Tuesday 22 January 2013

The origins of Education Otherwise and a major strand of British home education

British home education may be roughly divided into two major strands. These may not inaptly be called the sensible and silly movements. Over the last week or two, we have mainly been looking at the silly movement; founded  by the sort of people who would advise their children to shoot local authority officers, rather than show them what they have been doing lately in history or mathematics. (I think Iris Harrison knows who we’re talking about here!) Many of these early and high profile home educators were associated with, or were fellow travellers of, the so-called ’Children’s Rights’ movement in the early 1970s.


Before we go any further, here is a question for modern home educators. What sort of irresponsible lunatic would say that it is fine for an eight year-old girl to have sex with a grown man? Can nobody guess? Here’s a clue, it is the same person who also thought that children should be allowed to take heroin if they wished, work in factories, vote at the age of six and drive cars at literally any age at all. I am surprised that some readers did not get the answer to this! It was of course that great ideologue and founding father of home education; John Holt.

I know that I have talked before of John Holt and his mad beliefs, but last night I re-read his masterpiece; the book in which he sets out his vision for the future of childhood. This book, Escape from Childhood, E. P. Dutton 1974, is a vision of hell. Children are working in factories and mines, rather than being educated; they are drinking alcohol and using heroin; having sex with adults as and when they feel like. This then is John Holt’s Utopia, his vision of the ideal childhood. Not going to school is only a small part of this new world that he envisages and urges us to bring into being.

John Holt was writing from the same perspective as many of those in this country who became known as militant home educators in the 1970s, the sort of people who founded Education Otherwise. I am not at all sure that those today who speak enthusiastically of John Holt really know what he was up to and the things that he believed. This is relevant to home education in this country today, because the ideas that he espoused are still going strong among some parents. We shall be looking into this in detail in future posts and trying to distinguish this type of political or ideological home educator from the more traditional ones; those whose interest in home education is purely… educational.

43 comments:

  1. 'John Holt was writing from the same perspective as many of those in this country who became known as militant home educators in the 1970s, the sort of people who founded Education Otherwise.'

    There were some very odd ideas floating around in the 1970's. Are you saying that you have evidence that the founders of EO had a paedophile 'perspective'? Who *were* the 'militant home educators in the 1970's'? Are any of them still involved in the HE movement? We obviously need to know!

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  2. 'Are you saying that you have evidence that the founders of EO had a paedophile 'perspective'? Who *were* the 'militant home educators in the 1970's'? Are any of them still involved in the HE movement? We obviously need to know!'

    No, of course I'm not suggesting that any of the founders of Education Otherwise had a paedophile perspective. I am saying that they had a 'Children's Rights' perspective. Stan Windlass, on whose farm the first meetings took place, had run a Children's Rights Centre in London. The meaning of 'Children's Rights' in the early 1970s was a little different from what we generally mean by the term today. I shall be doing a piece soon about the founder members of the organisation and how they led British home edcuation in a rather odd direction.

    'Who *were* the 'militant home educators in the 1970's'?'

    Telling children to shoot local authority officers sounds pretty militant to me...

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  3. Just trying to understand the 'major strand' phrase in the title. So....I don't know ANY families who plan on shooting LA officers, even the rude ones, and certainly no one whose children's rights ideas verge anywhere near paedophilia. I must have had a very sheltered HE journey.

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  4. 'Just trying to understand the 'major strand' phrase in the title.'

    This is not hard to understand. It refers to the fact that all the founding members of Education Otherwise were radical unschoolers. They were united in a dislike of schools, rather than a love of home education as such. This is certainly a major strand in home education in this country; parents who are angry with schools for one reason and another. Such reasons today include bullying and a perceived lack of provision for special edcuational needs. Education Otherwise was also bound up from the beginning with such things as organic gardening and alternative medicine and we see this too continuing among quite a few unschooling home educators.

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    1. Hang on, so John Holt was an organic gardener?

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  5. "What sort of irresponsible lunatic would say that it is fine for an eight year-old girl to have sex with a grown man?"

    What page number of the book is this on, please?

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  6. "Education Otherwise was also bound up from the beginning with such things as organic gardening and alternative medicine and we see this too continuing among quite a few unschooling home educators."

    Oh Lordy. So what?

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    1. Simon seems to be trying to conjure up a home educating stereotype. The Hippy.

      Well, okay, I have met one or two orange-trouser-wearing KnitYourOwnGoat types, but many more who fit completely different profiles.

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  7. There's more spin and misrepresentation in your blog posts than in the seediest tabloid. Third rate hack? You're not even that good.

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  8. 'What page number of the book is this on, please?'

