Cream-spot Tiger moth

Martin has been leading a few walks in the walking festival, all drawn from a new walks booklet he has been involved in developing.  Yesterday we took Jonathan along with us (girls too blistered from Walk the Wight) and did a brilliant walk starting at  Mottistone heading down the coastal path to Brook  and past the Longstone back to the car park.  There were fantastic views of Freshwater Bay throughout.  We saw a Cream-spot Tiger moth and Martin told us about some of the conservation based farming that was going on. As well as this though we also had the “no school today” question.

Martin at the front said he had 3 lots of the conversation, Jonathan said he had 5 lots.  Martin mentioned he was asked about exams (Jonathan is 9 and looks young for his age – how worried do you need to be about exams at that age!) and “doesn’t he miss out on seeing his friends?”

I was trying to bring up the back and had time for a more lengthy conversations about HE.  I just had the one conversation though.  We did the standard questions:

Exams  -  ”well the girls have got a few already and we only need the ones they need to get where they want to go”  ”Actually finding somewhere to sit exams if you want to do them is the most difficult part of HEing  if you as me”

Socialisation: – “They’ve got lots of friends and get together to do various activities.   ” “There’s a HE group on the Island with about 70 families in it”   “They go to clubs” “socialising with a group of 30 children the same age doesn’t seem very natural to me”     “The girls did Walk the Wight on Saturday with a group of teens ranging from 18 down to 13″

Being checked up on – “Local Authorities tend to interpret the law in a variety of ways – we send them a report once a year”

Then there was actually an interesting question:

“So what would you consider to be success, how would you feel you had succeeded?”

So I guess I should have gone on about my educational philosophy blah blah.  But I just said “I’d want them to end up doing something that they felt happy and content doing.”  If I was considering it in more detail for a written answer I’m sure I would have had far more to say and would have phrased it slightly better – I’m not really so interested in what they end up doing but that in their lives they feel contented and happy – but actually for me that it the most important thing.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.