Education Otherwise endorse a strange and abusive home educator

I have a huge problem with the American organisation, the Home School Defense League Association and also with its founder, Michael Farris. This has nothing to do with the fact that the HSDLA is a right wing, Christian group. After all, I am a regular churchgoer myself and vote Conservative. Right wing Christians are fine by me! No, my objection to these people is that they equate parental discipline with the ritual beating of children. Either one is in favour of thrashing small children or one is a hopeless, lily-livered, bleeding-heart liberal who is opposed to discipline in childhood.


When I say ‘ritual beating’, it is important that readers understand that I am not talking about the odd smack delivered to a child when the parent is frazzled and angry. This happens with most parents and is regrettable but probably harmless in the long run. What I mean is a deliberate and cold blooded policy of beating the child, sometimes with the hand and often with an implement, in order to break the child’s spirit and force obedience to the will of the parent. This is loathsome.

I actually have a couple of books by Michael Farris and pretty strange reading they make. Consider What a Daughter Needs from her Dad. Now I always thought that what my daughter needed was love, understanding, guidance, teaching; stuff like that. What I apparently left out was the need to humiliate her by striking her repeatedly on the buttocks with a piece of wood. Discipline, you see! Farris even helpfully suggests the use of a wooden spoon for this vital part of childrearing. Anybody else think that there is something a little perverted about a man beating his young daughter on the backside with a bit if wood, or is it just me?

Michael Farris and the HSDLA do seem to have a bit of a thing about spanking; their favoured term for this kind of physical abuse. Whenever the USA looks as though it might be about to sign up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, (the only countries not to sign up to this are America and Somalia), the HSDLA wades in and reminds parents that this might mean an end to spanking their children. Here is Farris warning parents a couple of months ago about another ’dangerous treaty’ that the USA might get mixed up in; the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Article 15 of this calls for a ban on ’inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. That would be a good thing, right? No, you fool! As Michael Farris says, ‘This means that spanking will be banned entirely in the United States’. The guy really does have a thing about spanking.

Because of all this, I was surprised to find that Farris’ books are in Education Otherwise’s Amazon Store on their public website. Putting his books there is really a form of endorsement, suggesting that these are suitable for home educators to buy and read. When a man is so determined that children should be physically abused by being subjected to the degrading ritual of being struck regularly on the buttocks with a piece of wood, I feel that this alone should be sufficient grounds for ordinary people to edge past him cautiously and give him a wide berth. The books in the Amazon Store are both pretty weird. To give one example, the Bible has always been  important in our family. It seemed natural that my daughter would read it often and so she did. That was of course entirely up to her. Michael Farris, in The Homeschooling Father, says that he offered his children $100 if they would read the Bible regularly for a year! Am I alone in finding   that rather odd?

It is of course up to Education Otherwise which books they recommend, but I really think that Michael Farris’ works should be treated with caution. He is a strange man with an unhealthy fixation on corporal punishment and what with that and paying children to read the Bible, I hardly think that he is somebody that Education Otherwise would wish to be endorsing in any way at all.

The United Nations and Home Education

A few days ago I posted a piece about home education in Germany. I explained how the European Court had ruled that parents did not have a right to withdraw their children from society and thus brought into question the legal foundation of the decision by parents to home educate, at least in Europe. Somebody emailed me and suggested that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was a better bet for home educators seeking to establish their legal and moral right to teach their own children. Article 26 (3) of the Declaration states that;

"Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."

Seems clear enough! In fact I have now heard of several parents who are toying with the idea of using various parts of United Nations declarations in order to argue that some of the provisions of the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009 violate their rights. There is however an even bigger problems with relying upon the United Nations' declarations than there was with the European Convention on Human Rights. The United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, for instance, says in Article 29;

"State Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

(a) The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;

(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the freedoms enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;

(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilisations different from his or her own;

(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society , in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship of all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;

(e) The development of respect for the natural environment"

This sort of thing is pretty prescriptive. It could indeed serve as a description of a "suitable education" which parents should be providing for their children according to the DCSF.

For my own part, I do not know what the bloody hell it has to do with the United Nations to tell me that I should be instructing my child in the finer points of the United Nations charter! It's really none of their business. I have a suspicion that many home educators in this country would fall at the hurdle of "Developing respect for the national values of the country in which he is living" Does not quite tie in with our multicultural society, I fancy! (It would make a good examination question; "Britain has a unique set of national values which are easily identifiable; discuss).


I shall be interested if the new legislation does find its way onto the Statute Book, to see what attempts are made to challenge the law through the courts. I would definitely not recommend anybody to try using either the European Convention on Human Rights though, nor the United Nations declarations.