Sunday 7 October 2012

The task of Sisyphus



Readers with a smattering of erudition will no doubt catch the above allusion, which is to an ancient king condemned by the gods for his hubris. He was doomed to spend eternity rolling a heavy boulder up a hill each day; only to see it roll down again at nightfall, leaving him to attempt the task anew each morning. I know the feeling!

I set out a few weeks ago to explore the rationale behind the Welsh Assembly’s efforts to enforce compulsory registration and monitoring of home educated children. I hoped to do this by looking at a new aspect of the case each day and in this way gradually building up an understanding of what was going on. I need not have bothered. Even establishing the simplest and least controversial of facts proved too much and so I  have abandoned the attempt. Perhaps this was the intention of some of those commenting here?

To give an example of what I mean, I took two things for granted recently; two things connected with home education which are absolutely and incontrovertibly true and about which there cannot be the slightest doubt. Even with these simple facts, I found myself bombarded with objections and argument. No wonder we never got past the initial stages of considering the proposed Welsh legislation!

Here are the two, very basic and obvious statements which caused such debate;



The five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda were incorporated into the 2004 Children Act and are now the law of England



There has for years been a concerted campaign by some home education organisations and academics against the concept of a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’



Now I was not inviting readers to decide whether a couple of propositions from Russell’s Principia Mathematica were veridical. I was presenting two pieces of information, both of which had a bearing on discussions about the new Welsh law, and using them as givens so that we could look more closely at what is going on in the minds of those both in Wales and England who are demanding further powers with regard to home education.

It was a hopeless endeavour and  I shall according leave the topic of the Welsh legislation alone for the foreseeable future and concentrate more upon my own idiosyncratic views and opinions of things relating to home education in England. There is also, incidentally, the fact that I am currently writing three non-fiction books and a novel simultaneously and this is taxing even my powers,  to the extent that I have less time to engage in debate with those commenting here. Since it is discourteous to ignore comments, it seems better to limit myself for a while to posts such as this, to which nobody could really take exception.

24 comments:

  1. Always arguing here7 October 2012 at 01:22

    What are these books you're writing? I would be interested in a book about your home education journey wih Simone. There hasn't, as I know it, been such a book written in the UK by a British author. I for one would read it, and judging by your notoriety, you would have a guaranteed readership of a couple thousand at least!

    I have very little understanding of what the welsh proposals are about, so if you refuse to cover the topic I shall remain completely ignorant as I'm not a follower of many HE blogs.

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  2. The books are westerns and also local history stuff. If you look at my name on Amazon, you will get some idea of the sort of things. I have toyed with the idea of a personal account of home education and may get round to it one day.

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  3. Yes, I'd be very interested to hear more about your experiences of home educating your daughter. As a relatively structured type, I'd be rather interested to hear a lot more about your experience of teaching your daughter. I'd say the current accepted normal practice in HE circles right now is autonomous, which is great, but it does mean that those of us who have not chosen that path get relatively little chance to hear from those who have done it already.

    I'm in Wales, by the way-I'm not abandoning the Welsh! But I'm really much more interested in ideas and inspiration, at the end of the day we fight what we need to fight, we win or lose or draw even, but my real life work right now is getting my kids a good education.

    Oh and while we are on the subject are you the simon webb who wrote Unearthing London (eg http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/aug/12/londons-ancient-history)? As a Londoner by birth, not to mention a history geek, it looks absolutely fascinating and I'm certainly buying it for our next grandparent pilgrimage in a few weeks. Could we have a bit more info about that please?

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    1. Can I sneak in here, Edith? I think there is a perception that most home educators are autonomous, but it was Simon who pointed out that there is research done by Mike Fortune Wood that shows this isn't necessarily so.

      (And I would say that, because I'm an administrator on a structured HE forum where we talk a lot about the everyday life side of HE and, most of all, how to get our children the education and life skills that'll get them where they want to go.)

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    2. Simon claimed in a 2009 newspaper article that autonomous education is the most popular method used by home educators in the UK.

      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/simon-webb-we-must-get-tough-on-home-schooling-1764348.html

      But a 2001 study by Mike FW for The Centre for Personalised Education found that 47% follow a flexible, mixed approach to HE, 43% follow an autonomous/unschooling style, and 10% followed a structured/school at home/formal approach. The study found that learning was initiated by a mixture of both adults and children in 72% of HE families, only 17% claiming that learning was primarily initiated by the child and 11% by the adult.

      This chimes with my experience of home educators in several groups and also at various HE camps. Most home educators I've met use a mixed approach, quite often having a couple of hours of adult guided study in the morning leaving afternoons for child initiated/directed study, for instance. As I think Simon has suggested before, any selection bias in Mike's study is likely to favour the autonomous end of the spectrum since his questionnaire may have been more likely to reach autonomous educators.

      The study also found that 38% used parts of the National Curriculum whilst 62% did not use it at all, and 25% use curriculum style books frequently and 37% use them sometimes. As to timetables, 25% followed a timetable closely, 37% used a timetable flexibly and 38% not at all.

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    3. I'm not sure if it makes a difference but the autonomous/unschooling group splits down into 29% autonomous education and 14% unschooling.

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    4. oh goodness, sorry, I really didn't want to open a can of worms! Most of my experience of home educators is from real life, I don't spend much time on fora so could most certainly be wrong about how many home educators nationally are autonomous. I'd say, local to me, among those I know well, autonomous education is the norm. However, what I do think is really lacking is well written blogs like this one about the experience of structured homeschoolers. So regardless of whether there are actually a lot of structured homeschoolers, they don't seem to be represented in the blogosphere (although that could easily be my inadequate searching skills!).

