Mr Williams of Hampshire explains how to avoid legal problems with your local authority

Peter Williams has been explaining to readers here how letting in an official from the local authority can create legal problems at a later stage. He says:

The LA officer will be judging your home is it tidy to his standard and if he believes the education is not good enough he can then go on to cause you a lot of problems because his report about you will be used in a court of law to attempt to prove the education your giving your child is not up to standard once stuff is writing down by an LA officer it is almost impossible to get it changed.

Well, that seems quite plain. To avoid any legal action, just refuse to let the local authority officer in the house in the first place. Oh, wait a minute. let's look at this:

Oh so that's how you avoided legal problems with your local authority so successfully, Mr Williams! I'm sure that other readers will be grateful for your hints on this subject.

The one-trick ponies of home education

Regular readers will, I am sure, be familiar with Mr Peter Williams of Alton in Hampshire. He frequently comments here and is apparently obsessed by the fact that his son is not receiving a good education at home, but would be better off at an independent school like Eton. Mr Williams belongs to a small subset of home educators, who wish their children to develop one particular skill to the exclusion of all else; in his case, chess.

I say that this is a subset of home educators, but in fact it was once the only type of home educator of which anybody seemed to hear; people like Harry Lawrence and Laszlo Polgar, determined that their children will be the best in the world at something. Whether it is mathematics, chess, piano playing, singing or tennis; these children must be the best in the world. I have remarked several times before that it is always fathers who seem to be at the back of this type of home education, but today I want to focus upon whether this sort of thing is good for the children themselves.

The great problem with being brought up to be better than anybody else at something is that if you spend all the time with your family and don't attend school, then you may come to believe this to be true, even if it is really no more than an ambition or delusion of your father. The shock of discovering the truth, that there are many better musicians, mathematicians or chess players than you, can be profound. Once in awhile, this kind of enterprise pays off. We have seen it with the Williams sisters, who are the best at what their father taught them. We almost saw it with Judit Polgar, but not quite. In most other cases, it does not turn out that the child being raised like this is anything special. This is where the process can be traumatic. For years, a child has been told by her father that she is brilliant and special, that she will be world famous at whatever it is that the father has chosen for her. Every aspect of life is geared towards the realisation of the father's ambitions and the child herself becomes no more than an extension of the father's own thwarted hopes for his life. Sooner or later the realisation dawns for the child. First, she has sacrificed many of the ordinary pleasures of childhood for the sake of somebody else's goal and secondly, she it has all been in vain because she is not the world's best singer, mathematician or chess player at all. This often leads to an estrangement from the pushy father, coupled with a crisis of identity. If the child is not the world champion whom she believed herself to be; then who is she?

We do not hear of most cases of this sort. The ones of which we generally do hear are people like the Williams sisters, who are the best, or those like Ruth Lawrence, who showed great early promise and went to Oxford at a very early age. For every such case, there are many other children who are coached and pushed by their parents to the exclusion of all else in the search for perfection at the field chosen by their parents. There are psychological dangers in this type of home education, but there are ethical considerations too. Ruth Lawrence was not allowed to associate with children, because this would waste her time. All children who are being groomed for stardom in this way, inevitably miss out on many aspects of childhood. These are often things which however successful they might be in later life, are irreplaceable. The chance to become engrossed in other hobbies apart from the important passion of their fathers. Being able to spend a summer not practising tennis or chess, or even taking up something quite different and focusing their energies on that instead.

I have always been fascinated by this particular strand of home education and I have to say that although to most home educators this kind of thing is seen as very unusual; for the man in the street, it is what home education is all about. They have all heard of the Williams sisters or Ruth Lawrence and the popular perception of home education is largely defined by mad fathers pushing their kids on to become champions! Do any readers know of this sort of thing in real life, apart of course from Peter Williams? I would be curious to hear of modern examples of this practice and to know in what field the kids are being trained.

A sad, but not unfamiliar, story

I watched the Channel 4 programme Child Genius on Thursday. As I am sure readers know, it featured somebody who comments regularly here, Mr Williams of Alton. I found the section dealing with his son quite depressing. The reason for this is that the situation with young Peter, who is fourteen, is very familiar to me. There are countless thousands of young people in the same position, although most of them are at school rather than being home educated. Let me explain.

