Lucy Mangan: school runaround

Toryboy and I are in the middle – if such a position is locatable in such a longstanding event – of a row about our son's schooling. And not the one I expected us to have. I thought the one we would have would run roughly thus:

Him: Private.

Me: No.

Him: Yes.

Me: No. And you don't know where I keep the cash card, credit card or chequebook, or what bank we belong to, so that's the end of that.

But marriage, as we all know, is a beautiful journey of discovery that can last a lifetime – or, if you are less fortunate, a series of blind-sidings that leaves you each perpetually wrong-footed and desperately casting about for stabilising forms and light weaponry with which to regain your balance and upper hand.

Toryboy wants to home-school him.

"You want to what him?"

"Home-school him. School Him At Home."

In retrospect, I should have known. In the great Venn diagram of life, or at least of political ideology, there is a small, strange overlap between rabid Conservative anti-authoritarianism and hippy bullshit. I first realised this when it emerged that while I planned to fill my body with drugs during labour, he wanted me to ignore the wisdom of scientific ages and go and have the baby in a ditch somewhere, calming myself with the sweet scent of meadowgrass and having my fanny fanned by butterflies.

And now here this unhelpful little piece of intersectionality was again, and almost as unhelpful.

"We can't home-school him. I don't know anything and you know all the wrong things."

"I know everything. And I envisage you in a more dinner lady/playground warden-type role, so it'll be fine, woman who once asked me whether Stalin and Mussolini were the same thing."

"I still have no way of knowing if what you said was true."

"I will teach him history, geography, practical heraldry, English – that's just letting him read books – and not to trust foreign languages. And I'll do maths up to the part where you have to start finding the area under a graph, then we'll hand over to your sister, who will also cover computers, chemistry, biology and physics."

"From her home in Devon?"

"Haven't you heard of Skype?"

"No, and neither have you."

"It's like two yoghurt pots joined together with string but using webcams instead of yoghurt pots and witchcraft instead of string."

"We're too lazy to educate anyone. Do you know how hard teachers work? I mean, I like the child and everything but there's no way we've got that energy or commitment."

"Ah, but think of the energy we'll be saving! No moving house or competitive churchgoing to get a place somewhere they still insist on capital letters at the start of sentences. No Gove-induced rages and ulcers for you. No worries about bullying. No meeting and greeting other parents. No sports days, no parents' evenings, no after-school activities. Nothing."

"So apart from lunchtime and playground duties, I could just read all day?"

"'S what I'm saying."

I can't quite shake the feeling that there's still something awry. But you've got to admit, he sells it well. He sells it well.