More deliberately misleading claims about autonomous education

We looked yesterday at the case of a child  who was taught to read and then advertised as having just ‘picked up’ reading spontaneously. This sort of thing can have a bad effect upon parents who are thinking of home educating, because it gives them an unrealistic idea of what home education entails. It has caused some parents to simply wait for their children to start reading; having formed the impression that this is something which happens naturally as a matter of course. Here is a typical example of such a dupe. This mother’s account of her children’s education was until recently to be found on the Education Otherwise site as an inspiration to others! Here she is, talking of her seven and ten year old children, both of whom are functionally illiterate;

‘Their days are often filled with television and lots of play…They will read one day and will do so because they want to, not because somebody tells them to.’

Here is a mother who is simply waiting for her children to ‘pick up’ reading. She has been gulled into this foolish course of action  by misleading accounts such as that at which we looked yesterday.


Another type of deception is that practiced by those who pretend that their children were pretty backward in various subjects and then suddenly made great leaps at a late age; thus catching up and even overtaking  conventionally schooled children of the same age. We hear of children who could not read until the age of twelve or who were hopeless at maths until they  were thirteen and then in the space of a few years made up for lost time and went to university. Almost invariably, there is more to these cases too than meets the eye.

Two home education success stories which have been doing the rounds now for years and are still regularly trotted out, are the autonomously educated boys; one of whom got into Oxford to study law and the other who went to Manchester to study bio-chemistry. The second of these cases is an absolute classic in deception on the part of the child’s mother and I have recently come across an interesting letter from her dating back to 2007. Here it is;


'The “inspectors” quoted in the BBC article completely do not understand autonomous education, which is practiced by at least one in four home educators in Britain. Autonomous education is child led, with parents facilitating, not dictating and allowing the child to retain the urge to educate themselves, the drive which leads them to teach themselves to walk and talk, and by not supressing that urge allowing them to learn all they need to know to get on in the world they live in. To the LA advisors, this is so far away from the regulated, prescribed curriculums that make up their world, that they see it as no educational provision, because unless the child decides structure is the way they wish to learn, there is often no external way to assess the child’s education. My two children have been lucky enough to decide on their own education, and an inspector making judgements about my son at 13 would have been horrified at this child who had not yet decided writing was an important thing in his life, or maths. However my son was recently the youngest entrant ever at the Manchester School of Medicine’s PhD programme, following his degree.'

What are we to make of this? Well, the mother wants us to believe that her autonomously educated son was not too hot at  maths at the age of thirteen and that a local authority  inspector would have been horrified at his standard in this subject. But then look what happened; he went on to become the youngest ever entrant at the Manchester School of Medicine!  Curious that she omits to mention that the boy had already passed a GCSE in mathematics at the age of twelve, three or four years earlier than the usual age that this is taken in schools. The reality is that far from being horrified at his attainment in maths, any inspector would have been extremely impressed. This can hardly have been an innocent mistake on the part of the mother; she knew perfectly well when she was talking about how horrified an inspector would have been, that her son took his GCSE in this subject at twelve. She tells us here that he had not, at the age of thirteen, decided that maths was an important thing in his life,  when in fact he chose to pursue the subject and take a GCSE in it at twelve!

The result of this sort of deceit is that parents whose teenagers are not doing well at maths or reading are lulled into believing that it does not matter. Just look! Here is a child who is a complete duffer at maths when he is thirteen and then a year later, he is studying it at A level!  In the course of a year, he has caught up with and overtaken the fourteen year-olds at school. Nonsense like this can be very damaging for parents who don’t realise that they should actually be concerned about children unable to read at twelve or carry out basic arithmetical operations at thirteen. They are enabled to kid themselves that some miracle will happen and that their children will soon catch up without any teaching  on their part. 

Why does this bother me? I am hugely enthusiastic about home education. At the moment there are tens of thousands of home educated children in this country, but I would like to see the practice increase at least tenfold. I wish that hundreds of thousands of parents would take full responsibility for the education of their children and reject schools entirely. Educating children though is a full-time task and unless parents are prepared to devote their lives to it for ten or fifteen years, then they had better not attempt it at all. Those who undertake the enterprise believing that their children will be hopeless at maths at the age of thirteen and then suddenly whiz ahead and be at A level standard a year later, all under their own steam, are in for a terrible shock. Untruthful and deliberately misleading reports such as those we have looked at over the last few days are not helping matters. They present a distorted and wholly unrealistic view of home education. Any parents who decide to home educate after having read stuff like this are being set up to fail. Worse still, their children are being primed for failure and that really does bother me.

The real threat to home education

Over the last year or two, quite a few people seem to have fallen prey to the delusion that some kind of war is being waged against home educators in this country. We hear of a campaign of vilification, attempts to introduce legislation which would limit the freedoms of home educating parents and all sorts of other alarming things. The odd thing is that although I know quite a few teachers, social workers and local authority officers, I have never heard any of them say that they wish to put an end to the practice of home education. Nor have I heard this wish being expressed by anybody else. True, many people have reservations about home education. These often centre around tired old chestnuts like socialisation or a supposed inability to study science without a state-of-the art laboratory. Never once have I heard anyone say that they think that somebody should put a stop to home education.

This is quite curious, in view of the feeling of being beleaguered and menaced by hostile forces ranged against them which quite a few home educators seem to have. What can explain the discrepancy between the way things actually are and the way that some parents think that they are? In order to understand this, we must look to the past.

Home education has never been illegal in this country. Indeed, until the nineteenth century, it was probably the most common form of education in use. Even with the advent of universal schooling in 1870, under the so-called Forster's Act, a loophole was left which meant that those who did not wish to send their children to school would not be compelled to do so. Introducing the Elementary Education Act to the Commons on February 17th 1870, W.E. Forster said:

'We give power to the school boards to frame bye-laws for compulsory
attendance of all children within their district from five to twelve. They
must see that no parent is under a penalty for not sending his child to
school if he can show reasonable excuse; reasonable excuse being
education elsewhere, or sickness...'

Just like the later 'at school or otherwise' which was included in the 1944 and later the 1996 Education Acts, so too with the 1870 Act. Instead of 'education otherwise' this had the get-out clause of 'education elsewhere'.

A mythology has built up around the home education movement in this country. Briefly stated, the standard version is as follows. Apart from one or two brave souls like Joy Baker, home education by parents was all but unheard of in the UK until the 1970s. Then a few daring pioneers like Iris Harrison and the parents of Oak Reah attempted to undertake it and were quickly pounced on by their local authority. As a result of the court cases against these early home educating parents, the practice gradually became established as lawful and local authorities were reluctantly compelled to acknowledge the right of parents to teach their own children. This is a very neat and appealing scenario, but unfortunately it is also wholly untrue and misleading. The legal action against both the Harrisons and the Reahs began in 1977, the same year that Education Otherwise was founded. Iris Harrison was a founding member of education Otherwise. All this helped create the myth that local authorities were at that time bitterly opposed to home education and determined to stamp it out. This was not really the case at all. There were other home educating parents at that time who were known to their LEAs and had perfectly good relations with them. Take Harry Lawrence, for instance. He began home educating his five year-old daughter Ruth officially in 1976 and nobody turned a hair. Why should they? It was obvious that the child was being educated and also clear that he had a perfect right to teach her at home if he wished, rather than sending her to school.

The reason Iris Harrison was taken to court was not because her children were not being sent to school. It was because she was allowing them to spend their time doing pretty much as they wished. If her daughter wished to play the violin all day, that was fine. Her son preferred tinkering with engines; he was allowed to do that rather than studying maths or science. In the case of Oak Reah's parents, it was not because they were home educating that they ended up in court. He was not the only home educated child in Leeds; none of the other parents were having any problems. It was the fact that Oak's parents refused to answer any letters or tell anybody what provision was being made for his education that they were prosecuted.

