Wednesday 29 December 2010

How can one person hope to teach all those subjects?

Critics of home education tend in the main have a pretty limited repertoire of stock arguments which they level against the practice. Socialisation is of course one of these, as is the 'fact' that it is unhealthy for a child to spend all day in her parents company. The other old standby is, 'How can one person hope to teach all those subjects?' We saw a variation on this theme yesterday, when somebody commenting here quoted my saying that I did not trust anybody else to educate my child. This was taken to be a sign of some sort of mania. The very idea of it, that a parent could expect to provide a better education for his child than a school! One strongly suspects that this comment was not made by a home educator.

Over the years, parents have been persuaded that they do not know what is best for their children and that anything from deciding whether the baby sleeps on her belly or back to the teaching of reading, should be left to professionals. The result is that many parents lack the confidence to teach their children. Teaching physics? Surely, one would need to be a highly trained and qualified physics teacher with a degree under one's belt and a laboratory at one's disposal to undertake such a thing? The same is thought to be true of music, drama, mathematics and practically every other academic subject. So widespread is this pernicious point of view, that many parents who remove their children from school do not even attempt now to teach their children any of these things. They have, in effect, been disempowered by the cult of the professional. This is a shame, because there is in reality nothing at all to prevent any parent teaching anything at all effectively.

Most of the apparatus which schools now regard as essential for teaching, electronic whiteboards for example, are really only useful if you are teaching thirty children at once. If only one or two are involved, then a sheet of paper on the table and a felt tip are just as effective. The same goes for science laboratories; very useful for the mass instruction of large groups of children, but quite irrelevant where only one or two are concerned. Twenty years ago, Julie Webb explored this idea thoroughly in her book Children Learning at Home (Falmer, 1990). She found that the lack of specialised resources made no difference at all to parents and was not a bar to the teaching on anything from chemistry and biology to sports and music. Even such basic equipment as a Bunsen burner was found to be unnecessary; parents improvising instead at the gas stove.

With the advent of the Internet, the situation became even easier for the home educating parent. All the information one could possibly require on any subject at all was there to see. If it was biology, the specification for the various GCSE boards was freely available, setting out in minute detail what was needed to pass the examination. The same is true of music, acting and everything else. There can be no possible reason why any subject cannot be taught at least as effectively in the home as it can in a school.

The idea that schools are necessary for children to learn is an official one for teachers. Among the submissions received by Graham Badman was one from the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, which said;

'The NASUWT maintains that the existence of a right to home educate is anomalous with the clear emphasis in Government policy of ensuring that all children and young people can benefit from educational provision where teaching and learning is led by qualified teachers in well resourced and fit for purpose modern educational settings'

(Why do these people talk like this? Why do they say 'well resourced and fit for purpose modern educational settings' and not 'schools' like the rest of us?) Here you see the standard educational view of the matter and it is a shame that so many home educating parents seem to have fallen into the trap of believing this foolishness. Whenever there is a debate about home education, some fool will be sure to say, as Baroness Deech did a while ago, ''What about chemistry? You can't teach that in the kitchen!'

It is time that home educators in this country woke up to the fact that they are quite capable of teaching their children anything at all. In fact one-to-one tuition in a relaxed setting is the ideal vehicle for the transmission of knowledge. Children educated in this way tend to make far more rapid progress than those taught en masse in schools. I am aware that some parents have become dispirited by the idea that only professionals can undertake this sort of thing and have reacted by abandoning teaching entirely, but this is simply playing into the hands of these so-called professionals. The way to demonstrate the efficacy of home education is not to reject teaching but to show that it can be done far more effectively in the home than is possible in schools. If this belief is indeed a type of mania, as the person who commented yesterday suggested, then it is a mania backed by extensive research data from the USA!

16 comments:

  1. Where have you gained the impression that HE parents don't believe they can teach these things? This isn't my experience with my local group at all.

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  2. "The way to demonstrate the efficacy of home education is not to reject teaching but to show that it can be done far more effectively in the home than is possible in schools"

    Is this you thinking or implying that some HEers (ones who have a philosophy of autonomous education) reject teaching.

    They don't, the just reject teaching without consent.

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  3. 'Is this you thinking or implying that some HEers (ones who have a philosophy of autonomous education) reject teaching.'

    No, it's me explaining that years of professional disapproval of parental teaching has had a bad effect upon the morale of parents.

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  4. 'Where have you gained the impression that HE parents don't believe they can teach these things?'

    Some do and some don't. Many teachers and other professionals discourage parents from believing that that they can teach their children and this has had the effect of persuading some parents that they are not capable of doing so. I did not mean to imply that no home educating parents feel able to teach their children.

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  5. Going to be controversial here - but is it really true that every parent can teach their children?
    I am not for one minute supporting the ignorant views of Baronesses etc - obviously home ed parents can teach chemistry in the kitchen, nor am I thinking of this in terms of the whole debate about compulsory teaching/AE approaches which came up again above; but I do think that sometimes we can be a bit naive in suggesting that "everyone can do it". Not only is HE hard work (the autonomous home educators in our group would agree- even if they aren't directing their children, they are kept extremely busy providing all the resources and so on for their children to pick from) but some families, especially those who withdraw their children from school, really struggle to educate their children. Sometimes it is the educational attainment of the parents that is the issue, it may be difficult housing, lack of supportive family, poverty and so on. I meet families like that all the time... don't others??

    Now I am NOT suggesting that there should be a ban on such families home educating or anything of the sort ( after all , who is capable of being judge and jury on such matters) but although I do agree with much of what Simon says above, I do think that sometimes we are too over simplistic if we say "everyone can...."

