Wednesday 5 September 2012

Education Otherwise endorse a strange and abusive home educator

I have a huge problem with the American organisation, the Home School Defense League Association and also with its founder, Michael Farris. This has nothing to do with the fact that the HSDLA is a right wing, Christian group. After all, I am a regular churchgoer myself and vote Conservative. Right wing Christians are fine by me! No, my objection to these people is that they equate parental discipline with the ritual beating of children. Either one is in favour of thrashing small children or one is a hopeless, lily-livered, bleeding-heart liberal who is opposed to discipline in childhood.


When I say ‘ritual beating’, it is important that readers understand that I am not talking about the odd smack delivered to a child when the parent is frazzled and angry. This happens with most parents and is regrettable but probably harmless in the long run. What I mean is a deliberate and cold blooded policy of beating the child, sometimes with the hand and often with an implement, in order to break the child’s spirit and force obedience to the will of the parent. This is loathsome.

I actually have a couple of books by Michael Farris and pretty strange reading they make. Consider What a Daughter Needs from her Dad. Now I always thought that what my daughter needed was love, understanding, guidance, teaching; stuff like that. What I apparently left out was the need to humiliate her by striking her repeatedly on the buttocks with a piece of wood. Discipline, you see! Farris even helpfully suggests the use of a wooden spoon for this vital part of childrearing. Anybody else think that there is something a little perverted about a man beating his young daughter on the backside with a bit if wood, or is it just me?

Michael Farris and the HSDLA do seem to have a bit of a thing about spanking; their favoured term for this kind of physical abuse. Whenever the USA looks as though it might be about to sign up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, (the only countries not to sign up to this are America and Somalia), the HSDLA wades in and reminds parents that this might mean an end to spanking their children. Here is Farris warning parents a couple of months ago about another ’dangerous treaty’ that the USA might get mixed up in; the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Article 15 of this calls for a ban on ’inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. That would be a good thing, right? No, you fool! As Michael Farris says, ‘This means that spanking will be banned entirely in the United States’. The guy really does have a thing about spanking.

Because of all this, I was surprised to find that Farris’ books are in Education Otherwise’s Amazon Store on their public website. Putting his books there is really a form of endorsement, suggesting that these are suitable for home educators to buy and read. When a man is so determined that children should be physically abused by being subjected to the degrading ritual of being struck regularly on the buttocks with a piece of wood, I feel that this alone should be sufficient grounds for ordinary people to edge past him cautiously and give him a wide berth. The books in the Amazon Store are both pretty weird. To give one example, the Bible has always been  important in our family. It seemed natural that my daughter would read it often and so she did. That was of course entirely up to her. Michael Farris, in The Homeschooling Father, says that he offered his children $100 if they would read the Bible regularly for a year! Am I alone in finding   that rather odd?

It is of course up to Education Otherwise which books they recommend, but I really think that Michael Farris’ works should be treated with caution. He is a strange man with an unhealthy fixation on corporal punishment and what with that and paying children to read the Bible, I hardly think that he is somebody that Education Otherwise would wish to be endorsing in any way at all.

23 comments:

  1. Hopefully it's an oversight. I certainly had no idea that he held these views and I doubt whoever compiled the list on the EO web site has read all of the books listed. They should probably have included the usual comment about not endorsing the listed books. At the top of the category list it states, 'powered by Amazon'. I wonder if anyone at EO selected the books or if the list is automatically compiled by Amazon?

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    1. 'Hopefully it's an oversight'
      And what if it isn't an oversight?

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  2. An oversight?
    Some oversight...

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    1. But understandable if it's a list automatically compiled by Amazon software without human intervention!

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    2. Utterly irresponsible, someone enabled the Amazon software.

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  3. I'd be amazed if no-one involved in the eo website knew who Michael Farris was. His views on numerous contentious issues are very well known.