In short, thirty five years ago, just as now, local authorities were prepared to accept home education. What they were uneasy about were families that would either refuse to tell them what they were doing or were not apparently educating their children. Most teachers are well aware that individualised, one-to-one tuition in a relaxed, domestic setting is a fantastically effective method of teaching. Education professionals know perfectly well that children can do well in such an educational setting. What they are dubious about is the benefits of allowing a child to direct the course of her own learning. Because when those running Internet support lists for home educating parents say things like,

'obviously education takes place all the time and much can be learnt from surfing the net and watching TV! It is impossible for education not to take place, we're all learning all the time!'

then it sets alarm bells ringing. When parents casually assert that they are not worried if their children cannot read at the age of twelve and that this does not matter at all, this too causes massive concern. It is these sort of attitudes which pose the real threat to home education in this country and it is this sort of mentality which makes local authorities demand extra powers so that they can ensure that children aged between five and sixteen are provided with the efficient education which is their legal entitlement. The threat to home education is coming not from the local authorities or the Department for Education, but from those within the home educating community who raise the fear that many children who are not at school are nor really being educated at all.

Autonomous education in practice

I have been criticised here recently, and not for the first time, for my portrayal of autonomous home education in the two newspaper articles which were published last summer. Among the accusations levelled at me in the past was that I had put forward a grotesque caricature of autonomous education and thus misrepresented the whole thing to the readers of the Times Educational Supplement. I wrote of autonomous education;

' The idea is that the child should be free to follow their own interests at their own pace. They may, for example, look out of the window and see an unusual bird. This may cause them to investigate ornithology and then study biology generally. Of course, this approach just might work with a bright and inquisitive child whose parents are on hand to facilitate their learning. Equally likely is that the child will see the bird, mutter “So what?” and carry on playing Grand Theft Auto IV.'

Before we watch the clip below, which is from a BBC programme about home education, let us look again at what I wrote. Looking out of the window at birds; this leading, perhaps, to a study of biology; the possibility that kids would rather play computer games. I mean, preposterous! Where do I get off trying to foist such a monstrous and distorted idea of autonomous education upon readers? Now watch the clip below, which is about an autonomously educating parent.




The first thing to strike any impartial observer is how spookily accurate my description of autonomous home education proves to be in this particular case. One gets the distinct impression from his body language and general demeanour that young Christopher is indeed muttering 'So what?' and hoping to continue playing Grand Theft Auto IV, or in his case Super Mario. Anybody would think that I had based my article upon this programme! Since it was filmed six months after the publication of the piece in the TES, this is hardly possible. There is of course no mystery about it. The 'Let's look out of the window and study the birds in the garden' line is a pretty popular gag with autonomous educators hoping to get their kids interested in nature. They don't even need to leave the house! The preference of some children for playing computer games as opposed to studying ornithology is also a general theme among many autonomously educated children, as well as those attending school. Let's face it, an awful lot of eight year old boys want to do little more than run round like mad things until they are worn out and then flop down and watch television or play computer games. Why would autonomously educated children be any different? I also have quite a few people, including autonomously educating parents, contacting me privately to discuss this sort of thing.

The real reason that I enrage some parents is not because I am a know-it-all Smart-Alec and irritatingly smug bastard (Although it would be a rash man who discounted this aspect of my personality entirely when seeking an explanation for my spectacular lack of popularity among autonomous educators). The truth is that I often describe how things are rather than how people wish to pretend they are. This can indeed be annoying. I am no ideologue and am hugely interested in how things really work, as opposed to how they are supposed to work. Hazlitt said, 'Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.' This is why I gain such keen enjoyment from the observation of certain types of education; because of the yawning chasm which separates theory from practice.

Incidentally, lest anybody suggest that the clip above is highly artificial because the mother and child might have felt under pressure due to the presence of a camera crew; this was not the case according to everybody involved. The team actually spent a couple of days there and after a while the child more or less took them as part of the background. These people were quite shocked to find that it was possible to keep a child out of school in this way. Their views on this kind of 'education' were well worth hearing and cast light upon how ordinary people see autonomous learning!

How can we simply refuse monitoring?

A couple of days ago, somebody asked here for advice on frustrating the best efforts of her local authority to ensure that all the children within their area were receiving a suitable education. The question asked was, 'How can we simply refuse monitoring?' This is a common enough desire on the part of some home educating parents and although I have dealt with this question before, it will do no harm to run over the basics again for newcomers to home education.

The first rule is to make it quite clear to your local authority right from the start that they are dealing with a troublesome crank, rather than an ordinary parent. Sometimes just refusing to allow a local authority officer to visit your home will be enough to give this impression, but if this doesn't work then telling them 'We're autonomous!' will usually do the trick. It is as well that they know from the very beginning what sort of person they are dealing with. This is important, because you want the local authority to realise early on that you are the kind of person who will be complaining to her MP or getting the local paper involved if they hassle you too much by asking questions or trying to insist on visiting your home. Here's an old dodge which some have found useful. Why not simply quote chapter and verse of the relevant legislation when replying to an informal enquiry about your child's education? This will leave nobody in any doubt at all that you are a bloody minded, barrack-room lawyer type.

How can one get away with providing no evidence whatsoever to the local authority? This is not really as hard as it sounds. Begin by downloading an educational philosophy from ;

http://www.home-education.org.uk/ed-philos.htm


These have proved a great hit in the past. Just add your kid's name to the document and you're in business! You will end up with something along these lines;

Our approach to John's education is in the main opportunity-based,
child-led and very flexible. It is impossible to provide a timetable or to
specify in advance which activities we shall be undertaking.
We work to keep a good balance between child-led, informal learning
and a more directed approach. In general, it is our aim to facilitate
learning through John's interests rather than artificially contrived
situations to reach pre-determined outcomes. We are always vigilant for any gaps which should arise in our provision and ready, willing and able
to make the necessary adjustments to fill them.

Notice the cunning way in which you can avoid actually saying what your child is doing or learning. He could be an infant prodigy who also excels at athletics; he could equally well be blind, non-verbal, learning disabled and in a wheelchair. This is a vital gambit in your attempts to keep the local authority at bay. By keeping it completely vague in this way, you ensure that your local authority won't be able to work out what level your child should actually be working at. This is of course why it was essential to oppose vigorously the recommendation in Graham Badman's report which suggested that parents should provide a statement of educational intent for the coming year. Heavens, if once the local authority had that in their hands, they might be able to work out next year that your child hadn't learned a damned thing over the last twelve months!

Sometimes local authorities will ask for more 'evidence'. No need to panic. Why not take a photograph of your child looking at a tree or doing some baking? You can then claim that these are evidence of studying the environment in a scientific way and doing maths by measuring and calculating in a practical, life-based setting. Impossible to prove you wrong about that! The 'diary' is another popular ruse that many parents have found to pay dividends. Just get an old exercise book and write down dates. Under each date, put down some educational activities. This can be going to the library, visiting a museum, conducting experiments in the kitchen; almost anything at all really. Don't worry about being too accurate or truthful, it's not as though anybody is going to check up on all this.

Occasionally, you may get a stubborn local authority officer who is not prepared to take your word for it that your child is being educated. This can be a real pain. In such a case, try this. You should already by this stage have sent a succession of strange, oddly worded and angry letters full of long words to your local authority. (Always remember to copy these to the comments sections of Internet lists and blogs. Other home educators will get a real buzz from seeing how cleverly you have managed to portray yourself to non-home educators as somebody suffering from a massive social skills deficit combined with borderline personality disorder!) Presumably by now you will also have dazzled them with your knowledge of Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, Education and Inspections Act 2006, Children Act 2004 and Sections 436a and 437 of the education Act 1996. You should also have demonstrated a mastery of the relevant case law. Now go in for the kill by reminding the local authority of the 2007 Guidelines for local authorities on elective home education. You can find them here;

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/elective/


These contain some wonderful stuff about local authorities not being able to insist on visits and so on. This ought to get them off your case; after all, this is official government advice to them.

