Saturday 9 April 2011

The little edge of darkness in British home education

It is very easy to laugh when people come on here and post things like;


'WHO THE HELL WANT TO LEAR ABOUT SHAKESPEARE?' 'who the hell wants to learn about the tudors? what use is that webb?' 'no broad exposure to culture for me lol'



Yes, the style is inimitable; it is of course Mr Peter Williams of Alton! We sometimes dismiss this as the ravings of a lone crank, but it is less amusing and far more disturbing when prominent figures on the home education scene in this country start complaining that the Department for Education are advising home educating parents to follow a broad and balanced curriculum. Either these people are unwittingly channelling the spirit of Peter Williams or there is a common purpose at work motivating both Mr Williams and Ian Dowty, the home educating lawyer. There is such a common purpose. It is that quintessentially English characteristic of anti-intellectualism and philistinism.


In most countries, to say that somebody is clever is an unalloyed compliment. For the English, it is an insult. When we say, 'Of course, Smith is very clever', we wait for the 'But...'. Even if it does not come, we understand that the listener is really speaking slightingly of Smith, not saying something nice at all really. We don't like 'clever' people in this country. We say as a put down, 'Don't be clever!'; we even use the word as a direct snub, 'He's a Clever Dick'. This ties neatly in with one of the main trends in British home education, the so-called 'natural' education. There is nothing new about this idea of course; centuries ago we heard about 'books in babbling brooks and sermons in stones'. The idea being that children and adults too can learn more about the world from communing with nature than they can from poring over dry, dusty books. It is this which lies at the heart of opposition to any sort of a curriculum for many parents. Johnny is out in the fields, learning first hand about the wonders of nature. Why should I call him indoors to study biology from a dull textbook; he is already studying biology.


This notion, that all curricula are Beds of Procrustes which will stifle the holy curiosity of childhood, has been around since the Enlightenment. Being opposed as so many are to a broad and balanced curriculum, I suspect that few of these types will have read Emile, by Rousseau, but if they did then it would be a revelation to them. Now during the stone age, it is quite possible that the child of some hunter-gatherer might have learned all he needed to know while wandering the forests and plains with his parents. I doubt this is still the case. There may well be 'books in babbling brooks', but these books will not teach us how to calculate percentages so that we do not get ripped off by a loan company. Nor will they teach us how to read. When I raised this topic a few days ago, it was suggested that the reason that parents were suspicious of the idea of a broad and balanced curriculum was because it might lead to local authorities judging their child's education by the National Curriculum. This is not at all the real reason. Many parents simply do not want to provide their children with a broad and balanced education, whether a curriculum is involved or not. Their blood runs cold at the idea of anybody asking them about what sort of education they are providing, because they are well aware at the back of their minds that it would fall woefully short by most definitions. This is why the idea of a plan of education or a curriculum put the wind up a lot of home educating parents; not for any ideological reason.


We are seeing the gradual emergence of a cohort consisting of thousands of young people who have been educated in this way, with an emphasis not upon learning from books, but from everyday life. I have an idea that these children have been stunted intellectually. Everyday life is all too often trivial and uninspiring; the idea of education is to introduce children to elevated ideas and things which they would never encounter in their ordinary life. We return here to the idea of the rights of children, in particular the right to an education which will enable them to rise above their humdrum existence and learn about other people, faraway places and the great intellectual ideas of the world. This is anathema to many home educating parents, who would far rather that their children simply learnt by going to the shops or working in an allotment. These children are liable to grow up with the mentality of medieval peasants, with little or no awareness of any world beyond their own village or any ideas other than those of their parents and neighbours. It is a sobering thought and it is why the DfE would like to see all children exposed to a broad and balanced curriculum.

45 comments:

  1. What a simplistic world-view you appear to be propagating Simon! I shouldn't have to remind you that not only were medieval peasants capable of producing all their own food and the artefacts they needed in order to do so, but many learned to read and write, travelled widely and had a very shrewd grasp of the iniquities of the feudal system. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of many of the young people benefiting from the broad and balanced national curriculum.

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  2. Seems you have a simplistic view of medieval peasantry.