All secondary school teachers have teenagers in their class who are not at all interested in studying for GCSEs. This is often because these pupils will not need GCSEs in their chosen career. They are going to be singers/footballers/DJs/models/dancers/actresses and so formal qualifications will not matter to them. They say, 'What good will knowing about Shakespeare be, Miss? I'm going to be on the stage/in the movies/on the football pitch'. The result is that they neglect their GCSEs, typically leave school with few or no qualifications and then end up wholly reliant upon state benefits. Because for every ten thousand teenagers who know in their heart that they can make it as athletes, pop stars, footballers or DJs, only one or two will actually get there and make a career of it. The rest will have to get jobs and earn a mundane living like the rest of us. The only problem is that they will in many cases have handicapped themselves by not securing any qualifications. This makes it far harder for them to get jobs and a lot of them will remain on the dole.

As I say, this is not really a home education problem, although I observe that quite a few home educating parents seem to go along with this sort of idea; that their children are very talented and will not need the GCSEs that all the boring masses are working for. For home educators, the children's goals are more likely to be computer programmers, novelists or chess champions. The end result is likely to be the same as it is for schoolchildren aspiring to be pop stars or models though; another NEET to add to the statistics.

This problem is not restricted to any particular class and, as I say, is probably even more common among schoolchildren than it is with those who are being educated at home. A career in musical theatre seems to be a popular ambition with middle class children at the moment. We have four friends whose children are aiming for this. They know that a glittering future awaits them on the West End stage! The outlook for these kids is not great. My wife works with young people in their early twenties, many of whom have no qualifications and are living in a half-way house while awaiting a council flat. She cannot get them interested in training courses or enrolling at college. This is because they are still waiting for the big break which will launch them into stardom on the catwalk or as DJs. Why would they want to brush up on their maths skills?

And so to fourteen year old Peter Williams. He hopes to be a chess champion some day. It seems fairly plain that there is no question of his doing any formal academic work or studying for GCSEs. Why would he? Once he is world chess champion, there will be no need for such things! The tragedy comes eventually for all but a handful of those hundreds of thousands of children who have dedicated themselves to making it big in sport, entertainment or chess. They find that they have devoted their lives single-mindedly to one aim and have nothing in reserve to fall back upon. There is nothing at all wrong with ambition; still less with having a dream. However, when everything has been invested in that one idea, then a day of reckoning awaits for the vast majority of such hopefuls. In truth, the market for drummers and guitarists, chess champions and footballers, singers and models is pretty limited. It is ten thousand to one against actually becoming a star and it is wise to make some provision against the day that this realisation dawns. A broad and balanced education culminating in a clutch of GCSEs is probably as good an insurance policy as any!

Moderation

I know that some people are getting irritated at the moderation here, but I really can't think of a way to stop this just at the moment. Peter Willliams from Hampshire is still bombarding this blog with dozens of messages every day, under the mistaken impression that I work for Hampshire County Council and can help with his problems. Here is a sample of the sort of thing which he is sending:

'We going to send 2 letters of complaint to Hampshire Council 2day Webb see it has an English lesson LOL'


'new complaint about HCC send today Webb lol tell teacher Julie that Peter on do 3 complants a week in writing LOL'


'we going to bury them in paper work Webb LOL'

'we bury them in paperwork LOL '


'who give to hoots about going to university'

'Balls is finshed your daughter picked a loser lol '
'
'All children should have education like the children get at Eton college LOL '

'Why is home education not as good as good to Eton college Webb '



'anther chess player just been smashed Webb all the life went out of him after Peter 9th move every time Peter wins he does it for home edcuated children who did not agree with uncle Balls/Badman. Peter going to dedicate a game he plays just for you it will be a game where he squeezes every last drop out of the postion really sucks the life out of the opponent but it have to be against a state school child or a teacher you know any who want a game? LOL'

'Peter just played a brillent game on the internet crushing the girl player in 15 moves from what she just said she going to be giveing up playing chess after that seeing to! I hope she was not crying LOL never mind you can hold her hand Webb LO '
'
'What you teach Webb? how to be a loser? or how to pick the loser of a race! like Badman LOL'



'you dont like it webb becuase we and other home educators had the guts to tell the LA to f off! you where weak and allowed home visits did you get scared when they said we must come round and check on you? '

The problem is that there is just so much of this rubbish that I have to delete it en masse and other posts probably go at the same time. I really can't read all this and if I let it through it just disrupts any debates. I must ask readers to have patience and we must hope that Mr Williams finds some better use for his time in the near future, like signing up for remedial English classes or educating his unfortunate son.

