Those who followed the comments on the recent article in The Independent about some Hollywood starlet’s decision not to send her children to school, will have noticed an old and familiar accusation being made; that home educated children grow up to be weird loners, unable to interact normally with others.
Now before we go any further, I have to say that I have no evidence at all that this is so; I simply have not met enough adults who were educated at home to form an opinion. I have met one strange person who did not go to school, but the overwhelming majority of people who present as odd or unable to get along in society did go to school. So I am not putting it forward as an hypothesis that a greater proportion of adults who were home educated are actually socially inept. This is however what is commonly asserted by those who disapprove of home education.
Having got that out of the way, a home educating mother with children on the autistic spectrum contacted me recently, wondering if I could float this idea on the Blog; the possibility that if we meet such adults who were home educated, it might be that they were home educated because they already had difficulties in being with groups of people and that this behaviour could simply linger on into adulthood. She had noticed that the Ofsted survey of home education which was released last year showed a large proportion of home educated children with special educational needs. Other surveys have revealed the same thing and judging by anecdotal evidence, many such children are on the autistic spectrum.
Might it be possible that if a large number of children with autistic features or traits are removed from school because they have difficulties coping with large group situations, then these children might retain this aspect of their characters as teenagers and adults? If so, then any social awkwardness or dislike of group settings, would not have been caused by their being home educated at all. It is rather that this bit of their characters caused their parents to home educate them in the first place. In short, we would be in danger of muddling up cause and effect.
As I say, neither I nor the mother with whom I exchanged emails are asserting that this is so; merely wondering whether this might provide a possible explanation for those strange adults that people who are opposed to home education seem to meet so often. Of course another and to my mind more likely explanation is that those people who claim to encounter so many strange home educated adults are not telling the truth about this anyway and could just be inventing the idea to prove a debating point. The fellow commenting on the Independent article, for instance, claimed to have met four socially awkward adults who had been home educated. I find it unlikely that anybody unconnected with home education would have met four people in the course of everyday life who had been educated at home; it is after only less than 1% of the population. That they would all have been noticeably strange seems to me improbable.
As a parent of a home educated child with ASD and the physical disability of hypermobility, I agree with the idea that these children's social ability is the reason why they are home educated, and are not as a result of being home educated.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that the proportion of SEND in home education is higher than it is in school, and one of the reasons is that the inclusion movement in schools has actually made things worse for some types of SEND.
Research has shown that inclusion has not worked as they thought it would:"Progress towards classroom integration has been more evident for some groups than for others. Pupils with physical or visual impairments have benefited most from the integration movement; pupils with moderate or severe learning difficulties have benefited considerably less; and pupil with emotional and behavioural difficulties are in fact experiencing greater segregation than before." (New Perspectives in Special Educaiton - A Six-counrty Study of Integration by Cor J.W. Meijer, Sip Jan Pijl and Seamus Hegarty)
So with ASD children struggling in school, it is no wonder that so many of them are home educated, and it may well be that their outcomes will be much better for being HEed than if they had remained in a school that was not meeting their needs.
Both Tony Attwood and Simon Baron-Cohen are supportive of home education for children on the autistic spectrum.
SENmum1
I think this is likely. I have met families that began home educating because of one child's problems at school and went on to home educate other children in the family. However, the problems with socialising seemed limited to the child with the original problem.
ReplyDeleteSimon said, 'The fellow commenting on the Independent article, for instance, claimed to have met four socially awkward adults who had been home educated. I find it unlikely that anybody unconnected with home education would have met four people in the course of everyday life who had been educated at home; it is after only less than 1% of the population. That they would all have been noticeably strange seems to me improbable.'
ReplyDeleteWell I've met 5 adults who were home educated and they ere all ended up as terrorists.
It's easy to write, even though it isn't remotely true.
Apparently not that easy to edit though.
ReplyDelete;-)
Its not something that comes up in conversation for us to explain my husbands lack of enthusiasm for human contact. Since his early dayz he's always preferred his own company. When he has to he can mingle and converse beautiful with those around. My mother in law said she always had a problem in getting him to mingle with others to the point she just accepted this waz his personality the same as his fathers, I notice now that my youngest chooses to avoid others and enjoys his own company more. Could it be a family trait ? or do the facts grandad was home educated for parts of his childhood creating a loner which waz then passed to my husband who never went to school and was educated by his mother and now here we are with my boys who only spent there early years in a catholic school. I have one loner and one very out going. I just accept some people prefer to alone not everyone wants to deal with the politics of friend ships.
ReplyDeleteAmy