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  3. W. Webb says – “We return here to the idea of the rights of children, in particular the right to an education which will enable them to rise above their humdrum existence and learn about other people, faraway places and the great intellectual ideas of the world. This is anathema to many home educating parents, who would far rather that their children simply learnt by going to the shops or working in an allotment. These children are liable to grow up with the mentality of medieval peasants, with little or no awareness of any world beyond their own village or any ideas other than those of their parents and neighbours. It is a sobering thought and it is why the DfE would like to see all children exposed to a broad and balanced curriculum.”

    Once again the narrow-minded village idiot W. Webb insults the whole Home Education community with slurs that he invented overnight.

    W. Webb falsely asserts that the right of a child are an anathema to home educating parents, just more lies and no facts, just like Badman, stupid supposition without substance, scurrilous lies and why, to appease his ego of believing that he is superior. Then he wonders why he is reviled by real home educators.

    In the real worlds, the children that you refer to as growing up ‘with the mentality of medieval peasants, with little or no awareness of any world beyond their own village’ do not exist. By the age of 10 they learn more about cultures in a year from I.M. social networking friendships, reading 1st hand blogs than you or any school could teach them in five years. They know about such matters as Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and it’s ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, subjects that are not on the broad and balanced curriculum. And the oddity for you W. Webb is that they do this in their spare time and enjoy it.

    W. Webb strakes again.

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  4. I've never read any Shakespeare apart from a few of the more well-known quotes. I somehow avoided it all at school and have never been inspired to read it. What makes something a 'classic' anyway?

    However, I do know something about Tudor monarchs, from the War of the Roses to various bust-ups with the Spanish.

    I still maintain my view of the 'broad and balanced' curriculum, which is that by age 16/18 it should all have been covered,but there is no need to do all of on a weekly or monthly basis if there's no current interest in particular topics. There's also the point that home educators often don't deal in traditional school subjects, it's more areas of interest that can be used to cover a wide range of things.

    My usual example is volcanoes, which allows a bit of geography, history, geology and can be stretched to throw in some maths, physics and chemistry. The student may just know it as a study of volcanoes, without realising the coverage of traditional subjects.

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  5. Simon wrote,
    "Ian Dowty, the home educating lawyer. There is such a common purpose. It is that quintessentially English characteristic of anti-intellectualism and philistinism. "

    So you are suggesting that Ian Dowty, whose son is studying at Oxford, is an anti-intellectualism and philistinism? Or are you suggesting some kind of conspiracy theory whereby he is trying to ensure others don't benefit from his son's advantages?

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  6. Come along W. Webb, are you going withhold publication of another salutary criticism of your obscure thinking until the middle of the night in the hope of reducing it's exposure.

    If you tell lies, than expect to vilified for it!


    Dave M

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  7. Simon wrote,
    "The idea being that children and adults too can learn more about the world from communing with nature than they can from poring over dry, dusty books."

    So are you taking back your previous article, 'Teaching' children; Part 2 , in which you say:

    The best way of learning about mammalian dentition, the type and distribution of teeth in a mammals head, is to examine a skull. When my daughter was eight, we found a dead squirrel in the road. I suggested bringing it home and cutting off it's head.

    ...Get hold of a GCSE text book and you will find that studying these topics entails looking at little black and white line drawings. I can imagine nothing duller and am not at all surprised that so many children do not wish to be taught science in this way. But then again, that is why I chose to home educate, I suppose. I wanted my child to enjoy learning, not sit staring at a textbook.

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  8. "There may well be 'books in babbling brooks', but these books will not teach us how to calculate percentages so that we do not get ripped off by a loan company. Nor will they teach us how to read."

    The law requires parent's to provide a suitable education. A suitable education is one that enables the child to achieve their full potential, and that prepares the child for life in a modern civilised society. So unless you are suggesting that percentages and reading are not required to prepare a child for life in a modern civilised society, this is already covered by the law. A more detailed list that includes 'percentages' and 'reading' seems superfluous.

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  9. Or even,

    So you are suggesting that Ian Dowty, whose son is studying at Oxford, is an *anti-intellectual* and *philistine*?

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  10. Once again the narrow-minded village idiot W. Webb insults the whole Home Education community with slurs that he invented overnight.

    W. Webb falsely asserts that the right of a child are an anathema to home educating parents, just more lies and no facts, just like Badman stupid supposition without substance, scurrilous lies and why, to appease his ego of believing that he is superior. The he wonders why he is reviled by real home educators.

