Wednesday 30 September 2009

Home education - the vital need for a curriculum

It is sometimes suggested that children at school are encouraged to take ten or more GCSEs and that this becomes an end in itself, often filling their heads with a lot of useless information that they will never need after leaving school. Well, GCSEs are of course very useful, particularly if you wish to gain a place at college or university, but there is a far more important reason for undertaking the systematic instruction of children in the rudiments of history, geography, science and so on. This is because without the possession of a body of knowledge, much of the world will be incomprehensible. To some extent, it is irrelevant whether or not the acquisition of this knowledge leads to formal qualifications; it is vitally necessary for its own sake. I wish today to focus upon one subject, history, although most of what I say would be equally applicable to any other part of a well rounded curriculum.

Let us begin by considering just one current news item, the Lisbon treaty and Ireland's referendum on it. In order to make any sense of this, it is at the very least necessary to know that the Irish Republic was once part of this country. It is also necessary to be aware of the fact that France has been the main driving force behind the creation of the European Union. To know what is happening in Europe and why we and the Irish view things a little differently, you really have to know something of the history of Franco-British relations. You need to know about the two World Wars, but also about the Napoleonic Wars, the Hundred Years War and Agincourt and also of course, the Norman Conquest. Without this basic knowledge, nobody could expect fully to understand our ambivalent attitude to France. Similar knowledge is needed to make sense of our relations with Germany.

Most of the historical knowledge mentioned above is of the sort which any educated person will take more or less for granted. Of course, a young person or child might pick up such information in the course of desultory reading and browsing the internet, but this is rather a large gamble to take on such an important matter. Suppose that he does not pick up this knowledge of his own accord? Will he in later life be able to take an intelligent interest in foreign affairs? Will he be fit to hold an opinion on the EU? What actually is the autonomously educating parent's approach to this subject? Is learning about the Hundred Years War and the battle of Waterloo one of those things that must be left to the child's choice? Deborah Durbin, author of "Teach Yourself Home Education", which is incidentally quite the worst book on the subject of home education which I have ever seen in my life, talks about history in her book. She says, "History lessons can be covered by exploring your family tree". It would be hard to imagine a more parochial attitude! How studying my family tree would help anybody to make sense of the Lisbon Treaty is a complete mystery to me. The Good Lord alone knows if this is a standard approach for autonomous educators to such a crucial subject.

Let me give another example. To understand why Russia is manoeuvring and intriguing in the Black Sea, one must be aware of their historic quest for warm water ports. Without knowledge of the Crimean War and the significance of the Dardanelles, news that Russia is exerting pressure on Georgia will be meaningless. Basic geopolitical facts such as these are crucial to anybody's understanding of the modern world. Again, why leave a child to stumble across such important information by sheer chance? What could possibly be the rationale for this perverse course of action? A child could not be expected to guess that in order to understand Russian motives in the modern world, he will need to know about the Crimean War. We as adults know it though and it is up to us to transmit this useful knowledge to our children.

I am aware that many home educating parents have a profound antipathy towards the National Curriculum, an antipathy which I fully share. Indeed, my dissatisfaction with the scope and depth of the National Curriculum was a major factor in my decision to teach my own daughter. Dissatisfaction with one curriculum did not however make me think that there should be no curriculum at all! It simply meant that I should have to devise a better curriculum. Without studying a coherent and well planned curriculum in history, geography, science, English and mathematics, our children will struggle to understand the world around them. It is out duty and responsibility to see that they are equipped with the background knowledge which will enable them to participate as active citizens in the modern, industrial society in which they are growing up.

19 comments:

  1. Should all children receive a broad based education? Ideally, yes - although lots of children in school don't anyway (I went with a friends child for an interview for a part time school place last week...we went to beg for special permission to do a limited timetable of a few subjects so he could be home edded part time ...oh, no worries they said - we have lots of children on part time timetables who just do maths, English, science!!).
    Should a curriculum be enforced on home educators? - no, whose curriculum anyway - what is important? The beauty of home ed is that you can spend ages on investigating a small area with benefit. So if you take a snapshot of a home educator at anyone time, their curriculum may seem highly unbalanced...but that isn't to say it will be so over the whole 12 years or so.

