“Mine will ask questions about why do they call them this and what sort of
disabilities there is. They’ve all asked questions about that which I couldn’t
answer before without doing the course. ”
This kind of benefit goes beyond the nuclear family, both more widely, to nephews or
nieces, and over more than one generation, to grandchildren. Catherine uses her
education to help her extended family and takes an active role in their learning. She is
teaching her nephew to read as well because her sister can’t read herself. She
considers that her learning has benefited her family and her friends, and that she has
been able to pass her knowledge down from the short courses she has attended.
Beryl can now help her grandchildren with their reading and writing, which she
couldn’t do before. The confidence this has given her has transformed her relations
with her children, and helped her sustain herself in her role as carer for her
housebound husband.
Through craft classes, Elsbeth has made a fairy outfit for her granddaughter, she has
made furniture during woodwork that her children “keep grabbing”, and clothes, toys,
a rug, stained glass, ornaments. As a result of the woodwork class, she has sorted out
some aspects of her daughter’s fitted kitchen. Her reasons for making things for the
children and grandchildren are no longer principally to save money: it is for the sense
of achievement and to give the children something special:
“ It’s not to save money. It’s an achievement making it. It’s something new, it’s
something different when you make it for the kids and nobody else has got it. ”
One indirect benefit to the children is almost the mirror image of the ‘getting me out
of the house’ one, in that it enables the children to broaden their range of social
relationships through access to a college creche or other facilities. Thus Mandisa’s
going to college to do Maths GCSE when her son was 18 months was a good
opportunity for him to go to the creche, where she was close by and could be reached
easily.
“ He was integrating himself into his own little world with his own friends and
he was being a little bit more independent because he was without me, which
was good. ”
Similarly, getting involved in education had positive effects on Patricia’s children,
since they were left in the college nursery to mix with other children and received
stimulation from a source other than the home:
“ ... they enjoyed the time because they knew that on certain days they’d do
other things as opposed to just being with mum all the time. So they’ve enjoyed
the different areas that they’ve gone into. ”
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