Friday 29 November 2013

Another popular myth among home educators



I was hoping today  to continue looking at the concerns of local authorities, with regard to home education. However, I think that I should first deal with one or two points which have come up elsewhere. The first of these was a comment on this blog a few days ago, the relevant part of which refers to home education;

 30 odd years ago....back in the age where EVERYONE had visits

This is based upon a common misconception; that local authorities in the 1970s and 1980s were constantly chasing home educators and insisting that they had visits at home. This is of course absolutely false and is an old wives’ tale spread by people like Mike Fortune-Wood.  He was at it again today, propagating another ancient myth; this time about Joy Baker. He says:

Joy home educated back in 1960 and went to hell and back to gain the right.
…She is regarded as a pioneer of home education and alongside such people as
Jean Harrison who also fought for the right.  What Joy did is immensely important to home educators today.

Two things strike one about this sort of nonsense. The first is that if Joy Baker really did go to hell and back; it was largely because she chose to do so. There seems to be a widespread belief that Norfolk LEA pursued her during the 1950s because they were opposed to home education and that she stood up to them heroically; thus establishing the legality of home education. This is completely untrue. There were other home educators at that time, people whose names have been forgotten now. They were not taken to court for home educating. What was special about Joy Baker?

In 1952, Norfolk LEA realised that Joy Baker’s seven year-old son was not attending school. They wrote to her and asked if she could let them know a little about the education that she was providing for the child. Any normal person would at this point have reassured the LEA, by giving them some information and explaining what was being done. Mrs Baker decided that she was not going to tell them anything at all. Her attitude was that they should assume that the children were receiving an education, unless the LEA had grounds to think that she was lying. This is a pretty idiotic line to take. She could have avoided all the years of trouble which followed. Other letters followed and still Joy Baker resolutely refused to tell Norfolk LEA about the education that she was providing. The council bent over backwards to avoid taking legal action. They wrote, they sent people round in person; but still Mrs Baker refused to give any information at all about what she was doing. In the end, the LEA lost patience and issued a School Attendance Order. It really needn’t have come to that. 

One can have some sympathy with the local authority in this case, because the girls in particular probably were not receiving a decent education. Mrs Baker thought that girls didn’t need as good an education as boys, because they would only go on to become  housewives. Their education was a good  deal more restricted than that provided to her eldest son.

The second point is that Mike Fortune-Wood  talks of people gaining the ‘right’. Whose rights is he referring to here? Why, the rights of the adults of course! Not a thought for the rights of Joy Baker’s daughters to an education as good as that being provided for the boys! No, the important rights here are those of the adult. Terrible attitude.

Having disposed of this popular misunderstanding, I hope over the weekend to continue looking at the situation today.

12 comments:

  1. Simon wrote,
    "There seems to be a widespread belief that Norfolk LEA pursued her during the 1950s because they were opposed to home education and that she stood up to them heroically; thus establishing the legality of home education. This is completely untrue."

    How strange. I wonder how Mike gained that mistaken idea. I wonder if he's another person who has been your blog for information?

    You wrote (about a year ago),
    "Take the 1944 Education Act, for example. Today, we think that this plainly provides for the home education of children by their parents, but for the first fifteen or twenty years after it was passed, this was not at all how it seemed to people. That favourite part, beloved of home educators, ‘by regular attendance at school or otherwise’, was generally thought to refer to the provision of teaching by a tutor or governess. It wasn’t until cases like that of Joy Baker that the courts finally agreed that it could also mean parents themselves."

    And previously Simon wrote,
    " for years these same words were taken by local education authorities as meaning precisely the opposite; in other words that they meant that parents could not teach their own children at home. It was not until people like Joy Baker challenged the Act in the courts that this interpretation by local authorities was ruled to be wrong."

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    1. been *reading* your

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    2. Indeed yes! It is quite true that I was one of the mugs taken in by this nonsense. I certainly did take the accounts of this case at face value and not bother to delve any deeper. Of course, when one sees that Joy Baker's own mother deregistered her in the 1930s without any trouble at all with the local authority, the whole thing begins to look a little odd. The letters that Norfolk wrote were perfectly reasonable and there were other home educating families in the area at the time, who did not have visits. We should never shrink from changing our opinions when new evidence emerges and i have posted links here before to archive footage of Joy Baker herself being interviews. I take it that you agree that Mrs Baker was largely the architect of her own misfortunes?

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    3. "I take it that you agree that Mrs Baker was largely the architect of her own misfortunes?"

      If you describe her actions accurately, that she refused to provide any information about her provision, then this would simply be a repeat of the Phillips v. Brown case. I find that difficult to believe since this would obviated the Phillip's case; precedent would already have been set by the Baker case, yet the Phillips case is seen as setting precedence for the right of the LA to make informal enquiries. I was under the impression that the type of education was disputed in the Baker case. The LA did not believe and AE education could be considered suitable. I shall have to try and get hold of a copy of her book.

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    4. 'I shall have to try and get hold of a copy of her book.'

      Educational Heretics Press, £7.99 or Gill Kilner has an email copy that she can email you.

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  2. Simon wrote,
    "Mrs Baker thought that girls didn’t need as good an education as boys, because they would only go on to become housewives. Their education was a good deal more restricted than that provided to her eldest son."

    It might be argued that attitudes were different in the 1950s and that this sort of view about the inferior education which would be sufficient for girls was not uncommon in those days.

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  3. 'It might be argued that attitudes were different in the 1950s and that this sort of view about the inferior education which would be sufficient for girls was not uncommon in those days.'

    Interesting point. It is true that in the 1950s, girls were often guided towards different careers than boys; nursing and secretarial work, rather than engineering and science. There were also differences in the secondary curriculum; domestic science instead of metalwork, say. The primary curriculum was identical for both, though. Joy Baker simply did not think that her daughters needed to learn anything other than housework, which would prepare them for marriage. This attitude did not go down well with Norfolk LEA.

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    1. You appear to be suggesting that Joy Baker did not cover the primary curriculum with her girls. Since this is largely basic literacy and numeracy, both of which would be useful for a housewife, I find this difficult to believe. Especially as the court eventually found in her favour and determined that she was providing a suitable education.

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    2. 'You appear to be suggesting that Joy Baker did not cover the primary curriculum with her girls. '

      Tricky to know whether she was covering any sort of curriculum! I have never been able to figure this out. What is certain is that she hoped for her son to have a career and for her daughters to get married and stay at home. Expectations of this sort can colour every aspect of an education.

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    3. So your suggestion that Joy Baker's girls studied a completely different primary curriculum to her boys, unlike schools at the time, is based purely on Baker's preference for her girls to become housewives rather than evidence of her provision (as she obviously eventually provided in the court case or else the court would not have found in her favour). Presumably part of the task of a housewife in Joy Baker's eyes would be the ability to educate any male children. So wouldn't her girls at least need that knowledge to teach their sons if not for use in a career?

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  4. Where did you get the information you mention about Joy Baker?

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  5. Some came from her book. If you search on google, you can find clips of interviews with her from 1960.

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