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  2. Yes, I wasn''t thinking of enforcing a curriclum on home educators Julie! Heaven forbid. I was just saying that i think it is necessary to have some sort of a plan of what knowledge we would like our children to have. This will vary from child to cild, according to ability and also depend on the parents. I am really not a fan of either schools in general or the National Curriculum, as I am sure I have made clear!

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  3. I've always been interested in history so it's one of the few subjects from school I remember well. None of the historical facts you mention above was taught at my school. I am aware of most of those facts though, learnt as an adult, autonomously, without a curriculum. They also come up in discussion with my kids, usually as a result of watching the news. We even look things up sometimes after seeing something on the news.

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  4. Yes, the history covered by the National Curriculum is very sketchy. I am making the point that as home educators we are brilliantly placed to do better than schools in this respect.

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  5. But why the need for any curriculum when I've learnt so much more without one?

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  6. A good point. Just because you learnt a lot of useful stuff without a curriculum, or plan of learning, does not mean that every person will. I am sure that we all know adults who learnt little at school and did not then go on to learn a lot of stuff when they were older? It makes more sense to give children the opportunity to learn when young. I can't for the life of me see why one would not do that for a child?

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  7. I know plenty who failed to learn at school (despite a curriculum) but everyone I know has learnt lots since school without a curriculum (much of which is unlikely to be included in a curriculum, such as horse care, mechanics, decorating, etc). Why choose something I know can fail for my children in preference for something I've not seen fail yet?

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  8. You keep asking that.

    Maybe it's because every child is different, and some parents prefer to follow their children's specific interests in learning, rather than setting out in advance what must be learned.

    They've currently got the right to do this - as those parents who prefer to impose a preplanned curriculum have the right to do their thing too. But the Badman recommendations will make the first option impossible.

    I know you're going to ask why, and/or try to insist that's not the case, but it is the case. If you've got to sit down with the local authority and try to agree in advance what's going to be studied - and stick to the agreement - then you can't follow the child's unique interests and curiosity on a day-to-day basis.

    The Badman recommendations include a requirement for the child to be interviewed to check that the previous year's plan has been properly delivered and taken up. So there's very little room for manoeuvre in the case, for example, of the child whose curiosity and special interests take a different turn to the anticipated plan. Let's face it, that would probably be most children.

    What if you're giving the child the opportunity to learn all of those supposedly necessary historical facts, and the child is simply not interested in history? If you'd had more than one or two children, you would perhaps have some idea of how much variation there can be between them.

    Would you force a child to learn something about which it had no curiosity whatsoever, just because you thought it was required knowledge? How do you ensure the child retains such information?

    And it's all very well saying that those parents who really care about their children's education aren't the ones being targetted, and that nobody will take the letter of the law seriously and that there will, in practice, be flexibility. In some areas that might be true - depending on how determined Ofsted is going to be when it comes to enforcing the local authority regulations. But there are some inspectors who will only ever recognise a school-type provision. Nothing else counts, for them, as 'education'.

    It's going to cause some families a lot of problems.

    So go on, rip that to shreds in that charmingly sarcastic, sardonic way that you have. I won't be back, even if you locate my IP and try to take a stab at which of those frightful autonomous home educators I might be. (Good luck with that.) Your child has finished her education, which puts you in a position of some complacency. Mine might be just starting theirs.

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  9. I am glad to observe that you find my sarcasm charming; this is not the effect that it always has on people! I disagree with you, but suspect there is little point going through my reasons in detail. This is partly because the fact that you imagine that I would wish to locate your IP leads me to suppose that your mental state might be, well shall we say somewhat fragile? I shall accordingly let the matter drop.