    Chapter 27; The Law, the Young and Sex. Page 206 in the 1975 Pelican edition.

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  9. 'Oh Lordy. So what?'

    So somebody could not understand what I meant by a 'major strand' of British home education. I gave this as an example.

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  10. 'There's more spin and misrepresentation in your blog posts than in the seediest tabloid. Third rate hack? You're not even that good.'

    By all means give us an example of misrepresentation in today's post. There's no point mumbling about seedy tabloids; you will have to be a little more specific!

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    1. Here is an example of your misrepresentation. You go on about paedophiles and then say:

      'John Holt was writing from the same perspective as many of those in this country who became known as militant home educators in the 1970s, the sort of people who founded Education Otherwise.'

      Delete
  11. I'm reading that page of that edition and seeing no reference whatsoever to eight-year olds.

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  12. "I'm reading that page of that edition and seeing no reference whatsoever to eight-year olds. "

    Why does that so not surprise me. Simon cannot see past his confirmation bais again. Fail.

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  13. "Education Otherwise was also bound up from the beginning with such things as organic gardening and alternative medicine and we see this too continuing among quite a few unschooling home educators."

    You have just implied that about 80% of the world's population is somehow dodgy. Can you really not see how silly you are?

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  14. "By all means give us an example of misrepresentation in today's post."

    Right you are. "the sort of people who would advise their children to shoot local authority officers"

    1. You misrepresented the weapon in your previous blog post. It was an AIR rifle. Not a rifle.
    2. You misrepresent shooting at their feet with an air rifle i.e. possibly causing a stinging sensation as shooting them i.e. potentially causing death.
    3. You omit the context. From Harrison's perspective the social workers were attempting to kidnap her child. It was justifiable defence from her view.

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  15. '"I'm reading that page of that edition and seeing no reference whatsoever to eight-year olds. "

    Why does that so not surprise me. Simon cannot see past his confirmation bais again. Fail.'



    You really must get into the habit of reading complete books, rather than just skimming. John Holt's thesis is that all children should be full citizens with complete adult rights from birth. He says on page 120, 'I think that a six year-old who wants to vote ought to be able to vote."

    With citizenship would go the full range of adult rights, including unrestricted sex lives. On page 208 of the edition at which you are looking, you will see that Holt says, 'Some people have voiced to me the fear that if it were legal for an adult to have sex with a consenting child, many young people would be exploited by unscrupulous older ones.' He dismisses this fear a few lines later as, 'the remains of old myths'. He makes it perfectly clear that he sees nothing wrong with sex between children of any age and adults. I gave the age of eight to be fair to Holt. In fact, since he believes that citizenship and voting can begin at literally any age, even two or three, then sexual activity of such citizens should also be unregualted.

    Holt feels that if contraception were freely available, then, 'at least this reason for thinking that we have to protect inexperienced young girls from the perils of sex would no longer have weight.'

    As you can see, the case is even worse than an eight year-old having sex with an adult! Holt thinks that six year-olds are old enough to vote and so should be able to have sex with anybody. He thinks that all laws regarding sexual activity of any sort should be abolished. The phrase, 'a consenting child' in the context of sex, really says it all. Hands up any reader who feels that a six year-old can, in any meaningful way, consent to sex with an adult. I suggest you read the book, then we can discuss it in detail.

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  16. 'You have just implied that about 80% of the world's population is somehow dodgy. Can you really not see how silly you are? '

    I have implied nothing of the kind. Some people in this country are enthusiasts for organic farming or alternative medicine. They are a minority. Who said that this was dodgy?

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  17. 1. You misrepresented the weapon in your previous blog post. It was an AIR rifle. Not a rifle.
    2. You misrepresent shooting at their feet with an air rifle i.e. possibly causing a stinging sensation as shooting them i.e. potentially causing death.
    3. You omit the context. From Harrison's perspective the social workers were attempting to kidnap her child. It was justifiable defence from her view.

    A rifle is a weapon that has a grooved internal barrel to make the bullet spin; thus increasing accuracy. An air rifle is a rifle.

    Shooting an air rifle at somebody's feet can cause serious injury. This was a muddy farm; the risk of infection from a wound is high under such circumstances. A .22 lead slug can also ricochet upwards and hit somebody's eye with sufficent force to cause blindness. Firing any sort of rifle in the direction of anybody is criminally negligent. Instructing children to do this is not the mark of a responsible parent.

    What social workers? Iris Harrison was specifically worried about people from her local education authority who might visit to enquire about the education being provided. Why on earth would they kidnap the children? This is absurd. Have you actually read the diary that she submitted in evidence to the court? Now, you were talking about misrepresentation...