Any reasonably inventive parent should have no difficulty at all in refusing to be monitored by their local authority by following the simple points which I have outlined above. If you really find yourself stuck, then why not join the EO and HE-UK Internet lists? There you will find groups of like minded individuals. People just like you, who are all obsessively anxious to avoid having their children's education scrutinised by those best placed to judge its efficacy; i.e. the education department of the local authority. It has only been possible to sketch out the main points of strategy in this piece, but on the EO and HE-UK lists you will find plenty of people ready to help you with more specific advice.

The triumph of autonomous education!

There are still a few misguided souls who have the vague idea that autonomous education has something to do with home schooling! Nothing could be further from the truth. Autonomous of course means self-directed and really relates to the fact that a child is able to choose for herself what form or direction her learning should take. This can include choosing to study structured courses via the Open University or even going to school or college. This much, all advocates of autonomous education would agree upon. As a number of irate parents who commented on my piece a few days ago called ' A curious case of apparently autonomous education' asserted very strongly, one must always take the parents' word for what the child has chosen to do. Raising one's eyebrows at what a mother calls the decision of an autonomously educated child to study for GCSEs is rude and disrespectful of the whole idea of autonomous education. This seems reasonable because, as I remarked yesterday, we never get to hear what the kids themselves want; so we are compelled to take their parents' word for it.

Having cleared the ground a little, I have to tell readers that I have glorious news for them. Autonomous education seems to be far and away the most popular form of educational technique used in the United Kingdom today! How have I discovered this and what is my evidence for this astonishing assertion? I started from the viewpoint that if, as many of those posting comments here have told me time and again, an autonomously educated child can choose to attend school or college at the age of fourteen in order to gain GCSEs or A levels, then it must logically be the case that a child could also make this choice at thirteen and still remain autonomously educated. And why stop at thirteen? Surely a child of eleven or twelve who wishes to go to school must also be regarded as following autonomous education? I see no reason at all why this principle should not apply right down to four or five.

The beginning of my research was with my friends and colleagues. I only spoke to parents of course, because as we established here a few days ago, one must not doubt the word of parents when it comes to judging the wishes of their children. They know best. I therefore asked parents known to me personally the following questions; 'Did your child want to go to school?' and 'If you gave your child a choice now, would she rather attend school or be taught at home by you?' These questions were asked of seventeen parents having between them thirty six children between the ages of five and sixteen. The results were interesting. All but three of the children apparently wanted to go to school. Only one would choose not to attend now if given the choice. This suggests to me that these four children out of a total of thirty six, amount to a little over 10% of the sample; that is to say that almost 90% chose to go to school and are choosing to remain there and study formally. This is very heartening, but the immediate objection will of course be; how representative do I think my friends are? I have anticipated this. Only two of our friends are not white and most are middle class. Luckily, my wife works with a very working class client group in Barking and I have quite a few parents whom I visit in LB Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Since I was helping out by organising activities at my wife's place of work this week, I had the opportunity to speak to eleven parents there. Between them, they had fourteen children between the ages of five and sixteen. Over half this group are black and minority ethnic. Only one child in this group was reported by his mother to have not wanted to attend school. One would like to leave now. Again, almost a 90% rate of autonomy among the children; they are choosing their own preferred method of education. I repeated this survey with similar results among a group of black and Asian parents in Hackney and Tower Hamlets.

I can see two possible explanations for these findings. The first is that I should take them at face value and assume that autonomous education is the most popular method of education in the United Kingdom today. In other words, most children are actively choosing the educational setting which they wish. I have to say that this does not seem likely to me. The other possibility is less palatable to some parents. It is this. Parents themselves choose the educational setting which they would prefer for their children, whether it is school or home education. After they have taken this decision, they persuade both themselves, their children and everybody else that this is what the children really wanted in the first place. In effect, they rewrite history and kid everybody that the child has had a choice in the matter. I will at once put my own hand up to having done this! Talking to close friends and exploring the questions which I posed to them recently reveals that a similar process has taken place with at least some children who have been sent to school.

Many parents who send their children to school effectively brainwash them into accepting their fate. They buy them books called 'Jimmy has lots of fun at school' or 'Jemima's happy first day at school'. They repeat over and over again, the mantras 'You will make lots of new friends at school' and 'You will have a good time at school'. By the time they get there, the children have been hypnotised and are incapable of resisting all this psychological conditioning. Of course home educating parents do exactly the same thing. I used to point out to my daughter how lucky she was not to be cooped up indoors on a lovely sunny day and how many enjoyable things we did which she couldn't have done if she had gone to school. I know other home educators who did the same thing. In some cases, the kid actually wanted to go to school and the mothers have discouraged them and worked hard to make them change their minds! One reads of such cases on the Internet lists; mothers who say that their child wants to go to school and they want advice on how they can discourage her. Oddly, I have never seen a response to questions like this where the parent is urged to respect the child's autonomous wishes! Instead, a variety of handy tips are offered to get the kid to change his mind. This is just what some parents do who persuade their children against their inclination that they really do want to go to school.

Perhaps we are all of us deceiving ourselves. I think that what really happens might be that rather than carefully respecting our children's choices, we simply make what seems to us the best decision for them and forge ahead regardless. I rather think that home educating parents are just as apt to do this as anybody else. I'm sure that if I carried out a survey among home educating parents I should find just the same results as I did among the parents of school children. I've no reason at all though to think it any more likely that these children were really having their own free and unfettered choices acted upon.

Home education and the curse of anecdata

I am grateful to my daughter for teaching me about the word 'anecdata' in recent months. This word could have been coined with home education in mind! Anecdata means presenting various scraps of anecdotal evidence together in such a way as to suggest that it supports some pseudo-scientific idea; in other words presenting random, isolated stories together in such a way as to make them look like proper data.

One of the things that I have noticed time and again when dealing with home educators and talking about home education is that it is very tricky to pin down facts and figures. I am frequently assured, for example, that FE colleges will accept people on to courses without any previous qualifications. The same is said of universities. Whenever I ask for the names of these institutions, they never seem to be forthcoming. This happened during a recent exchange on here. After I had cast doubt upon the chances of studying at university without having any formal qualifications, somebody told me,

'I spoke to a home educator recently whose child has been accepted on a postgraduate course despite not having a degree.'

This is actually quite exciting, but when I tried to find out the details, it turned out that this was another of those cases where it boiled down to the equivalent of, 'A man in the pub told me.....' . No possible way of checking the facts. This is how it is with so many stories about home education; they end up with vague accounts which are impossible to follow up. Now twenty vague stories from unidentified sources do not impress me more than one such story. This is what is meant by anecdata, a collection of anecdotes which together are supposed to be as good as properly collected and verified data. The reason that these sorts of data do not really support any idea or theory is that one unsubstantiated account by itself is worthless. So are two, twenty or a hundred. It is not the case that the more vague and unidentified witnesses one can cite, the more reliable is the thesis being presented. If that were the case then we would all believe in flying saucers or homeopathy!

We see anecdata being used again and again in discussions of home education. This is such a useful word; I am surprised that nobody coined it long ago. The autonomous acquisition of literacy for instance is almost invariably supported by this kind of 'evidence'. people often claim, 'I know that children can learn to read like this because that's how my children learned'. What can one say about this? Without personal knowledge of the family in question, it is hard to judge this claim. is the person making it generally truthful? Does she have a mental health problem? Is she really even a home educator? Did her children learn to read without being taught? It is quite impossible to answer any of these questions. The person is typically anonymous and we are invited to take her word for an extraordinary assertion. Sometimes it is presented in the form of, 'My children and many of those of fellow autonomous educators'. This is no better really, we still don't know how much credence to place upon the word of an unknown stranger.

