Silencing other views

I was fascinated to watch the reaction among some well-known home educators to my daughter's heterodox views on home education, as expressed in the Guardian recently. Now you must remember that these are people who contrive to give the impression that they are fighting to protect home educated children from the oppressive power of the state. One might have thought that they would be pleased to hear the views of a genuine home educated young person; one who had never spent a single day in school. Not a bit of it! To appreciate this fully, you have to realise that I am not talking about a few random strangers, but people who are very well known in the world of British home education; they run groups, write blogs, send letters to the papers, make Freedom of Information requests to the Department of Education, submit evidence to select committees, that sort of thing. I shall not name them because this seems to irritate people; I am accused of 'naming and shaming'. However, the guilty may look into their own hearts!

As many realise, the opposition to any increased regulation of home education in this country is often coordinated via Internet lists and also by communicating on twitter. It was on twitter that some really awful opinions were being expressed, opinions which provided a window into the true nature of some of these staunchest advocates of the right of children to have their opinions respected. One woman made a sleazy and misogynistic joke about my daughter, a play on words about 'Balls' and called her a 'little tart'. My daughter responded vigorously, pointing out the sexism inherent in this remark. This prompted another home educating mother to describe my daughter and me as 'a pair of c**ts'. What an extraordinary thing for a home educating mother to say of a sixteen year old home educated girl who had expressed an opinion about home education! The tweeter who had called her a tart agreed with this description. Then began a series of exchanges between six prominent home educators in which she was variously called 'a sad little troll' and an 'attention seeker'. (This last was a bit rich, coming from a woman whom it is impossible to avoid tripping over in the comments section of any online article on home education!) There followed doubts being expressed as to whether she really is sixteen or was even home educated.

Two things strike one about all this. The first is that almost all the stuff posted on the Internet about home education is by parents. Parents who claim to be speaking on behalf of their children, it is true, but parents never the less. All the comments posted on Ed Balls' article in the Guardian last week were adults; nearly all seemed to be parents. My daughter was the only home educated young person to say anything there. One gets the distinct impression that most of the parents there would rather keep the whole home education debate in their own hands, without home educated children and young people muddying the waters by expressing their own views on the matter! As soon as a real home educated youth pops up to say something, she is dismissed as a 'cunt', 'little tart', 'sad little troll' and 'attention seeker'. This, I think, says a great deal about how these people really view children and young people, even home educated ones.

The second thing which occurs to me is this. I have regularly been mocked by some home educators for being a lone voice; the 'only' home educator who agreed with Badman. Where are all the other home educating parents who feel as you do, I have been asked rhetorically. Well I think that quite a few of them keep well clear of the established home education scene in this country because they know that there are some pretty unpleasant types to be found there. A year or two ago there were a few people on some of the Internet lists who had varying opinions to most of those who post there. All have gone now. Some were made to feel unwelcome, others were bullied and driven off by some of the same parents who were being so abusive on twitter recently. Parents who join these lists soon learn that if they do not go along with the majority view, then they are liable to be ostracised and incur disapproval. A similar thing happens at some home education groups. I had an email recently from somebody who posts here from time to time. She has been frozen out of her local group because she told everybody that she hoped that her seven year old son would be taking examinations in a few years. Since these parents are often facing negativity from those who send their children to school, the prospect of also being frowned upon by fellow home educators is sometimes too much. I also know this to be true, because when I posted on HE-UK, I would not infrequently receive private emails from folk who agreed with me but did not like to say so publicly for fear of the reaction. Perhaps we need to remember what John Stuart Mill said about the 'Tyranny of the Majority'.

I hasten to add that my daughter is well able to stand up for herself and in fact her response was as forcefully expressed as anything I could have said myself. It has given me food for thought though. Ian Dowty recently suggested that home educators might consider compromising to the extent of agreeing at least with registration. Up went the predictable cry of 'No surrender'. One would get the impression that home educators were completely united in not giving an inch on this question. And yet, as I have mentioned before, when opinions were collected anonymously as responses to the Badman review, a third of home educating parents were in favour of registration. The reason that these parents are not speaking out publicly is almost certainly because they do not want to be abused and insulted by some of the more gung ho members of the home educating community. We have seen what happens when even a young girl from a home educating family says publicly that she agrees with this idea; one shudders to think what these characters would say to a mother or father who dared to speak out like that!