    In the real worlds, the children that you refer to as growing up ‘with the mentality of medieval peasants, with little or no awareness of any world beyond their own village’ do not exist. By the age of 10 they learn about cultures in a year from I.M. social networking friendships, reading 1st hand blogs than you or any school could teach them in five years. They know about such matters as Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and it’s ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, subjects that are not on the broad and balanced curriculum. And the oddity for you W. Webb is that they do this in their spare time and enjoy it.


    W. Webb strikes again.

    Dave M

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  11. This post is bizarre, Simon! Where are these thousands of medieval peasant children? I have yet to meet any. And Ian Dowty as some sort of anti-intellectual? I have been to talk by the man and he seemed to think that the audience could cope with written slides that included references to the law. He certainly didn't conduct the whole thing using turnips in a muddy field.

    Personally I really dislike anti-intellectualism - it's a sort of inverse snobbery. I can't say I've encountered it in the home ed world. My autonomously educated children will be watching another Shakespeare in the park this year at festival time :-)

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  12. There's a difference between watching and understanding. You describe visual association and that is only one aspect of the learning process. It appears that you're repeating a half understood grasp of The Personal Family model of teaching, a skilled educator would employ a variety of models to fully explore Shakespearian drama and text.

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  13. Oxbridge is the finest example of anti intellectualism and philistinism.
    You might look into the Laura Spence Affair and criticisms made by Eric Thomas VC of Bristol University and Gordon Brown.

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  14. As for 'medieval Peasantry' there were three classes of Peasant.
    Free men
    Cottars
    Villeins
    More often than not they were little more than slaves with short life expectancy, their health blighted by poverty and disease.
    Their lot didn't improve until after the Black Death had wiped out the workforce, even then their lives were in a constant state of flux.

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  15. And there are thousands of 'Medieval peasant children'..they're in inner cities being subjected to brutality at home, running streets flooded with cheap alcohol and drugs and enduring a dumbing down through education and being scapegoated by a government that hasn't invested in the working class family for around three decades.
    Thing is you probably voted for it all at some point in your adult life.

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  16. There's loads of 'medieval peasant children', some getting ASBOs or shot dead at home and the others getting blown up or shot dead in places like Afghanistan.
    They went to fight the Germans in two World Wars before that, being ordered to go 'over the top' by the Oxbridge set..

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  17. A 16 year old girl asked me last week who Winston Churchill was. The girl had supposedly benefitted from abroad and balanced curriculum, at school.

    I suspect the problem is with the word 'curriculum', rather than 'broad and balanced'.

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  18. Sounds like she was winding you up.

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  19. What exactly do you mean
    'The girl had supposedly benefitted from abroad'?

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  20. At a guess, it should have been 'a broad', but I'm sure you know this already. Do you like making pointless comments?

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  21. "Sounds like she was winding you up."

    Lots of other children seem to be winding researchers up too then. Funny how so many had the same idea at the same time.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3587157.ece

    The most celebrated British Prime Minister of the 20th century was the first man to walk on the Moon, one in three young people told a survey.

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  22. Hmmmm....Arab-Israeli politics eh?

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  23. I wish we where that powerfull Webb and people where copying our ideas you think thier are? hope so!

    we dont want to learn about shakesphere but we do want to learn more about the Iraq War amd how we got involved along with the liyba war to thats something we are studying did you know that one of thsoe bombs think its cruise missle cost half a million pounds for each one fired never knew that until Peter told us! Want to hear more from our great leader Cameron about this subject.

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  24. Sweet Jeeezus you really believe 'a survey', The Times is sister to The Sun... 'A survey' is only published to fill space.

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  25. Peter and Carol...
    Are you even sober?

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  26. Peter and Carol..
    Who's educating who?

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  27. Perhaps if you read Shakespeare you might get an insight into politics

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  28. Perhaps if you learned to read you might get an insight on everything.

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  29. I doubt that you understand even a smidgin of what Cameron says.

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  30. anon says-I doubt that you understand even a smidgin of what Cameron says.

    are you saying our great leader Cameron did not take us into a war with liyba and that cruise bombs dont cost half a million pound each?

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  31. "Sweet Jeeezus you really believe 'a survey', The Times is sister to The Sun... 'A survey' is only published to fill space."

    So you are basing your assumption that she was kidding on...?