It is for these reasons that attempts are regularly made to gather real, verifiable data about home education. Such efforts are almost invariably viewed with suspicion and parents urge each other not to take part. The participation rate in such surveys never rises above 20%. This at once rings alarm bells for any objective observer. After all, for years these dramatic claims have been made about the efficacy of this treatment and yet when an attempt is made to examine these claims and verify them; nobody wants to participate. This makes the thing look more like a pseudo-scientific enterprise along the lines of some quack remedy rather than a genuine pedagogic technique. Most practitioners and devotees of proper medical treatments and educational systems are quite happy to allow sceptical researchers in to look at what they are doing. Those who are reluctant to do so are usually followers of some crank ideology who have an inherent fear of opening it up to the gaze of unbelievers. This is fine if what is happening is s religion. For instance in my church, claims are made for the transformation of the host into something different. This is not a scientific claim and no amount of measuring or analysis would reveal the supposed changes. There is nothing wrong with this, it is simply an irrational belief that some of us hold. I recognise this and am quite happy with it. But some home educators make the claim that their ideas produce quantifiable changes in children and their minds. If this is so, then it should be possible to measure and observe these changes. At this pint though, the additional claim is made that to measure these changes would be to destroy them and wreck the whole process. If we are to take them only on trust and not allowed to look too closely for fear of harming the activity, then we can be pretty sure that we are not dealing with a scientific or rational enterprise at all, but something as peculiar as the transubstantiation of the host into the body of Christ. In other words, it makes autonomous education into a religion or faith rather than an educational method.

The constructivist theory of education. Part1; as used in schools

Until relatively recently, the accepted method of education in this country was that of the behaviourists. One set out to give knowledge to children and then rewarded those who learnt it. Those who failed to learn what was offered faced sanctions. These days, this type of education is not so popular, particularly in maintained schools. Now, the favourite theory is called constructivism. In this, teachers try to get children to learn by finding out the answer for themselves, often by discussion and experiment. This theory also underpins autonomous education. Autonomous educators, albeit frequently unwittingly, are following a constructivist theory of learning. I have of course simplified both theories dramatically. There are a number of difficulties with constructivism when used in education; I shall first look at the problem when it is used in schools.

To begin with, let us look at a class of ten year olds who are trying to discover which substances sink and which float in water. They are gathered round a tank of water and the idea is that they are going to learn by actually doing, rather than by being told. The only thing wrong with this scheme is that these are real flesh and blood children in a real life setting; children who are moreover oblivious to the distinctions between behaviourist and constructivist theories of education. They regard the activity round the water tank as a welcome break from learning. It is a chance to discuss last night's episode of Eastenders, see who can splash the most water on the floor and to pretend that the bits of plasticene, rubber and wood that they have been given are submarines. The whole process is enormously time consuming. An entire morning has been occupied with setting up, conducting the 'experiment' and clearing up after this session. What with all the talking and messing about, the small matter of which substances sink and which float will soon be forgotten. In other words, they have learned no science whatsoever from this science lesson.

It would certainly have been more effective if the children sat quietly while the teacher simply demonstrated the point which he wished to get across, but of course teachers today have a deep rooted aversion towards what they call 'Chalk and talk' and the rest of us call teaching. They are constructivists to a man (and woman).

Over at the local secondary school, a history lesson is just ending. The kids there have been learning about castles. For their homework they have been told to pretend that they are Norman Barons who have just invaded England. This is a very popular thing in schools. Pretend you are a ten year old Pakistani boy working for 25P a day; how would you feel? Pretend you are living in the Middle Ages and your best friend has just died of Black Death; how would that make you feel? Pretend that you are lady Macbeth..... Anyway, today the home work is to pretend you are a Norman Baron who wants to build a castle. Where would you build it and why?

Now the teacher is a constructivist who wants his pupils to figure out for themselves where and why the Normans built their castles. He can't just tell them; that would defeat the whole object of the exercise, which is to get the children to think for themselves. At the next lesson, the children have all made different guesses. One thinks that the castle should be built by a river which would provide drinking water. Another would site the thing in a forest, a third on an open plain. So it goes on. Eventually, after the home work has been discussed and a noisy row erupted between the kids who are each arguing for their own choices, the teacher is forced to tell them the real place that the Norman's built their castles, i.e. on high places with a good view over the surrounding countryside.

Now comes the interesting bit. A month later, an inquisitive adult who knew of all this foolishness asks the pupils where the Normans built their castles. Not one remembers. They all recollect the discussions about the subject, most can even remember what they thought themselves. Not one knows where the Normans really built their castles. In short, this history lesson has failed to teach any history at all. And that's constructivism in action folks, as it actually works, or fails to work, in modern schools.

This method of teaching in schools is astonishingly time consuming and singularly ineffective. Often, the children fail to learn anything worthwhile from the exercise. By this, I mean they not only fail to learn any science or history, but neither do they learn any useful, transferrable skills. No wonder many independent schools eschew this theory of education and prefer proper teaching; that's why their examination results are so much better. 'Learning' based upon the constructivist theory of education has replaced traditional teaching in maintained schools for purely philosophical reasons, not because it actually works better, it manifestly does not. It is one of the chief reasons why children leave state schools in such an ill educated condition these days.

Ah, you say, in schools this may be so. But what about a one-to-one situation in a relaxed domestic setting? Surely this method will yield better results when used in home education? We will look at this possibility tomorrow.

HE scam

I really cannot resist drawing the attention of readers to a recent exchange on the HE-UK list. A mother posted the following;

hi, can anyone please give me some advice, i have a 15 year old who i am suppose to be HE but he has done hardly any written work, and i have the lea coming out on the 1st july and i will have nothing to show them, my son say that there are children that just leave school early and they don't have anything to do with the lea, does anyone have any views to what i should do please.
thanks

What this woman is saying, in as far as I am able to decipher it is as follows; my teenage son is no longer at school, I am not providing him with any education at all, he thinks that he has left school and ended his education, I am afraid that the local authority will catch wind of this and I shall get into trouble. This has all the hallmarks to me, not of home education but the condoning of truancy. A regular contributor on this list offers helpful advice. She says;

You can refuse a visit for starters. You do not by law have to have a visit.
You can tell them what you have been doing with a 'report' (called an
educational philosophy) which will tell them the hows and wherefores of your
educational provision (it is the provision that is being 'judged' not the
childs take up of that education). So you can state in the report that DS
does a lot of work online and therefore won't have any workbooks, you can
give examples of the visits and experiences done and tell them about the
different subjects covered in whatever way you have done them. There are
examples of Educational philosophies in the files section of this group

What's wrong with this picture, boys and girls? Well in the first place, this does not look in the least like a question about home education. The person asking this question is not at all interested in education; she is only concerned with avoiding trouble with the authorities. Secondly, it is plain that the person offering her the advice realises this and is also only concerned with helping this mother to dodge her legal and moral duties towards her son. If this were a rare and atypical case, it would hardly be worth mentioning. It is not. One local authority with which I have dealings has a collection of 'educational philosophies' , all nearly identical apart from the child's name and all downloaded from HE-UK. It is little short of scandalous that people should encourage parents to operate scams of this sort. And some people who comment here still cannot understand why local authority officers are not satisfied with an 'educational philosophy' and suspect that in many cases these are used to mask the complete absence of any sort of education........

Let me spell out the nature of the problem clearly. Many parents whose children are lively and inquisitive, although receiving little or no formal teaching, prefer not to receive visits from the local authority. Instead, they send an educational philosophy and things like a diary or photographs. In many cases, these children are pursuing their own interests and, in effect, educating themselves. Others, like the mother quoted above, simply feel that their children have finished both school and education. Their only concern is to get the authorities off their back. With a little help from HE-UK, they are able to furnish their local authority with precisely similar evidence to the families whose children are genuinely receiving an autonomous education. The question is very simple. How, without visiting and speaking to the child and his parents, is the local authority able to distinguish between these two very different cases, given that the evidence is identical?

