Me!

Questions I'm often asked are: what happened to the kids' mother? and What are your qualifications for teaching them?

The simplest answer to the first is "disappeared", with a tinge of "none of your business" ;) Suffice to say this has been a one parent family since 2003, is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, and the "other parent" hasn't been seen or heard from since 2003.

To the second the answer is twofold: you don't need any qualifications or experience, as there's a wealth of materials and support out there to enable anyone to home educate their kids who wants to, for whatever reason. I haven't personally taken much advantage of this support, except in the form of books generally available in the shops, because I consider myself capable of teaching my own kids up to GCSE level in the general school subjects, having obtained high grades in my own GCSE's and A-levels not so long ago to have forgotten everything just yet.

My main areas of intellectual interest, since a very young age, have been in the humanities, but I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, really (yes - and master of none!). I've taken courses at the OU in the sciences (particularly physics), and through various voluntary and paid work I've gained vocational qualifications such as First Aid, etc.

The two things I consider to be the greatest gains I've got from my own personal study are that, given an excerpt of almost any language in Europe (from any period in history), I can probably work out the jist of its meaning at least or, depending on the language, give a full translation and reply. Although I would only confidently say that I can speak three languages: English, French and German. I can "get by" in many others, though.

The other thing is that I began searching, reading and learning sense at the age of six, to find a strong grasp of the history of my home continent, from prehistoric times to today. By this I mean all sides of that history: economic, geographic, demographic, social, cultural, linguistic, political and natural. I feel that the greatest thing I've taken from all this study is a sense of how and why things happen, and an acceptance of what can and can't be done. It gives me courage to do things that seem difficult or impossible, and to turn away from courses of action that might seem tempting, but which I know are unwise in the long-term.