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  32. Peter and Carol...
    We're not at war with liyba.
    I don't think there is actually a country called liyba....
    even if there was it's spelling would start with a capital letter.
    Maybe you refer to Libya where Libyans live.
    It wasn't Cameron that took us into war with Libya, that was the UN Security Council, they authorised a No -Fly Zone and air strikes to protect civilians.
    The Civilians of Libya were/are engaged in an anti authoritarian popular uprising against their government and leader Muammar Gaddafi.
    The price varies with Cruise Missiles, sounds like they've launched the cheap ones again.

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  33. I'm basing my 'assumptions' on how trusting you obviously are of Rupert Murdoch.

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  34. Gosh - I am confused again - mostly because I can't tell which anon is which.....

    However, I am pretty sure that linking Ian Dowty with any sort of anti-intellectualism is rather far fetched; I am pretty sure that if he really has complained about the whole broad curriculum thing it is to merely point out that is an incorrect interpretation of the current state of the law. I don't think he is advocating us raising a generation of peasants or anything else.

    Are there "anti-intellectuals" amongst home educators? Yes, some- but again there is a whole generation of school children who care little for things that I consider important. I am afraid I can't spare too much time worrying about those who deliberately choose to raise their children in a way that is so different from my choices. There are plenty of families out there who do want support, information and encouragement about home educating their children.

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  35. Julie said...
    'are there "anti -intellectuals" amongst home educators? Yes'
    Hmmmm...

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  36. "I'm basing my 'assumptions' on how trusting you obviously are of Rupert Murdoch."

    You misunderstood the question. I asked you why you were so sure the original girl was winding someone up when she said she didn't know who Winston Churchill was. What evidence did you base that theory on? Or was that a different anonymous?

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  37. One of the many Anons says:
    "There's a difference between watching and understanding. You describe visual association and that is only one aspect of the learning process. It appears that you're repeating a half understood grasp of The Personal Family model of teaching, a skilled educator would employ a variety of models to fully explore Shakespearian drama and text."

    Oooh, get you! Don't worry too much about us, thanks. Having experienced 'a variety of models to explore Shakespearian drama and text' in my life I found the best was watching it performed. (Funny how I can't remember any of the lessons about 'A Winter's Tale' but will never forget the night at the Barbican.) Oh, yeah, and all the talking about it on the train home.

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  38. 'They know about such matters as Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and it’s ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem,'

    This is an anti-Semitic lie, almost certainly written by somebody who has never lived in Jerusalem.

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  39. 'You might look into the Laura Spence Affair and criticisms made by Eric Thomas VC of Bristol University and Gordon Brown.'

    This is nonsense. Laura Spence herself had no complaints about the selection procedure; it was a stunt pulled by her Head.

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  40. Reading about the Laura Spence Affair page on Wikipedia I must agree with Simon (unusually). I'm surprised though that there were only 22 applicants for 5 places. During my daughter's uni recent applications and interviews, the ratio of applicants to places averaged around 6-8 applicants for each place. I would have expected greater competition for Oxbridge places, but maybe times have changed since than and the ratio is greater now?

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  41. "During my daughter's uni recent applications and interviews,"

    should have been,

    During my daughter's recent uni applications and interviews,

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  42. anon says-We're not at war with liyba.

    we are at war with Libya or are you saying that droping bombs on anther country is not a war? a number of civilians including children have been killed by UK airstrikes!

    your happy for your taxes to be spent bombing anther country when we have so many problems here in the UK?

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  43. Hmmm... I see no response to the comments on medieval peasantry.

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  44. W. Webb says:
    "'They know about such matters as Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and it’s ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem,'

    This is an anti-Semitic lie, almost certainly written by somebody who has never lived in Jerusalem."

    So W Webb wasn't very good at teaching modern history then!

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  45. While I enjoy most of what you write Anon, and the W.Webb tickles me no end, I must say your 'rabid' remarks about the Arab/Israeli conflict are a bit off.

    I must ask so as not to lose respect for your usually entertaining and erudite comments ... have you ever been to Israel, let alone Jerusalem? I ask as someone who spent many years living there.

    I always maintain that history is a matter of perspective. I imagine Hitler would have expressed a very different version of the events of WWII and the Holocaust, than most of the rest of the Non-Muslim world.

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