Monday 18 March 2013

Why home education is not more popular





I sometimes used to be puzzled why more of the parents we knew didn’t just keep their kids at home, rather than sending them to school. After all, they used to moan enough about the shortcomings of the  schools! My wife and I gained a good deal of pleasure from hearing those who had been sniffiest about our decision not to send a child to school, later complaining about the fact that schools today seemed to be dreadful and their children were not thriving there. So why don’t more parents just educate their own children?  I think that there are two main reasons.

       First, there is the great confidence trick or swindle perpetrated by teachers;  that nobody but a trained professional can undertake the education of a child. This is of course a lot of nonsense. It is perfectly possible for any person of average intelligence  to teach physics, chemistry, music, acting, sport and anything else that is wanted. All that is necessary is to download the subject specification and away you go. For this reason, that particular objection holds little water.

      The real explanation for the lack of popularity of home education is economic, rather than educational. The thing which makes home education so astonishingly effective is the unlimited, one-to-one tuition which can be provided in a relaxed, domestic setting. For this to be successful, whether by means of direct teaching or purposive conversation, it is necessary to have an adult available at all times who is able to give the child his or her undivided attention. And this is where things get a little tricky.

     One of the most obvious differences between our family and those with whom we used to associate was that we were a lot poorer than everybody else we knew. No holidays abroad for us; or for that matter decent cars, new carpets, 48 inch plasma screen televisions, games consoles or any of the other trappings that many families take for granted these days. This is because in order to ensure that our daughter had one adult with her at all times, each of her parents was only working part-time. We took it in turns to spend time with her. Instead of two salaries coming into the family, there was only one. Which meant, in effect, that we had half as much money as most of the other families we knew.  As it happened, this presented no real hardship to us. As long as there was enough money for books from charity shops and the occasional weekend in Wales, we were quite happy. True, our televisions have never exceeded fourteen inches, even today, but this has not seemed too important.  

     For many families, material trappings such as new refrigerators, cars, ipads, clothes and so on, are important. The idea of an income suddenly halved is horrifying to them and so both parents must continue to work so that all these things must be paid for. This means that school becomes a kind of childminding service which enables adults to get on with the serious business of earning money. It is this which prevents most families from even considering home education as an option.
     Of course, single parents also home educate, but this creates a new set of economic difficulties. If the mother is on benefits, then the pressure from the Job Centre to find work or training  can be pretty intense from when the child is still fairly young. If the parent is not on benefits, then there is an inevitable clash between the need to earn a living and the necessity of providing a child with undivided attention whenever needed.

     The American situation is rather different from this country. There, research indicates that much home education takes place in more traditional families, where the father goes out to work, while the mother stays home and looks after the children. This is an ideal arrangement, with the children having unlimited contact with one adult  all day long. Families constituted in this way are not as common in this country as they once were and again, this is driven by economic pressures. Couples  feel that they need so much stuff these days, that one salary is just not enough to provide it all. It is only by having both parents working that the expected standard of living can be maintained. Of course, the irony is that when asked, children say that they would far rather have their parents’ attention than they would expensive holidays or new computers.

23 comments:

  1. old Webb says-My wife and I gained a good deal of pleasure from hearing those who had been sniffiest about our decision not to send a child to school, later complaining about the fact that schools today seemed to be dreadful and their children were not thriving there.

    You supported crazy old Badman ideas which would have resulted in many children being sent back to dreadful schools?

    Your right about being able to teach GCSE physics at home i did and now Peter taking A level physics at college

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  2. Totally agree about the teacher perpetrated swindle that 'only they can teach'. and the exam situation. When I took my son out at age 5 I was asked how we'd do GCSE. My answer that we weren't actually planning to sit them yet didn't go down too well.

    Now we are doing GCSE work, and it isn't any harder to tackle than anything else has been. You read the syllabus, buy the recommended book, and an answer book if they do one, and then you do the work. And after that you turn the liver you dissected into pate...

    Atb
    Anne

    (Who is slightly nervous because I'm agreeing with you again!)

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  3. Peter, didn't you only home educate little Peter because the school wouldn't give you the time off you wanted to play chess and you had a little hissy fit?

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    1. err No we where threatened with truancy prosecution by the LEA solicitor so had no choice but to home educate Peter a candidates FIDE chess master so it was a bit more than just playing the odd game of chess for fun.

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    2. Actually, this is an interesting case, because Hampshire interpreted the law eight years ago to mean that flexi-schooling was not allowed. As we have recently seen, lawyers at the Department for Education now agree with this view. Here is the mother's account of the sequence of events:

      http://www.samizdata.net/2004/12/carol-williams-on-why-she-does/

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    3. 'so had no choice but to home educate Peter '

      Not entirely true! You could of course have sent him to school full-time instead. You had a choice between sending him to school and home educating him. To suggest that you had no choice is a little strange.

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    4. your wrong Webb again Peter needed offsite chess coaching from a grandmaster which we where paying for and which the head teacher was happy with until the LEA poked its nose in! The county councilor Dr tony Ludow also agreed Peter needed this offsite education to improve his chess and he was very unhappy with LEA answers which forced us to home educate i kept all his letter he wrote agreeing with us!
      I think the LEA thought we would back down and not home educate Peter and send him back to school but they got that wrong like most thing they do

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  4. 'And after that you turn the liver you dissected into pate...'