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  18. I put myself in the bracket of people he dismisses at the bottom of the page, because I suspect that a real interest in sex comes from the hormones that arise at puberty. Am no expert, but it makes sense to me. Teenagers often have sex with each other: the bulk of Holt's argument seems to be advocating a decriminalisation of this. He doesn't dwell (it seems to me) on the sexual activities of young children.

    The entire book is almost painfully preoccupied by the principle of respecting children's wishes and preferences, not of violating these. By implying otherwise I think you're twisting it to mean something it doesn't.

    I do not approve of sex between adults and children and would consider this to be abusive of the child, definitely involving coercion. Holt's entire argument, always, is anti-coercion.

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  19. 'I do not approve of sex between adults and children and would consider this to be abusive of the child, definitely involving coercion. Holt's entire argument, always, is anti-coercion. '

    Does this mean that if there were no coercion, that you, like Holt, would be OK with a six year-old girl in bed with a middle aged man? Holt says that those who object to this scenario are the victms of old myths about childhood innocence. Surely this cannot be a common belief among admirers of his ideology?

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  20. "Does this mean that if there were no coercion, that you, like Holt, would be OK with a six year-old girl in bed with a middle aged man?"

    No, and I can't tell you when I stopped beating my wife, either!

    I can think of no circumstance in which a sex act between a young, prepubescent child and an adult wouldn't involve some degree of coercion of the child.

    I disagree with Holt about childhood innocence.

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  21. Still on the subject of John Holt, on page 207 he talks of children having sexual feelings. He says adults refuse to ackonowlege this because, 'pretending they have no sexual feeling makes it easier for us to ignore or deny the sexual part of their attraction for us'. Do many people here find that that part of the attractiveness of children is sexual?

    It makes one a little queasy after reading this to see what Holt says on page 82 of Escape From Childhood. He talks of 'a six year-old friend of mine' who 'nestled herself in a comfortable position against me'. There is something more than a little odd about a man of fifty who talks of having 'six year-old friends'.

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  22. 'I can think of no circumstance in which a sex act between a young, prepubescent child and an adult wouldn't involve some degree of coercion of the child. '

    What a mercy, I was beginning to think that I was the only one who saw something amiss here!

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  23. He goes on to say, on page 207: "It would never occur to us to use them, or them to use us, as sex objects."

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  24. "Does this mean that if there were no coercion, that you, like Holt, would be OK with a six year-old girl in bed with a middle aged man?"

    I cannot conceive of the scenario where this would occur without coercion unless the man is her father? Healthy, uncoerced youngsters simply do NOT voluntarily get into bed with adults or have sexual relationships with anyone. If you think they do then you haven't met any.

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  25. ""'I can think of no circumstance in which a sex act between a young, prepubescent child and an adult wouldn't involve some degree of coercion of the child. '

    What a mercy, I was beginning to think that I was the only one who saw something amiss here!"

    I think you just went round in ever decreasing circles and disappeared up your own rear end. No? Still here? Alas, we live in hope.

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  26. 'I think you just went round in ever decreasing circles and disappeared up your own rear end. No? Still here? Alas, we live in hope.'

    Presumably somebody unable to follow a debate about ideology and, feeling left out, decides to resort to playground vulgarity. It's not funny and it's not clever!


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  27. 'Healthy, uncoerced youngsters simply do NOT voluntarily get into bed with adults or have sexual relationships with anyone. If you think they do then you haven't met any.'

    I agree entirely. Which is why I found Holt's talk of 'consenting children' a little disturbing. It is a contradiction in terms in this context.

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  28. I think he's definitely breaking boundaries, some of which have been placed there for good reasons. But when he was writing in 1974 the effects of hormones on sexual activity and awareness might not have been well understood, perhaps.

    If you read his thinking on this in context with the anti-coercion message of the rest of the book, you can see that he's obviously not advocating child sex abuse.

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  29. 'you can see that he's obviously not advocating child sex abuse. '

    He thinks that he isn't, but when you talk of children consenting to sex, that is what you are doing. If, as he suggested, children become full citizens from birth and can vote at literally any age, you are on a sticky wicket to begin with. Combine this with his idea that there should be no laws at all governing sexual activity between citizens, either between children and other children or between children and adults, then you have a recipe for disaster. I say nothing of his ideas that we should let children drive cars if they wish or smoke cannabis!

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  30. Yes, reasonably applied his principles of non-coercion can provide wonderful childhoods, but I would never give drugs or a car to a child! Then again, I think there are issues with context - both of his ideas taken as a whole, and with the time he was writing compared to now.