Should we teach our children to read and write?

For at least three and a half thousand years it has been thought a good idea to teach children to read and write, whether or not they actually wish to do so. A clay tablet dug up at Nippur in Iraq dates from around 1700 BC. It reads, in part, 'My teacher said "Your handwriting is unsatisfactory" He caned me'. This gives us some idea of how ancient this idea is. For the last few decades or so though, the notion has circulated that it is in fact neither necessary nor desirable to teach children these skills in a structured way, particularly if they are reluctant to learn. There is a bit of a problem though with this relatively new approach.

A huge body of research dating back centuries amply demonstrates the advantages of teaching children to read and write. A good deal of these data lead also to the conclusion that the earlier children read, the greater the benefits from an educational viewpoint. This is not the case with the educational advantages of not teaching them these skills. There, we are forced to fall back on either bare assertion, the examination of grotesquely small samples, anecdotal evidence or exceedingly limited research. For instance, meta-studies of tens of thousands of children suggest strongly that there is a distinct advantage for a child in learning to read when he is young. True, some surveys indicate that this is only a short lived advantage and that it makes no difference in the long run at what age the process starts; none however suggest that being taught to read at an early age can be harmful. By contrast, there is no research at all which would lead us to suppose that there is an educational advantage in learning to read late, say at the age of eleven or twelve. It is claimed by some that this does no harm and that children quickly catch up, but nobody has ever shown that learning to read late is actually better than learning young. Nor has any research ever shown that not being taught to read is better for a child than being taught to read.

One or two well respected academics claim that children can learn to read by themselves without being taught and that this is a good thing. Such people however make in general unsubstantiated assertions. Alan Thomas has conducted work in this field. His sample was not tens of thousands of children though; it was twenty six. There is of course ample evidence to support the idea that formal education in schools should be delayed until after the age of five. Raymond and Dorothy Moore examined this idea back in the seventies and wrote the book Better late than early, which argued that formal schooling should not start before the age of twelve. A few years later they wrote Home Grown Kids, in which they decided that schools were unnecessary. In other countries, such as Sweden for example, it is thought better to dealy schooling until later than in this country. Learning to read at school when a child is five is however quite a different thing from being taught to read by a parent at the age of two or three. Research showing that early schooling is undesirable does not mean that a parent teaching a child to read at home at that age is undesirable.

I have a suspicion that most of the home educating parents who decide not to teach their children how to read and write refrain from doing so not because they have examined the evidence and concluded that this is the best strategy. Rather, it seems to me that the majority of them begin from this perspective and then cast around for books and websites which will encourage them in this belief. It could hardly be otherwise. After all, anybody looking into the subject objectively will, as I say, soon discover that teaching children to read has been the rule for thousands of years, and that there is really very little evidence that it is unnecessary. Those parents who choose not to teach reading and writing are, in effect, gambling on an untested and unproven theory. This is fine when we make a decision as adults to place our faith in a crank belief system. if I fall ill and prefer crystal healing to antibiotics, that is my affair. If I opt to use a dubious system of medicine or education upon a child though, the case is altered. Children are not able to give informed consent to becoming guinea pigs in this way.

Where our children are concerned, it is probably best to play safe and follow the most widely accepted beliefs regarding their welfare. This should apply equally to their education and medical treatment. It is curious and perhaps significant that many home educating parents who choose to follow bizarre and unsubstantiated educational doctrines, also follow strange and irrational medical ideas such as homeopathy and the dangers of vaccination. I have an idea that the explanation for this propensity to embrace unconventional and frankly outlandish belief systems would be more readily understood by a psychopathologist than the present writer, whose interests in the matter tend to be purely educational.

Research on home education

Once again, somebody commenting here has suggested that I look at the research on home education, research which apparently shows autonomous education to be a wise and good course of action for parents who wish to educate their own children. There are three problems with research in this country on autonomous home education. These are that the research is confusing and contradictory, that it involves ridiculously small numbers and that those conducting the research are usually very biased in favour of home education. Let's look a little at these points.

The work of two people invariably comes up when this subject is discussed; Alan Thomas and Paula Rothermel. Indeed, I have yet to read anything about autonomous home education in this country which fails to mention one or both of these two researchers. This should at once set alarm bells ringing. If we look at, say for example, the acquisition of literacy in schools; hundreds of different names will crop up. The same goes for any aspect of education; there are always hundreds, if not thousands of people's work to look at. Not so with autonomous home education; it is Rothermel or Thomas and that is pretty much it.

Why do I say that much of the research on the subject of autonomous home education is confusing and contradictory? To take one example, the standard view among many home educators is that children who learn in this way may read later than children at school, but it does not matter, because when they do start they soon catch up. This is a point of view which Alan Thomas shares. Paula Rothermel though, when conducting research among much the same families at the same time, discovered that over 90% of the home educated children were actually fantastically early readers. On the tests used, one would have expected 16% of the six year olds to be in the top band, whereas 94% were on that level! Both beliefs cannot be correct. If many home educated children start reading a little later than children at school, then clearly 94% of them cannot also start reading fluently very early. More research needed there, I fancy.

That the numbers involved in this sort of research are ludicrously small is self evident. Thomas examined a hundred or so home educated children. Rothermel's literacy tests were with a sample of thirty five. Research on the academic achievements of schooled children runs into millions every year from all over the country.

I remarked a few days ago that many home educating parents seemed reluctant to become involved in objective testing of their children's abilities. The only people with whom they will work are researchers who are enthusiastic about home education and who assure parents that they think that it is a good thing. This means that such researchers often abandon all objectivity and become friends with the families. The results of work under these conditions is automatically suspect. Whenever the possibility presents itself that home educated children might be examined or their educational attainment tested by anybody who is not a dedicated supporter of the home education movement, parents refuse to have anything to do with it. Witness the reaction to the DCSF's proposed longitudinal study recently.

It would be nice to see some large scale research by objective or even sceptical workers looking at home education in general and autonomous home education in particular. It could well show, as many parents claim, that this is a brilliant scheme. However, until this happens, the rest of us will have to suspend judgement. One thing is for sure, it would be fatal to rely upon the anecdotal evidence from parents themselves. All parents tend to have grossly exaggerated and wildly optimistic views and opinions about their children's abilities. I would be the worst possible person to ask about my own daughter's achievements!

Comparisons between the outcome of autonomous learning and conventional teaching

A few days ago, somebody posted a comment here asking if I could provide links to any research comparing the outcomes of conventional teaching with the results of autonomous learning. Of course I cannot do any such thing. Nobody who knows anything at all about autonomous education will be the least bit surprised at this.

For at least three thousand years, it has been generally accepted that the best way for children to learn is for them to be taught. There exists an enormous body of evidence to back up this belief. This has been gathered over the centuries by scientists, teachers and statisticians. A small group of people today challenge this and argue that children are perfectly capable of learning what they wish by themselves, enlisting the aid of adults as and when it is needed. This is a perfectly good theory and there may well be something in it. Unfortunately, like so many 'alternative' ideas whether in education, medicine or science, it is not possible to prove it.

In order to demonstrate the efficacy of traditional education, we measure, test and examine children. We look at their abilities at point X and then test them two years later to see if they have changed. This is done with millions of children across the world and the results compared and adjusted for cultural differences and so on. There was an opportunity for work of this sort to be conducted with autonomously educated children in this country. It was called the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009. This would have examined the outcomes of autonomously educated children objectively. Baselines would have been established and the intentions of their parents compared with eventual achievement. There can be little doubt that this would have been a great chance to test the autonomous education hypothesis in detail. It was the parents of autonomously educated children who led the opposition to this scheme.