The Autonomous Mafia - the tail that wags the dog

Whenever anybody is quoted in the newspapers as criticising or even questioning the efficacy of home education, you may be sure that the comments section of online editions and the letters page in the traditional edition will be filled with denunciations of the ignorance/malice/vested interests/ stupidity/cupidity/ sinister motives of whoever has expressed the opinion. Wow, it surely look as though public opinion is solidly in favour of home education. Vox populi, vox Dei! Welcome to the startlingly well organised agitprop section of the autonomous home educators
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Those who, like the present writer, hang out on the message boards of EO and HE-UK will of course be well aware that there are perhaps only two or three dozen regulars, those who contribute day after day. If we assume that there are fifty or sixty thousand home educated children in this country, then there might be somewhere in the region of eighty thousand parents. Those stalwarts of the HE lists thus represent fewer than 0.05 % of home educators. Taking a closer look at those who swamp the comments sections when articles on home education appear in the media reveals a most curious thing; they are largely those same people who are such indefatigable contributors to the message boards. (When these people find time actually to educate their children is a mystery to me! They post at two or three in the morning and then again at five AM. Some of them are online all day long as well.)

The same hard core are also the ones who organise petitions, lobby MPs, and generally behave as though they are a mass movement rather than a small group of dedicated activists. Another of their important roles is to patrol the message boards and put in their place anybody who doubts that the Badman Report is all bad, that local authority officers are agents of the Prince of Darkness or that autonomous education might not be the best way of doing things. I have had many emails offlist from people on these message boards who like to keep in touch with home education by belonging to this online community, but who do not post because of the responses that they have had in the past. Many of them agree with things that I have said on the lists, but do not wish to say so publicly for fear of the reaction. For example, more than one person has told me that they would not dare reveal on the HE-UK message board that they are actually teaching their children to read. This is, to say the least of it, a strange state of affairs to find in a support group for those who are educating their children!

I am not of course an entirely impartial observer of these shenanigans. When I had a couple of articles published on the subject a few weeks ago, the response from the autonomous activists was swift and ruthless. It demonstrates clearly how these characters operate. Here is somebody cross posting on EO and HE-UK , urging others to help skew the comments section of the TES against the Badman report;

" What about lots of comments that support Jeremy but ignore Simon.And don't forget to vote in the poll."

After a few people had expressed qualified support for my views, the same person posted again on the lists;

"Couple of less supportive comments on there now, even a nothing to fearnothing to hide one! Anyone got the energy to slam em."

"Slam em'". Nice, eh? One would, by the way, hardly guess that she was married to a professor. This same process happens every time a newspaper publishes anything on home education. It is often combined with smears and innuendo against those who are less than whole heartedly in favour of home education, particularly the autonomous variety. Graham Badman himself has been the subject of death threats and while nothing as unpleasant has happened to me, I have certainly had many lies told about me in an attempt to discredit my views. For example the same person who posted the above comments also tried to start a rumour that I was actually a home education inspector!;

http://twitter.com/Maire52/status/3123694250

The mad idea that I am a friend or colleague of Graham Badman is still doing the rounds in cyberspace; a ludicrous fabrication which was first cooked up on the HE-UK list and then deliberately peddled as fact to newspaper editors. Of course I am not alone in this. When Professor Alan Smithers, a liberal and humane educationalist from Buckingham University, expressed reservations in the press about autonomous home education, he received emails branding him a fascist!

In fairness to these individuals , I believe that they honestly see themselves as the vanguard of the home educating movement, providing a voice for those too idle or inarticulate to speak out for themselves. That is certainly one way of looking at it. The other possibility is that they are a handful of strident and media savvy fanatics who are determined to impose their view upon others by any means at their disposal. For now at least the jury is still out on the question of precisely whose views and opinions the likes of firebird2110, bornjoyful and Maire52 are actually representing other than their own.