    There is obviously a sensible balance to be struck, and children are very much the products of their environments. So if their environments are healthy and non-toxic, then power struggles about such as the smoking of cannabis, just don't occur and there's still no coercion required.



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  31. 'Here is an example of your misrepresentation. You go on about paedophiles and then say:

    'John Holt was writing from the same perspective as many of those in this country who became known as militant home educators in the 1970s, the sort of people who founded Education Otherwise.'

    I did not go on about, nor even mention, paedophiles. I explained Holt's bizarre views on children's rights and said that this perspective was shared by the people who founded Education Otherwise. This is true. I shall be exploring this theme in the coming weeks.

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  32. 'Simon seems to be trying to conjure up a home educating stereotype. The Hippy.

    Well, okay, I have met one or two orange-trouser-wearing KnitYourOwnGoat types, but many more who fit completely different profiles.'

    I am talking about the roots of the home education movement in this country, which lie in the Alternative Society and Counter-culture of the early 1970s. Some threads from this have lingered on.

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  33. 'I am talking about the roots of the home education movement in this country, which lie in the Alternative Society and Counter-culture of the early 1970s. Some threads from this have lingered on.'

    Pointless discussion. No one who was home educating in the early 70's is still doing so. 40 years later and HE is far more disparate than you are trying to present. You write as though you have a good grasp of the HE community in this country. Every post you write demonstrates clearly that you don't.

    It would be sad if anyone reading here got the impression that you are knowledgable about this subject. Reading the a few blogs and one or two email lists is no substitute for experience of actual people and relationships.

    T

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  34. 'Pointless discussion. No one who was home educating in the early 70's is still doing so'

    True, but by looking at what went wrong, we can see how we reached the present situation. I take it that you were not, like me, actually involved in home education at that time?

    'It would be sad if anyone reading here got the impression that you are knowledgable about this subject. Reading the a few blogs and one or two email lists is no substitute for experience of actual people and relationships.'

    Fairly typical piece of nonsense, designed to try and discredit what I am saying by spreading falsehoods about me. I have been involved in home education, one way or another, for over forty years; long before there were such things as blogs or email lists. For twenty two years I worked as an independent advocate for parents of children with special educational needs in the London boroughs of Hackney, Haringey and Tower Hamlets. This entailed helping parents who wished to educate their children at home. I know many home educators in real life, apart from through my work. These do not tend to belong to internet groups. I have also written an academic book on this subject, Elective Home Education in the UK, Trentham Books 2010, and given evidence to a parliamentary select committee on home education. Oh yes, I almost forgot! I was a home educator myself, part-time for 1995-1998 and then fulltime unti 2009. Does this sound as though my experience of home education has really been limited to 'Reading a few blogs and one or two email lists'? Perhaps you would like to outline your own experience in this field?





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  35. "I worked as an independent advocate for parents of children with special educational needs in the London boroughs of Hackney, Haringey and Tower Hamlets."

    Was this voluntary, or funded? If funded, who paid you?

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  36. '"I worked as an independent advocate for parents of children with special educational needs in the London boroughs of Hackney, Haringey and Tower Hamlets."

    Was this voluntary, or funded? If funded, who paid you?'

    I was the head of an independent, registered charity which was partly funded by the London Councils body and partly by people like the Lloyds TSB Bank. I was not a popular figure with local authorities, as my work consisted mainly of persuading them either to provide a decent education for children with special educational needs or not to harass parents who decided to wtihdraw their kids from school.


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  37. Unfortunately I haven't been able to read John Holt's Escape From Childhood yet, but thought others might find this Amazon review interesting. The reviewer reach completely different conclusions to Simon's on the peadophile issue.

    "When I first heard of John Holt I was given a quotation and a comment. The quotation was from 'Escape from Childhood' page 1: "I propose...that the rights, privileges, duties of adult citizens be made available to any young person, of whatever age, who wants to make use of them." The accompanying comment was that Holt's work can be taken as a charter for paedophiles. I disagree. Unless I missed something fundamental I found Holt a progressive thinker who argued for the removal of the taboos which led young peole into sexual ignorance and often tragic experimentation. He was ahead of his time. Nowadays we're all aware of the importance of sexual education for the young. Twenty years ago such thinking was anathemna to many, though not Mr Holt. More generally this book is a first class discussion of rights and responsibilities, and it will offer anyone a useful light with which they can explore this academic minefield further. For Holt the escape from childhood is as much about acknowledging the responsibilities of the young as it is about acknowledging their rights. As he says, "If we gave up our vested interest in children's dependency and incompetence - would they not much more quickly become independent and competent? We ought to give it a try." He could be right. The 190 (out of 192) countries who have signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child should all listen up and read."

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