envisage ever failing anyone anyway, why can’t we all just sit and chat about the kid’s work over a coffee/orange juice!!?

Enough about inspections for now. I’ll post about the report when it arrives, and any militating we decide to get up to.