How I found the best school for my children: at home

Maryam Ismail

• Last Updated: October 07. 2009 1:43AM UAE / October 6. 2009 9:43PM GMT

My daughter’s best friend’s mother called to say: “I spent the whole summer helping her to catch up with her cousins in Canada.” I know what you mean, sister. Me too. After one year and more than Dh20,000, I’ve also spent the summer teaching my daughter a real first-grade curriculum and building her confidence.

“I can’t read that,” she cried whenever I gave her a book. The year before last she was home-schooled and was just getting the hang of reading, but in her year at school she rarely had the chance or need to read, or to think much about her learning – or anything else, for that matter. So she’s had to learn to read all over again.

I was so sad and frustrated that I actually went to the local Ministry of Education office and asked if they would help me to get my money back, because the school did not keep its promise. I used the Mecelle, the civil legal code of the Ottoman Empire: part Sharia, part man-made, and used throughout the Middle East until about 25 years ago. It states: “If one pays for a product or goods and they are not delivered, then that transaction is null and void.”

The “goods” in this case was an education, and well, they got me on that one. I am sure they’re laughing all the way to the bank. Look, all I want for my children is a proper education, one where I don’t have to exhaust them with going to school in the morning and spending hours at night catching up, then running from tutor to tutor and all the while creating enrichment work to help to explain the lessons that were glossed over at school. There is not enough time in the day and they are only little kids. They need a life, and some rest.

When schools don’t teach, regardless of how much they cost, and they don’t give refunds, and in the end there is just a parent with empty pockets and a child with an empty head, something must be done. So my children are dropping out. They are not going to school for as long as I am sane and have to deal with dukhan education (too many schools behave like dukhan, those little supermarkets on the ground floor of your building who know that you have no choice when you need milk and your guests are due any minute).

With that same Dh20,000-plus, I can take my two girls to Istanbul and teach them about the Byzantine Empire – in person. I can spend time with them in the park, where I know they will get some proper physical education. We can watch the elusive hoopoe bird, see blue-winged sparrows and listen to the crows converse – all within walking distance, no need to wake up before the crack of dawn and rush them to the bus.

We can do science experiments and they will always have enough materials. I can teach them four languages. They can learn to write their own articles, essays and fiction from their own well-stocked imaginations. They can learn to work independently and think critically rather than worry that they have four more pages to memorise from a book. They can learn the lessons of family life. They can learn how to interact with people; the value of respect, kindness and mercy. They can live.

This year I signed up for a home-schooling curriculum from the United States. It comes with a teacher to whom I send progress reports and tests for review, and in return my children get education records and certificates. The trouble is, the rules and regulations governing home-schooling in the UAE, with an external curriculum, are as grey as London skies.

For the Ministry of Education, home-schooling seems to mean education for housewives and senior citizens. When I went to the Ministry to register my daughters for home-school services, I was told they were “too young”. And the Ministry doesn’t recognise education records from home-schooling programmes not administered in the UAE. In fact, when I asked a Ministry official about it, he told me it was illegal.

My children’s home-schooling programme is a fraction of the cost of sending them to school. It includes all materials, manuals and even pencils. Imagine how this could help some parents who don’t have the money to send their children to school.

Not only that, my programme has Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation, which is accepted by the Ministry of Education. So I have to ask, why not just recognise it? Why not give parents the choice?

Home-schooling in the US and UK is an accepted education alternative for a number of reasons, one of which is that parents feel their kids deserve the best education and many believe that this is how to provide it. The purpose is not just education, but giving children a world view, a thought provoking eye on the world that can make them better contributors to society. Isn’t that what education is?

For me, home-schooling means no hanging out with the girls for coffee, or lounging around reading novels, and it means waking up earlier to write articles for you to read. Nevertheless, my girls have rights. It’s my duty to teach them, and teach them well.

John Taylor Gatto, the controversial American libertarian education author and a teacher for 35 years, has some interesting and provocative thoughts on why home-schooling is the best choice: “Family is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents … we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The curriculum of the family is the heart of any good life; we’ve gotten away from that curriculum, and it’s time to return to it.”

Well, I’m on my way.

Maryam Ismail is a sociologist who divides her time between the US and the UAE