    Ah yes, the wonders of actually doing biology for GCSE; something many schools do not bother with now, relying instead upon film clips. Liver, kidneys and hearts from the butchers, road kill squirrels and foxes, a shark's head from a fish shop, also an octopus. I remember my daughter's amazement to discover that an octopus actually has a beak, just like a parrot. There were some awkward moments when my wife found that the blender had been used to mash up worms, so that we could extract DNA. And she really put her foot down on the trip to the seaside, where I found a dead seal on the beach and wanted to bring it home to dissect...

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    1. How very unfair of her, Simon. We haven't gone that far, but we do look at the Sunday roast chicken in a new light.

      Did you do any genetics experiments? We've been cross-pollinating sweet peas for a couple of years now and are starting to see results that actually look like the text book say they should.

      Anne

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  5. 'err No we where threatened with truancy prosecution by the LEA solicitor so had no choice but to home educate Peter a candidates FIDE chess master so it was a bit more than just playing the odd game of chess for fun.'

    So you did not really want to home educate? You dis so because you were not allowed the time of that you wanted? So my first comment was correct?

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  6. no we did not want to home educate the head agreed to the off site chess coaching which we where paying for and said it was not affecting Peter at school at all when he was away from the class i kept her letter saying this! it was when LEA got involved that it went wrong LEA threaten us with court action over truancy so we home educated which worked out rather well and now Peter at college studying A level physic

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  7. Yes, and that lack of a second income can often continue after the process of home education is complete. Having such a long gap in employment history can mean it is very difficult to find work again when your children fly the nest. This is what some of my friends and I are finding right now. Being able to both work part-time and 'keep their hand in', as it were, as you did, is to be recommended.

    I would slightly disagree with your assertion that any parent of average intelligence can teach any subject to exam level. I like to think of myself as being of slightly higher than average intelligence (perhaps I am deluding myself there!) but Chemistry IGCSE was utterly beyond my comprehension. Luckily, there was an alternative for the child who wanted to study it: a group of HE kids in a study group who employed a tutor to teach it. All did well.

    The local AE mafia tell parents that all they need to do is hand the child the textbook and they will sail through the exam. This is a confidence trick equally as cruel as that of the professionals telling parents that they need their specialist assistance. Not all children can study this way. Some need some support from within, or even outside, the family for some subjects.

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    1. "The local AE mafia tell parents that all they need to do is hand the child the textbook and they will sail through the exam."

      I hope you don't generalise from you personal experience on this issue. As an autonomously educating family we have frequently made use of various teaching methods be it correspondence courses, tutors, college courses or parents teaching children by working through text books with them. If a child is left to struggle when they would prefer and need help, this is not autonomous education since the child is being coerced!

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    2. 'I hope you don't generalise from you personal experience on this issue.'

      I don't think I do. I'm not sure I understand why you think I would. How could I? Experience is experience, not law.

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    3. Glad to hear you don't tar all autonomous educators with the same brush based on your personal experiences. Not sure what the law has to do with anything though?

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    4. OK, I'll explain. I gave my personal experiences. I did not say 'because this happens in my area, I believe xyz is automatically true of all AE'ers.'

      You expressed the hope that I didn't generalise from my own experiences, for some reason. I assured you that there was no hint of that in what I said.

      I do hope that is crystal clear now.

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  8. I read the attacks home educators make on Facebook pages. They are people I want to give a very wide berth.

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    1. Can you provide any links?

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    2. Go to the Facebook page for CBeebies and read all the comments about the show "What's the big idea?" https://www.facebook.com/cbeebies?ref=ts&fref=ts

      Click on See All beside 'Posts by others' and you will see how home educators attack people.

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    3. If you want links, just take a look at this blog. It is a stellar example of attacks on home educators. Look at the posts and comments about Alison Sauer, Cheryl Moy, Hafod the Witch and Mike Fortune-Wood.

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  9. "I'm not sure I understand why you think I would. How could I?"

    I didn't think that you necessarily would; that's why I didn't say that you were doing this and just expressed the hope that you do not believe that all autonomous educators hold these views. I wanted to make the point that the views you described are not necessarily the views held by all autonomous educators, just in case anyone reading this is unfamiliar with AE. I would hate anyone to believe that AE means no formal teaching and that children are left to struggle by themselves whether they want help or not. Leaving a child to struggle when they want help is the antithesis of AE.

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  10. 'Leaving a child to struggle when they want help is the antithesis of AE'. It may well be. However, I did not say that children were wanting help. It is possible that the children were not aware of their need for help. The myth goes; Give the child the textbook and they will learn all they need to know to pass the exam. Tragically, for the children involved, they do poorly and are never entered for exams again.

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    1. So these parent's or the child made a mistake about their level of understanding. Why are you so angry about it? Parent's make mistakes every day, and many have far worse consequences. I'm sure it's not a myth thoough, since my children have taught themselves things from books without help from others, as I have too. You really think that failing an exam is a tragedy? What a strange idea about something that happens to most people at least once.

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