The reasons for this opposition were fairly straightforward. Like so many fringe activities, from ESP to homeopathy, spiritualism to Steiner schools,; this form of education must not and cannot be examined too closely without breaking the spell and damaging that which is being tested. It has been compared, by Ann Newsome of Education Otherwise, to a quantum system, where the very act of observation will alter that which is being observed! In short, it is not possible, even in theory, to test the effectiveness of autonomous education. The methods routinely used in schools and colleges throughout the world would place such children under intolerable stress and their education would be altered as a result.

We are left in a peculiar situation. It is roughly comparable to that faced by conventional medicine when challenged by some new crackpot cure. For example the traditional way of dealing with cancer is to cut out the tumour and then bombard the site with radiation and often use poison as well to rid the body of the remains of the cancerous cells. Some opponents of these methods characterise the treatment as 'slash, burn and poison'. Sometimes 'alternative' practitioners offer gentler methods, involving diet, exercise and meditation. None of these alternative methods can be examined closely though by doctors or statisticians. This would hinder the healing process and in any case the presence of sceptics can have a bad effect upon the whole thing.

One is reminded of the sort of thing the autonomously educating parents claim about their own methods. Measuring their child's progress would be harmful. Sceptical teachers or local authority officers would damage their child's learning if they were to be allowed access. It is all so eerily similar to other crank belief systems that one wonders that the practitioners are unable to see this for themselves!

This is however, why no body of evidence exists which has compared the outcomes of autonomously educated children with those at school. No such body exists, nor is it ever likely to do so. This does not of course mean that autonomous education does not work, merely that there is little evidence that it does. The only evidence is, like that for cures of cancer by carrot juice or meditation, a handful of vague and subjective accounts by one or two dedicated enthusiasts for the ideas. The rest of us will have to reserve judgement until the autonomous educators agree to a little research.

A broad and diverse education of a high quality

What sort of idiots would not want their children to enjoy a broad and diverse education of a high quality? It is, after all, what most ordinary parents seek for their children. What could possibly be wrong with it? Step forward an assortment of such idiots who hang out on the HE-UK list. They are currently foaming at the mouth like a bunch of retired colonels from Tunbridge Wells writing to the Daily Mail. Their anger is directed against, of all unlikely targets, the Green Party!

The Green Party have said in their manifesto that they feel that home educated children are entitled to a high quality education. Few would argue with that statement. They also believe that such an education should be 'broad and diverse'. Again, most sane and well balanced individuals would see this as a good thing. This education should also be 'supported by local authorities'. These modest aspirations have been more than enough to drive a number of home educating parents into a frenzy. Mike Fortune-Wood, whose reputation for calm, clear thought has never been extensive, has spotted their true intentions. He says that this 'broad and diverse education' is none other than the 'broad and balanced education' which the DCSF and local authorities have been trying to push home educators into adopting for years.

The concern is apparently that by pushing this notion of a 'broad and balanced' or 'broad and diverse' education, some people are intending to encourage home educating families to provide an education for their children which includes history, music, science, mathematics and so on. Once again, to most ordinary families this would seem quite unexceptionable and eminently reasonable. For most parents, a knowledge of science and mathematics is seen as a good and desirable thing per se. The more extreme types of autonomous home educator are evidently opposed to the idea not on pragmatic grounds; that it would be bad for their children. Rather, their opposition is rooted in ideology. The idea of having various subjects which it is intended that the child will study is anathema to such people because it does not accord with their fixed belief that children should be free to choose for themselves what they learn about and when they learn it. Deciding beforehand that history or science will be studied would remove that choice from the child.

It is an extraordinary notion, that any parent should follow an ideology specifically designed to cause one to curtail a child's education in this way. Perhaps I might offer the following simile. It is as though traditional education consists of a table set out with a variety of dishes which the child is encouraged to sample. Some will be more to her taste than others. Still, it is important that she tries as many as possible, because otherwise she will not find out which she likes. By contrast, the autonomous approach is predicated more upon education as a locked cupboard. The child may have any of the foods in the cupboard, but she must first guess what they are and then ask for them. She will certainly not be encouraged to try an unfamiliar food, this is opposed on ideological grounds. Under such conditions, it is all but inevitable that the child will grow up with a limited and restricted palate. She might in later life sample some of the foods which were not offered to her in childhood, but the chances are that she will remain a cranky and picky eater. The end result of such a strategy, whether in matters culinary or pedagogic, will be to restrict choice and limit future attainment.

Cui bono?

I am confident enough of my readers' erudition to believe it unnecessary to translate the above expression. It means of course "who benefits?" and is the classic question asked by those investigating a murder. I have been considering this question very carefully in connection with the practice among some home educating parents of not encouraging their children to study for and sit formal examinations. Cui bono? Who benefits from this action, or perhaps one should more properly describe it as lack of action?

It is fairly plain at once that the person who benefits cannot really be the child. It is hard to think of any benefit or advantage for a child in reaching the age of sixteen without any qualifications. It will make life difficult if she wishes to attend a Further Education College, prospective employers will raise their eyebrows; indeed according to a recent survey, many will not even consider a candidate lacking any GCSEs at all. Some parents say that these examinations can, if required, be taken later by the home educated child. In some cases this is true, but it is hardly an advantage for the child to find himself several years behind his contemporaries in this way. It might perhaps not be a grave disadvantage, but that is the best one can say. Others claim that children can get into college on the strength of portfolios or auditions and this is certainly true if one wishes to study Performing Arts, Photography or Textile Design. It won't usually help for Physics or mathematics. The lack of GCSEs has restricted their life chances and closed off many options. This is a great disadvantage. Even if they would not have chosen the academic pathway in higher education, it would at least be nice if they were given the choice!

If the decision not to sit GCSEs or other similar examinations does not benefit the child, could there be anybody else who might gain an advantage from this peculiar and on the face of it perverse decision? Why yes, there are the parents! For the mother or father of a home educated child there are many advantages to this course of action and no disadvantages at all. Let's look at some of the advantages.

Firstly of course, one does not risk any sort of confrontation with one's child about study. This is a major cause of friction in families where a teenager is at school. Have they done their homework? Why are they going out late on a school night? Do they want to fail their GCSEs and end up working in McDonalds? Acrimonious debates of this sort are a regular feature of life for many parents whose children are at school. Home educate your child and don't trouble with GCSEs and you are free of this at a stroke! That's got to be a good motive. It is also extremely time consuming to teach your child to this level. Not only will you have to spend time doing it during the day, but your evenings will be taken up with preparation of the next days activities. No more relaxing in front of the television or computer once the child is in bed! For a single parent, this aspect of the matter alone can be a deal breaker. There simply will not be enough hours in the day to teach all those GCSEs and also keep on top of all the housework and everything else that needs to be done. Sometimes also, there is a living to be made. It is more practical to allow the child to spend hours browsing the Internet while you get on with your work.

Which would most parents rather do with their children; visit a park with a sketchbook and supply of pastels or stay indoors on a lovely day and learn about covalent bonding of molecules? Wow, this is a hard one! Personally, i think I'd opt for the park. Minor decisions of this sort can also have the effect of easing a child onto the non-academic pathway in life. Most of us would rather spend the day relaxing with our kids like this, rather than working at a table.

It seems clear that for parents there can be many advantages and benefits in not teaching their children to GCSE standard. Since this ties in neatly with the ideology of autonomous education, this becomes a lifestyle which is much easier for parents and can seem, even to them, as a principled decision made in the best interests of their child. In some cases it may well be so, but it is hard to avoid the suspicion that for many it is a justification for a life with children and teenagers which is far less stressful. The only ones who do not benefit from this arrangement in the long term are of course the children themselves.