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  6. Your comments, "it is time that home educators in this country woke up to the fact that they are quite capable of teaching their children anything at all", and "it is a shame that so many home educating parents seem to have fallen into the trap", seem to imply that you think a large proportion of home educators hold this view. What proportion (roughly) do you think hold this view and what evidence are you basing this on?

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  7. Julie, there is a difference between a single person being able to teach their child everything (I agree that's not always possible), but this doesn't prevent a child learning anything they want at home. There are many alternative routes to learning at home that do not directly involve the parent primarily involved with the child's education. Your GCSE groups are a perfect example.

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  8. 'What proportion (roughly) do you think hold this view and what evidence are you basing this on?'

    I have no idea of the proportion and neither does anybody else. I am basing what I say upon the fact that some parents pay distance learning providers, enroll their children at college or say that they feel unable to teach certain subjects.

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  9. The main difficulty in teaching a child at home is, as Julie says above, that it is hard work. My own educational attainment is nothing to write home about, but it proved no hinderance in reading and teaching the specifications of the subjects upon which we worked. That and the local library proved adequate. The main thing was that it was constant work and I used to feel that I didn't have time for anything else.

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  10. Anon a couple of posts above said "There are many alternative routes to learning at home that do not directly involve the parent primarily involved with the child's education"

    -.. agreed; but sometimes it is not as straightforward as it might appear. Without giving away too many details, this year, I have met a mother, who has herself been educated at a special school, struggling to home educate a small child with terrible behavioural problems, who lacked any coping strategies. By removing the children from school she had also removed the family from sight of anyone who could support her in anyway. Another mother has a teenager who struggles with learning and yet who wants to support her child with basic maths (the sort of functional maths that allows you to cope in society- I am not taking about algebra here!) but cannot, so even with trying to support learning alongside each other, they are getting nowhere.

    I knwo that in some families children can make amazing strides with no or very little parental intervention, but to feel that always happens is far too idealistic.

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  11. "I have no idea of the proportion and neither does anybody else."

    If you know so little about it, why talk about 'many home educators falling into that trap'? In my experience the numbers are pretty low.

    "The main thing was that it was constant work and I used to feel that I didn't have time for anything else."

    But what about those with 3 or 4 children to teach? Maybe this is why some might choose to take advantage of correspondence courses or other alternatives. If you found it such hard work with one, consider what it would be like with 3 or more children of different ages and different interests.

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  12. "I knwo that in some families children can make amazing strides with no or very little parental intervention, but to feel that always happens is far too idealistic."

    Possibly, it certainly sounds as though you have met your fair share of people with problems. I've belonged to around 5 different groups over 15 years without meeting so many!

    Do you think these children are would have been better off in school? Were they getting adequate support before the child was withdrawn? Do the benefits of being outside of the school establishment (with all the problems that can exist their such as bullying and children struggling to cope in a hostile, alien place) in any way balance or outweigh any loss in quality of education? How much were these children managing to learn in school if they were having problems there?

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  13. I am not suggesting that school was necessarily better at all, but I strongly suspect that in some cases that is because their school placements were totally unsuitable. By withdrawing a child from school some of these families cut themselves off from any help or support in the future. Now as the mother of an SEN child I know that being home educated can make a huge difference to some children and I am sure many parents would say that home education has literally saved their children, but it isn't like that for all families.

    I think I know a lot of families in difficult positions for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that a lot of them get sent to our HE group by the LA. However it does produce some debate- some home educators feel strongly that we are a "support" group and so shouldn't be propping up families that can't home educate themselves. It is all a bit of an ethical nightmare really.

    I am not however denying the truth of a lot of what Simon said though in his original post - home education parents should have confidence that they can do a good job, and I clearly don't support the idea that most families can't offer a wide and well rounded education to their children.

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  14. 'I am basing what I say upon the fact that some parents pay distance learning providers, enroll their children at college or say that they feel unable to teach certain subjects.'

    In my experience, people often do this because they don't particularly want the responsibiity of teaching exam subjects. This is not the same as not feeling able to take that resonsibility. For eg many parents will also have younger children with competing needs and it's helpful for them to hand over the responsibility for exam subjects to others.

    In other cases, the parents know that their child has reached a stage where they would benefit from the ideas of a third party or using other instructors is a way of extending the child's experiences or preparing them for their further or higher education.

    Sometimes, the students themselves desire independence from their parents and prefer to work that way.

    I don't believe the use of tutored groups, correspondence courses etc is a sign of a lack of confidence on the part of the parents. It's often a pragmatic response to the family's or the child's individual needs.

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  15. Another reason why I feel that there might be a reluctance to teach among home educators is the sort of thing which people say on here. Here is a comment from a couple of days ago;

    'But Simon, people do not really see you as a home educator so they would not presume in the manner that you might hope.

    People see you as a would-be teacher'

    This person is making a clear distinction between home educating and teaching at home. Indeed, some have portrayed those two things as being in opposition. A number of people have said here that I am not a home educator, precisely because I taught. this suggests that at least some home educators do not want to teach and are a little suspicious of the idea.

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  16. A number of people? I've only seen the one you quote making that very strange suggestion. I've not seen the suggestion on any email lists or at any of my local groups.

    Speaking as an autonomous educator who teaches often at request who has HE friends who use parent-led teaching. I think very few people would agree with that comment. I suspect the person involved would probably only say this about you and not my HE friends. You seem to arouse some very extreme, abnormal reactions in people!

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