      I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the Centre for Personalised Education nor the particular study you mention so I can't really comment, I'm afraid I'm a little fussy about studies and do prefer to see the methodology and where possible raw data before I decide whether to give it weight.

      Also-there is a difference between autonomy and unschooling? What is it? I'm surprised, tbh I thought unschooling was an American term whereas autonomous was the British one.

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    5. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the Centre for Personalised Education"

      http://www.personalisededucationnow.org.uk/

      "I can't really comment, I'm afraid I'm a little fussy about studies and do prefer to see the methodology and where possible raw data before I decide whether to give it weight."

      The Face of Home-based Education 1: Who, Why and How?

      http://educationalhereticspress.org.uk/shop/article_09/The-face-of-home-based-education-1%3A-Who,-why-and-how.html?shop_param=cid%3D1%26aid%3D09%26

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    6. "I don't spend much time on fora so could most certainly be wrong about how many home educators nationally are autonomous. I'd say, local to me, among those I know well, autonomous education is the norm."

      So these families allow their children complete freedom in their learning choices? I must admit I'm surprised that different areas of the country can vary so much. I've attended a few groups in two parts of the country and in both of those areas the majority used a mixed approach. For instance, literacy and numeracy may be directed by the parent whilst project work is chosen by their child. I only know a few families that allow their children complete control.

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    7. "Also-there is a difference between autonomy and unschooling? What is it?"

      I'm not sure, I only mention the split in the study because the respondents could choose between autonomous and unschooling (and several other styles). 29% chose autonomous education and 14% chose unschooling.

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  4. I am indeed the author of Unearthing London! In it I explore the folklore and mythology of prehistoric Britain and look for traces of ritual practice in the area that would later become London' the horned god, cult of the severed head and so on.

    I am actually thinking of focusing here for a while on the techniques which I used for my daughter's education. This might prove less controversial!

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    1. Bet you it won't, Simon! But I would like to know more, and, especially, how you balanced your daughter's tendency to think for herself with the need to produce approved opinion to get the grades that'll get her where she can think for itself.

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  5. How very exciting! I did read a review of Unearthing London in the paper a while back and had it in my Amazon basket. Have just ordered a couple of your books now (Unearthing London and Roman London) and am really looking forward to reading them on my next trip down there, there's nothing like reading local history while you're on the ground. I do especially love London history, the way the layers all jostle together, and my father's family has lived in London for as long as records seem to go back. And any excuse for a wander round London! My kids do love the Museum of London but we've found it quite quickly outgrown.

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  6. 'How very exciting! I did read a review of Unearthing London in the paper a while back'

    Did you, by George! Which paper was that Edith, if you don't mind my asking? Not Pagan Dawn, surely?

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  7. errrr the guardian i think. There you go http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/aug/12/londons-ancient-history

    oh its not a review, sorry, its an article. But I thought it looked great. I'm always on the look out for stuff like this (there is an extent to which home educating my kids is just a clever excuse to buy huge amounts of books and read them)

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  8. ' But I thought it looked great'

    I am glad to hear you say so, Edith. Look closely and you will see that I wrote the Guardian article myself! Always best to write about your own books, before others have a chance to get in with something unfavourable.

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    1. So my vote now is for a blog post or better still, a series, on exploring London (pref Roman and pre-Roman) history on foot...

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  9. 'Simon claimed in a 2009 newspaper article that autonomous education is the most popular method used by home educators in the UK'

    And as I have explained before, ad nauseum, I originally wrote, 'one of the most popular'. Sub editors often alter thoughtful and qualifying remarks of this sort in the interests of creating greater controversy.

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    1. You also said,

      "You say that I have no substantial grounds for believing it to be the case that autonomous education is the most popular method among British home educators. Of course, one cannot be sure. A couple of years on the HE-UK message board, EO and Herts-HE boards all tend to suggest that this is so."

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  10. It's a very strange thing, that even when I bend over backwards to make a post as innocuous and uncontroversial as humanly possible, there are those who manage to find cause for one of those endless, pointless wrangles about which I hint in my post!

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    1. Someone just quoted your newspaper article, it was you that decided that a correction was necessary!

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  11. 'So my vote now is for a blog post or better still, a series, on exploring London (pref Roman and pre-Roman) history on foot...'

    I happy to oblige and will put a few such walks up later today. I dare say that some autonomous home educator will attack me for this and claim that it will cause me to have blood on my hands, but this is a risk I shall have to take!

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  12. 'Can I sneak in here, Edith? I think there is a perception that most home educators are autonomous, but it was Simon who pointed out that there is research done by Mike Fortune Wood that shows this isn't necessarily so.'

    There is of course also the problem that some of those commenting here in the past have suggested that because an autonomously educated child can ask for formal teaching without losing her autonomy, this means that a child choosing to go to school is still being autonomously educated. This raises the possibility that an enormous number of children who look forward to and enjoy school are in fact being autonomously educated. I think it would be helpful to know whether when the people here are talking of autonomous education, they are referring only to home edcuated children.

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    1. I don't think that many school children have a genuinely free choice to attend school or not, but if they do I cannot see how they are failing to self direct their own education, the basic definition of autonomous education. But practically I think most people mean home educated children. At most it's possible that some include children who have been home educated but are currently trying school through their own choice.

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