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    1. I knew he was connected with HSDLA but I didn't know about his corporal punishment views and I've been home educating for 17 years. But any discussion is by-the-by until we know if the books were selected by a person from EO (and if they had read the book or knew about his views) or if they are automatically selected by Amazon software. Maybe EO would welcome a warning?

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    2. I'd be surprised if they'd never heard of Farris and his views.
      It would appear that having selected a facility for Amazon to select books might give rise to problems like this.
      Maybe EO should clarify the issue..

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  4. I recently went from being a spanker who thought spanking was correct, to being a non spanker. May I say that my personality has not changed. I have not changed from an abusive, violent monster into a perfectly lovely or weak, liberal person. I have simply & thoroughly considered what is best for our family. I see good & reason in both sides. can there be a middle ground?

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  5. Michael Farris and EO have a whole lot in common..
    In fact Michael Farris is the template for more than one or two of our home grown home ed campaigners.

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  6. ' I see good & reason in both sides. can there be a middle ground?'

    I'm not at all sure that this is possible. My nineteen year-old daughter is currently staying here before going back to university next month. If I were to lose my temper and hit her, the police could arrest me. The fact that we are related would not be a defence in court; the law will protect her from me if I become angry and aggressive, just as they would protect my wife from similar violence. It would be a bit strange if that protection were not to have been afforded her four years ago when she was fifteen, or ten years ago when she was nine. I can't see why vulnerable young children should need less protection from angry and aggressive adults than other people enjoy in law!

    Some people, and I am one of them, believe that hitting children is absolutely and unconditionally wrong under any circumstances. Others honestly believe that striking their children is a good method of instilling obedience and respect in them. I would be interested to hear what the middle ground could be between those two points of view. Of course, I am aware that most people do hit their children; even those who theoretically disapprove of the practice. I did not hit my own child, but have every sympathy for those who were driven to it by frustration and tiredness. There is a difference between that spur of the moment loss of control and the deliberate decision to inflict pain on a child as a means of keeping her under control.

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  7. 'Right wing Christians are fine by me'
    Oh...so, you agree with racism, weaponry and proven nefarious politics?
    Perhaps you need to take off them blinkers and look at the real world.
    The Christian Right in America and Western culture is every bit as dangerous as the Taliban in the Islamic diaspora.

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  8. ' His views on numerous contentious issues are very well known.'

    Yes, don't get me started on his views on the proper place of women!

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  9. He's not that far removed from having similar views to Fred Phelps and Westbro.

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  10. 'Right wing Christians are fine by me'
    Oh...so, you agree with racism, weaponry and proven nefarious politics?
    Perhaps you need to take off them blinkers and look at the real world.
    The Christian Right in America and Western culture is every bit as dangerous as the Taliban in the Islamic diaspora'

    I was not giving an unqualified endorsement to all right wing Christians! Some home educators in this country have objected to the HSDLA simply on the grounds that they are a Christian organisation which tends to be right wing. This alone is enough to damn them in the eyes of such people. I was pointing out that I had nothing against right wing Christians per se and that i tended to judge each such person on a case by case basis, rather than regarding religion and right wing politics as being bad things in themselves.

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    1. Perhaps you should take a look at what Archbishop Desmond Tutu thinks about those right wing christians, G.W Bush and Blair.

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  11. Why haven't you asked this question on the EO email list, Simon? It seems the logical place to ask if you really want to know and you are a member.

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  12. 'Why haven't you asked this question on the EO email list, Simon? It seems the logical place to ask if you really want to know and you are a member. '

    Whenever I start a new topic on that list, I am invariably told that it is only for the support of home educators and not for general discussions of this sort. I am not a member of EO and the books about which I talk are on the public website, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to mention the matter publicly.

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    1. Well it's fine if all you want to do is comment on the issue. But if you actually want to know if they intentionally included his books, you would do better asking elswhere. Have you thought of joining the EO-debate list? I would have thought that that list was right up your street!

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