The Permission Slip

You need your school's permission to take your own child on holiday.

Think about that.

So you lie. You teach your child to lie. "Tell them you're sick." You get a fake doctor's certificate. Everyone knows it's fake. The school knows. You know. Your child knows you're teaching them that lying to authority is necessary.

When did this happen?

When did strangers get veto power over your family time?

The Center

You drop your child off at Grade 1.
Pick them up at Grade 10.

And expect them to emerge as the person you imagined.

Except you weren't there for any of it.

Teachers you've never had dinner with shaped their days. Administrators whose values you've never questioned set their rules. A system that owns your child from 7 AM to 10 PM — first in classrooms, then homework, then test prep.

You outsourced your job to strangers.

And called it education.

The Comfortable Lie

Parents make school the center because it's easier than the alternative.

The alternative is admitting you don't trust yourself to raise your own children.

"The school has thousands of kids. They must know better."

No. They don't.

They know how to create obedient test-takers. Not how to nurture YOUR child's specific genius. Not your family's values. Not what matters to you.

Whose time?

School: 7 hours. Homework: 4 hours. Weekend test prep. Summer classes.

You get the exhausted remnants.

The school decides if your child advances or fails. Their call, not yours. The school schedules your year, and you squeeze your plans around it.

The school became the sun. Your family just orbits.

The Real Teachers

You. Your dad, who tells stories. Your sister, who failed three times before succeeding. Your neighbour’s kid who builds robots after school.

These are your child's real teachers.

School is just one resource. Useful, maybe. Central? Never.

At Flourish, we built this into our DNA. Want to travel during term? Go. Your kid doesn't want to finish a project? Fine by us.

Your children are accountable to you. Not us.
Because we know something radical: You know your child better than we ever will.

The Question

Your child will attend school for 12 years.

They'll be your child forever.

Which relationship deserves to be the center?

We confused busy with important. We mistook compliance for education. We let strangers become the sun while we became distant planets.

It doesn't have to be this way.

The permission slip you're signing isn't really about the field trip.
It's about who gets to decide what matters.