Chinese whispers

One of the most fascinating aspects of home education as encountered on the Internet is the extent to which fanciful and misleading stories about it have a tendency to multiply like fruit flies. One need only make an untruthful claim such as, 'The Children, Schools and Families Bill would have made it a criminal offence not to register as a home educator' and although there is not a shred of truth in the statement it soon assumes a life of its own and will be endlessly quoted and repeated with various exaggerations. So we read on one site a few months ago that, 'under a new law, children will be removed from their parents and interrogated alone'! I'm sure we all have favourite examples of this sort of thing. A lot of this happens when home educators in Europe contact American groups and ask them to publicise some case or other. These lies and half truths then often find their way into respectable newspapers. I was thinking about this recently in connection with what I have been writing about Sweden. There are some pretty uncanny similarities between the Johansson case and that of the Williams family whom I mentioned the other day. Both are good instances of how the game of Chinese Whispers may be played on the Internet.

Readers are probably quite familiar now with the Johansson business. I have given up trying to get to the bottom of this affair, because as time goes on the stories change and become more elaborate. Those interested in the case also make things up as the mood takes them. It is apparent though that the basic thesis, that Swedish social workers snatched a child from his parents to prevent them from home educating him, is not the full story. Five years ago, a similarly heart-rending story was doing the rounds on American home education sites. This concerned a child in this country of the same age as Dominic Johansson. He was called Peter Williams and the story was that his parents were being persecuted by their local authority in Hampshire because they wished to teach their son at home. Here is one account from an American site;



I received an email from the mother of this chess prodigy asking for a little publicity regarding her fight with her LEA. It seems that being the best under-7 chess player in the country doesn’t count as receiving an education. The LEA is threatening to arrest the parents and to force the kid into a g-school.
I hope that Education Otherwise will set the edu-crats straight.
UPDATE: If you’re particularly inspired to contact the case officer directly, he can be reached at
Mr. XXXXXXX
Ass. Principal Education Welfare Officer
New Forest Local Education Office
Southampton
England
United Kingdom
Phone number is XXXXXXXXXXX
I especially like that “Ass.” part. The other potential contact person is
Mr. XXXXXXXXXXX
Hampshire County Council
Winchester
Hampshire
S023 8UG
England
United Kingdom
Phone number XXXXXXXXXXX

I have removed the personal details. This is spookily similar to the sort of appeal currently being made for the Johanssons. Even the details being given for officials to contact is the same tactic. Note also the untruthful statements included. 'The LEA is threatening to arrest the parents'. Of course this is not true. Nor is it true that the child was the best under 7 player in the country. Three months later, on another American site, this had become, 'An 8-year-old homeschooled British boy who reportedly is the best under-10 chess player in the UK ' How's that for progress? The source of these assertions was the father's claim that his son was the best player of his age in Britain; a claim unsupported by any exteranl evidence and then endlessly exaggerated by others.

Now of course with the perspective afforded by the passage of a few years, we see that this case was not really as advertised. The local authority, Hampshire, was not opposed to either home education or chess, but were in fact worried because the child's father appeared to be both completely mad and also wholly incapable of educating his son. Both fears have been shown to be fully justified over the years. Fortunately, Hampshire have kept on the case, with the result that the child now has private tutors for at least some of the time. I have a feeling that five years down the line, we might well have learned something pretty similar about the Johanssons.

At one time, circulating information about some perceived injustice was a slow and laborious business. Newspapers often used to check what they were told before publishing and gaining access to a world audience was very hard. All that has changed now and a story can be published to the world almost instantly, just as I am doing now! The problem is that many of these stories will be mad or untruthful. This is just as true of stories about home education as any other subject which one comes across while browsing the net.