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  10. "This is partly because the fact that you imagine that I would wish to locate your IP leads me to suppose that your mental state might be, well shall we say somewhat fragile?"

    Maybe the previous anonymous remembers the time you listed the locations (during the week and a different location at the weekend) a previous 'anonymous' was posting from. Must admit I thought you had checked their IP address, maybe we were wrong?

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  11. I have no idea at all how I would go about tracking down the IP of somebody posting a comment here. I suppose my daughter might know how to do this.

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  12. Ah, I have just realised to what you are alluding. A while ago I thought that Paula Rothermel was posting angrily here because I had passed comments on some of her research. I guessed that she was probably in Durham at the time and so suggested that that was where she was posting from. Is that what you meant? If I was right about Durham, it was no more than a lucky guess! I assure you that I am very unfamiliar with computers, can just about send an email. When I was a boy the most sophisticated calculators were slide rules. I am flattered that anybody should think me capable of tracking down an IP.

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  13. I went to a private school with a very good reputation. I was certainly not taught the national curriculum, because it didn't exist. I was taught all the history you discuss above, but I didn't remember any of it for any longer than I needed to in order to scrape through the exams, because it didn't interest me. The same goes for geography, maths and science. I can't say that in the 35 years since I left, I have been handicapped by my failure to understand the world around me. In the unlikely event that I should ever need to grasp the significance of the Dardanelles (whatever they are), understand quadratic equations or quantum physics, or get to grips with the formation of oxbow lakes, I can go to the library or look them up on the internet. Or, indeed, ask my son, who is interested in all these things, and had therefore managed to learn about them, before he went to school, with no help from me other than making the necessary resources available to him. Should I have told him that he couldn't learn about quantum physics yet because it messed up my coherent and well-planned curriculum? That he had to learn to wire a plug before he tackled robotics? Or that he'd have to postpone his sudden passionate interest in astronomy or the life cycle of the headlouse because I considered it more important for him to learn about the Hundred Years' War?
    Sorry. No.

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  14. I've no idea if you were right about Durham. Not sure why you thought it was Paula Rothermel though. Should have guessed you were bluffing.

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  15. I thought that it was Paula Rothermel commenting because the person was absolutely incensed about some minor point of the figures used for her doctoral thesis. I could not imagine why anybody but the author herself would feel so passionate about the subject. Became very angry and called me a liar repeatedly. Also seemed extremely familiar with Paula Rothermel's CV and background. It seemed a reasonable guess. Hence my assumption that the posts originated from Durham. If people would just give their names, the way Julie and Gisela do, then I wouldn't have to play guessing games like that! It would be less confusing as well, having to deal with a lot of people all called anonymous.

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  16. Careful now, you don't want to risk libel.

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  17. Well, I think that's my affair. Assuming that it was Paula Rothermel, it is hardly libellous to say that she was angry and passionate. If it wasn't her, then it is nor really libellous to tell somebody that I mistook her for a famous psychologist! I can't see what you are driving at.

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  18. I agree that some things appear to be worth learning from an adult's point of view. HOWEVER, there was NOTHING that could get me interested in history at school and I dropped it as soon as I could.

    Now I'm an adult, I can see how important it is, but attempting to make a child learn something will not make them learn it. It will most likely make them hate the subject even more.

    Children, in some measure, do have to see a point to learning a particular something, and if they don't, no amount of coersion will be effective.

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  19. Thanks for suggesting that only systematic instruction enables people to understand the world. I'm sure Einstein, Jefferson and all the other autodidacts out there were figments of some autonomous educators' imagination.

    And sorry, Simon, I teach at undergraduate and postgrad level and I can tell you that some of my students who received 'systematic instruction' DO find much of the world incomprehensible. The mature students who've returned to education having facilitated learning for themselves frequently knock these exam-fatigued youngsters into a cocked hat. Throwing information at people does not constitute learning. You can take a horse to water ....

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