"This autonomous thing works"

Last week I suggested that there was a need for a new Internet list for home educators, one where parents could get accurate and objective advice from professionals as well as other parents. I said that some of the current lists tend to perpetuate myths, half truths and old wives tales. The title of this post is a thread on the HE-UK list which perfectly illustrates this point.

A mother started this thread, saying that she did not teach her child to write and that he has spontaneously begun to do so. This is heartening. It is indisputable that some children will learn to read and write without instruction, although I doubt it is particularly common. At any rate, this was one such child. The theory behind this type of education was neatly expressed by Paul Goodman in his book Compulsory Miseducation , published in 1962. He said;

"....the puzzle is not how to teach reading, but why some children fail to learn to read. Given the amount of exposure that any urban child gets, any normal animal should spontaneously catch on to the code. What prevents? It is almost demonstrable that, for many children, it is precisely going to school that prevents - because of the school's alien style, banning of spontaneous interest, extrinsic rewards and punishments."

The suspicion must be that this is a pretty hit and miss affair and that many children learn to read and write despite this treatment, rather than because of it. Be that as it may, after the mother had posted her success story, another parent posted sadly, explaining that her son was now thirteen and could only write one word - his own name. I found this shocking, that a child's education could have been so neglected that he was wholly unable to write as a teenager, but not so some others on the list. Here is one response;

"I know of children far older than 13 who don't write, but it hasn't stopped them being successful. Why are you worried about him not writing? "

This leaves me almost breathless with horror. Just to remind ourselves again, this child cannot even form the letters of the alphabet. He can write his own name slowly in capital letters and that is the limit of his writing ability. It is true that many children leave school with poor literacy skills, but I would be surprised to hear of a thirteen year old in a mainstream school who could only write one word. Here is another comment from a helpful mother;

"My son is also 13 and only learnt to read when 10/11. His dad is trying to get him to write but I am convinced that he will do so when it is important to him. He finds it difficult as he has dyslexia and can't spell so has to think very hard to write anything."

This is awful. The child's dyslexia may of course be unconnected with the fact that he did not learn to read until he was ten or eleven and is still unable to write. On the other hand an inability to spell might very well have been caused by, or at the very least exacerbated by this bizarre educational method. It is writing words down and thinking of the correct order of letters which helps young children to spell. They need a lot of practice at this from an early age and if they don't get it, they are apt to be poor spellers as they get older. Even using a keyboard does not help sometimes, especially if they have no idea at all how to spell the words they wish to type. I have seen children like this. The spellchecker hasn't got a clue what they are trying to type and the result is complete gibberish.

Being unable to write is a devastating handicap in later life. Why any parent would set out to inflict this upon a child is a complete and utter mystery to me. One of my uncles was a Gypsy who was unable even to write his own name; he had to sign for his wages with a cross. He had never been to school and his family were also illiterate and so had not taught him to read. Funny really, you'd think that the whole bunch of them would just have picked it up automatically from the printed text which surrounds us, but it didn't happen. I cannot tell readers what menial jobs this restricted him to.

It is quite possible that some children will learn to read and write if given no formal instruction. It is equally certain that many will not. What ails these parents that they would deliberately play Russian Roulette with their children's future prospects in this fashion, I really could not say. And still, some people are puzzled that the DCSF and local authorities wish to check that children are actually learning to read and write.......

Research into the autonomous acquisition of literacy

In a comment on the last piece which I posted here, somebody asked whether I could cite any research in support of my statement that autonomously educated children were often late in learning to read. It is, on the face of it, a fair question. Of course there is no research at all worth mentioning on this subject. Such as there is, does indeed support my contention, of which more later.

One of the main reasons which home educating parents give for not sending their children to school is that they object to the constant testing of children and consequent pressure on them to perform. As a result, many parents have an ambivalent or in many cases downright hostile attitude to the idea of their children taking part in a programme of testing. I am of course talking of this country. Whenever I have mentioned the need for extensive research on this Blog, there are objections to the idea as being unnecessary. Because of this, the only research into autonomously educated children tends to be that carried out by sympathetic types like Paula Rothermel and Alan Thomas. The idea of an educational psychologist testing autonomously educated children en masse would, I suspect, be anathema to most home educating parents.

We are left with very small scale samples made by "believers". There seems to have been no objective survey of this subject by anybody! Again, I think that most parents would object to their children being tested by a professional who was actually opposed to home education. Under these circumstances, it is almost impossible to gather data. I have looked previously at Paula Rothermel's work on literacy among home educated children. Her response was to pull the original work from her website, thus making it impossible for the casual enquirer to check the methodology. Let us look instead at what Alan Thomas says about late reading.

In his book "How Children Learn at Home", he says, "...many children learned to read 'late' by school norms. Resistance to being taught and late reading both featured in the earlier research." The work in "How Children Learn at home" was with twenty six parents. Whenever he quotes one, he uses a number between one and twenty six to identify the speaker. In the section on late reading, he identifies thirteen out of the twenty six parents as being parents of late readers. This is 50%. Most would see that as a pretty high prevalence of late reading.

In previous comments on this Blog, some have tried to fly the idea that because 20% of children do not reach the government's own targets on literacy, this means that 20% is a base line figure for reading difficulties. It is suggested that this is also the figure among autonomously educated children and that it is therefore somehow a "natural" thing that 20% of children should be late in reading or have difficulties with literacy. This is absurd. A figure of 20% with problems in this crucial area of development tells me that the maintained schools in this country are lousy. (Which was of course why I did not send my child to one!) Quite apart from that, without testing the reading abilities of thousands of autonomously educated children, we cannot really compare their reading with those in state schools.

All of the above strikes me as a very good argument in favour of the large scale testing of autonomously educated children in this country. This way, we would be able to find out what is really going on. A lot of home educating families seemed to be very pleased with the DCSF select committee's report on Graham Badman's report. I hope that they would agree with what the committee said in para. 121, "We call on the Department to fund research into the outcomes of autonomous education among a fully representative sample of home educating families." Now that would really be interesting....

Explaining the mystery

As a regular churchgoer, I am every Sunday exposed to a great mystery. A priest waves his hands over a piece of bread and mumbles some incantation and miraculously the host is transformed into something altogether more wonderful than mere flour and water. It has in some sense become the body of Christ. This matter is too deep for a simple man like me and I have at various times asked to have this strange process explained to me. Ultimately, I am told; it is a mystery. One must simply accept that the thing happens and just be jolly glad that it does. Most unsatisfactory for the man of reason!

I am irresistibly reminded of this when trying to get believers to explain to me the essential mystery of autonomous education. The closest that we seem able to get is; "It works and you just have to take people's word for it. If it is measured or observed, then you are apt to destroy the spontaneity of the thing and thus change it!" Now as I say, I am a simple man who is quite prepared to believe improbable things. (After all, if I am able to swallow virgin births and men who come back from the dead, you would think I would have no trouble believing in a little matter like autonomous education. I am like the man in the Bible who swallowed a camel and yet strained at a gnat!)

Almost fifty years ago, Paul Goodman had this to say in Compulsory Miseducation;

"the puzzle is not how to teach reading, but why some children fail to learn to read. Given the amount of exposure that any urban child gets, any normal animal should spontaneously catch on to the code. What prevents? It is almost demonstrable that, for many children, it is precisely going to school that prevents - because of the school's alien style, banning of spontaneous interest, extrinsic rewards and punishments."

Alan Thomas in his books says much the same thing, that the teaching of even so basic a subject as literacy is unnecessary. Children will just pick it up by themselves. Some authors have gone even further. According to John Holt, not only is school not needed for the acquisition of literacy, it can be positively harmful! Both he and Goodman apparently believe that reading problems are actually caused by schools. In other words, they are the disease and not the cure.

