BIOGRAPHY



I thought about doing one of those cutesy things they have on MySpace where you answer personal questions about your star sign, favourite colour and choice of underwear, but you really don't need to know that stuff and I am not sure I want to share it.

My name is Martine. I live with my partner Duncan in the beautiful Cotswolds. I have four children: Lewis who is 19, Tish and Jacob who are 16 and Mirinda who is 12. Lewis lives with a friend, Jacob with his father and the girls live here with us. I have worked as a post woman for the last four years. In my past life I educated my children outside the school system, but unfortunately, since separating from my ex-husband, that is no longer the case, so now my job is to help my younger children get what they can from the system they are obliged to participate in. When I am not at work I like reading, for myself and with the children. No doubt some thoughts on my fiction reading will find their way on here too. I have been involved with Education Otherwise for many years in a variety of ways, but now as an ex-council member I find myself with time on my hands. We also enjoy visiting friends and family around the country, and frequenting Emily Rose, a fabulous fudge shop in Stow on the Wold.


How I got here.

I first read John Holt's 'How children fail' when my son Lewis was a toddler. I remember wanting to write to him and tell him how inspired I was, only to discover that he had already died in 1985. His book had struck such a chord with me I had the strangest sensation of mourning someone I had never met. I then started reading everything I could get hold of on the subject of alternative education. I used the bibliography of each book to search out new authors and hopped from subject to subject. Ivan Illich appeared quite early on and he is someone I came back to time and again, which is why I have started with him now.
I then spent the next dozen or so years educating my own children, sometime in but mostly outside school. I hold quite strong opinions about the seriously dubious benefits of school, but this has always been tempered by the thought that my children are intelligent beings and should make decisions about their own lives. So my children always went in to school with the knowledge that if they wanted to they could leave again. I have always supported their choices and helped them to get the best experience they could from being in school. Other things have intervened since and their lives have not been as I might have intended but I continue to help them to rise above the petty things that school insists on and to focus on the aspects that are meaningful to them.
Many years ago now (about 1998 I think) Silencing the Bell started out as a leaflet, aimed at teenagers, drawing together resources and information about learning outside the school system. I printed a couple of hundred copies and distributed them through contacts, friends and at Hesfes. I do hope some copies are still in circulation, though they are probably a bit out of date by now. We had some web space as part of our internet access package and I had been looking for inspiration for using it, so the original Silencing the Bell website was born. The first site has been gone for quite a while now and I have debated on and off restarting it but have not been sure what I wanted to do with it. I don't have the same immediate connection with the 'otherwise' movement as my children are obliged to go to school so my interest has returned to the ideas that started it all off.