An amusing anecdote about home education

As regular readers might know, I am the author of many books and have a good deal to do with various publishers. From time to time, I am invited, for a fee, to give my expert opinion about some manuscript or proposal that is being offered to a publisher. Expert, you ask? Expert in what, precisely? Well, archeo-mythology for one subject, social history in general and of course home education. And thereby hangs a tail…

A few days ago, I was approached by one of the largest international publishers of academic work and asked to prepare a report on a proposal which they had received. This was to be a book about home education. This is not the first time that I have been asked to do this; I am regarded by many as one of the leading experts in this country on home education. This time, the manuscript that was being offered was by somebody whose name would be instantly recognised by most home educators, an academic who has conducted some research into home edcuation. The funny thing was of course that I would have been the very last person in the entire universe that this particular person would have wanted to be offering an expert view about the proposed work.  The person in question had only his or herself to blame for this.

When you are touting round a non-fiction book to publishers, it is done by means of a proposal which you must prepare. You describe the book, say who might buy it and also compare your proposed book with other similar works on the market. This is where both the person who is trying to sell the book on which I reported this week and also the author of a previous book on home education, upon which I was also asked to comment some months ago fell down.  You see, both hopeful authors could not help being very unpleasant and uncomplimentary about my book on the subject. Both were flattering about Mike Fortune-Wood and Alan Thomas, and both were scathing about what I had written. Big mistake! This virtually guaranteed me the job of reviewing their proposals. The reason is simple.

If you  are a publisher and want somebody to point out potential shortcomings and errors in a manuscript, then there is no point at all asking chums of the author about it. In the present case, this author had mentioned various people by their Christian names; Jan, Mike, Alan and so on. When it came to my book, it was a case of Mr Webb, followed by a swift hatchet job. Obviously, the publisher came to me and asked me what I thought about the work of this academic. I am ideally placed to tell them the things that his or her friends would not.

I have to say that there was something so exquisitely funny about the idea of my writing a report on this person’s proposal, that I felt that I simply had to share it.

Home educated children and the 'broad and balanced curriculum'

Regular readers will know that I am something of a connoisseur of hypocrisy among home educators. Not that I believe there to be more hypocrisy among them than the general population, but rather that some of the more prominent among them tend to be very po-faced and sanctimonious and so the hypocrisy is all the more entertaining.


A few days ago on the television news, Robert Goddard of ATL, a teaching union, said this:



`All evidence suggests that whilst some young people that are home educated do get a broad and balanced curriculum, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that quite a few of them don't. We feel that registration and monitoring of that provision will help towards all young people getting those skills and knowledge that they need to excel in life’



Inevitably, some home educators promptly went mad and accused him of a ‘slur’ against home educating parents. What evidence did he have that quite a few home educated children were not getting a broad and balanced curriculum?

Well of course, anybody who took part in the Graham Badman enquiry and the associated fuss will know full well that an awful lot of home educators were and are bitterly opposed to giving their children a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’. They have a visceral dislike of any curriculum; especially one which is broad and balanced. The concept of broad and balanced curriculum was regularly denounced on home educating blogs, forums and lists as a coercive tool, one which right-thinking home educators should reject. Here are Alan Thomas and Harriet Patterson explaining why they don’t think it is necessary for home educated children. See section 5 of the following:



http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/memo/elehomed/me1602.htm




Last year, the Department for Education website said this about home education:



'parents do not have to follow the National Curriculum. However, parents should deliver a broad and balanced curriculum'


This caused such anger among many home educators that Fiona Nicholson got together with Ian Dowty to try and make them remove it. The very idea, that home educating parents should be delivering a broad and balanced curriculum! It was outrageous!

And so a few years down the line, after having fought vociferously for their right not to provide their children with a broad and balanced curriculum, somebody from one of the teaching unions notices this and remarks upon it. He is at once attacked. How dare he suggest that quite a few home educated children are not receiving a broad and balanced curriculum? Why, it is a thing beloved of home educators, all of whom do their very best to ensure that their children receive such a curriculum.

This is such a monumentally awful piece of barefaced hypocrisy, that it goes straight into the Simon Webb Hall of Hypocrisy Fame. Indeed, I think that it will be a strong contender for the Seth Pecksniff Memorial Prize for Arrant Hypocrisy. Seriously, has anybody ever heard a better example of the doublethink which goes on in the world of British home education?