For some inexplicable reason, either sheer, bloody minded stubborness or perhaps because they are in thrall to the hidebound orthodoxy of mainstream educationists, almost every teacher, local authority officer and member of staff at the Department of Children, Schools and Families disagree with this perspective. They persist in the belief that it is necessary and desirable that small children are taught how to read. For myself, I remain unconvinced, but open to persuasion. I am unlikely to be persuaded though because Mrs. Smith's son did not go to school and now he reads just fine. Nor am I likely to be swayed by the horror stories of parents whose children have suffered untold misfortunes in maintained schools only to blossom when once they are deregistered. Nor, I'll warrant are those hard headed types at the DCSF likely to change their minds on purely anecdotal evidence of this sort.. They stand there like Mr. Gradgrind, saying, as he did;

" Now what I want are facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else."

(Hard Times, by I am confident enough of my readers' erudition to believe it unnecessary to mention the fact)

Every time somebody offers to examine or measure or look closely at autonomous education, there is a panic. The standard tests are inadequate to do justice to the activity and can even harm it. The local authority are the quite the wrong crowd to be dealing with it. Ofsted are no good, who knows what their motives are? (Of course, strictly speaking it should not matter a damn what the motives are of those doing the testing. I can administer Schonell's reading test to any child and my motives will not affect the outcome.) Essentially, we are told that the thing must be taken on faith and that many parents just know that it works without a lot of tiresome testing. This may be enough for me; as I say I am able to believe a good number of strange and improbable things, but I have a very strong feeling that it will not for much longer be enough for those charged with the monitoring of elective home education. Unless autonomous educators come up with either some solid evidence that this practice is actually educating children, along with some way of assessing the process, then there will soon be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in many home educating families when the provisions of the Children, Schools and Families Bill become law.

More good news for autonomous home educators

There can be few spectacles less attractive than that of a man crowing, "I told you so, you idiots!" Fortunately, I am possessed of sufficient self control that I shall not be yielding to this enormous temptation. Ever since Graham Badman's report was published, excitable people have been claiming that all his recommendations would become law. There was, realistically, little chance for many of them. Badman is not a lawyer and many of his idea were hopelessly impractical, however desirable they might have been. I am surprised that others could not see this. On September 16th I posted a piece asking what changes in the law were likely. I concluded it by saying;

"To summarise, there is a long way to go before anybody needs to get het up about all this. My personal view is that some new legislation would not come at all amiss. I realise that not everyone agrees with me on that point, to say the least of it. But it does not really matter, because the chances of local authorities actually ending up with specific powers about interviewing children alone are negligible."

A number of individuals responded indignantly, telling me in effect that I did not know what I was talking about. I am saying this for a reason, not just as an act of odious and smug self-congratulation for my prescience, (although no doubt there is an element of that). Exactly the same thing is now happening again. People are reading the new guidelines and regulations and imagining that every jot and tittle will be as fixed and immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. It is not so.
Here is an example of the sort of thing which will provide a loophole;

"19E
Monitoring provision of home education to registered children
25
(1)
A local authority in England shall make arrangements with a view to
ascertaining, so far as is reasonably practicable—
(a)
whether the education provided to a child whose details are
entered on their home education register is suitable;"

At once, we focus upon those words, "so far as is reasonably practicable". In other words, there will not be an absolute duty on the local authority at all, only, "so far as is reasonably practicable". What will this mean? Perhaps families who do not co-operate fully with providing a statement of what they intend over the coming year will mean that it is not reasonably practicable to ascertain if their provision is suitable. Possibly awkward customers will not be able to be dealt with for the same reason. At the very least, we know that the local authority has a get out clause which will enable them to slacken off if they feel like it.
Here is another interesting bit;

"(3)
Arrangements made by an authority under this section shall include
arrangements made with a view to their—
40
(a)
holding at least one meeting with the child during the
registration period;"

Note that the law will not state unequivocally that local authorities must meet the child. Rather, they will make arrangements "with a view to" doing so. When laws are framed in this wooly way, there is usually a reason for it. After all, there was nothing to prevent the blunt statement, "The authority will hold at least one meeting with the child".

All the signs are that these regulations have been carefully worded so as to allow the local authorities plenty of space to manoeuvre and not enforce them too rigorously. Add to that the fact that the old School Attendance Order will remain as the primary tool for getting children back to school and that this must be enforced by a court and I can see that very few, if any, home educated children will in the end be forced unwillingly to school.

The middle of the road, Part 2

A week ago I was injudicious enough to post a light hearted piece in which I suggested that at either end of the home education spectrum are groups of fanatics whose opinions are diametrically opposed to each other. I gave it as my view that Ed Balls and his cronies are at one end and autonomously educating parents at the other. I also mused that those like the present writer who remain resolutely in the middle of the road are apt to be run over. Ironically, but quite predictably, I was promptly knocked down by a bunch of autonomous educators who took exception to the thesis advanced, which was that they were by way of being extremists!

The fault is of course entirely mine, because I worded a couple of sentences somewhat elliptically and several readers jumped to the wrong conclusions about what I was saying. Referring to autonomous educators, I said that this group thought that children shouldn't be taught. I cannot really complain about readers being literal minded and failing to read between the lines; I am after all a world class pedant in my own right! What I actually meant to imply was, "This group believe that children shouldn't be taught (as a matter of routine and certainly not unless they actually want to be taught)." I did not for a moment suppose that autonomous educators would actually refuse to teach their children if the kids actually asked to be taught.

Mind you, I have to say that in my experience this is a rather rare occurrence. My own daughter has often asked me to take her to the theatre or buy her various magazines. I do not ever recollect her asking me to explain the failure of the Schlieffen Plan in August 1914 or to teach her about the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915. Perhaps she is a very weird and atypical teenager, but I was obliged to arrange this myself and set times when I would teach her that sort of thing. I have a suspicion that had it been left to her, she would not have come to me and asked to be taught about the six specific themes of World War I which she needed for the IGCSE History; I always had to take the initiative. Perhaps other readers have teenagers who are a little more enthusiastic about stuff like that and do actually ask to be taught about it.

To put the case for there being two groups of extremists involved in home educations, I will say this. The vast majority of people, both parents and teachers, believe that children should be taught regularly and that this teaching should take place according to some sort of plan. I myself believe this. I think most of us would agree that this is the commonly held view. Ed Balls and some of his friends go much further than this and believe that teaching can only take place in schools and that a child not at school is a child not being taught, or at least not being taught properly. I imagine that he has reached this conclusion by some exceedingly faulty induction. I guess that he has said to himself, "Teaching takes place in schools, home educated children are not at school; therefore, home educated children are not being taught." That muffled whirring noise which is faintly audible, is Wittgenstein spinning round like a Catherine wheel in his grave.......

In short, the folk at the DCSF are saying that children need teaching and that parents are not really capable of providing it and that the education of their children will suffer as a consequence.
Autonomous educators seem to be saying precisely the opposite. They seem to be saying, from all that I am able to apprehend, that children do not need to be taught, unless they particularly want to be and that they are in any case quite capable of learning without formal teaching or even any sort of plan. Their views thus differ both from that of the Ed Balls faction and also from most ordinary people. My own views lie between both these extremes and firmly with the majority of normal people. I believe that children need to be taught and that this teaching has to be done in a planned and systematic fashion. I don't think it matters much whether the teaching takes place at home or in a school, although it is easier and more effective to do it at home. And that is why I regard myself as a middle of the road type of home educator who has little patience for the extremists whom one finds on the fringes.

What is a curriculum?

So many autonomously educating parents seem to be vehemently opposed to the very idea of a curriculum, that I think it worth considering what we mean by the expression. A curriculum, at its most basic, is no more than a plan of study. It can be as simple as a list of subjects which will be covered over the next year or so. This is in itself hugely controversial, because of course the Badman report recommends that some such plan be compulsory and many parents are determined to have nothing to do with the idea. It has even been suggested that just giving such a plan would render autonomous education impossible. This seems very strange. Let us have a look at a curriculum and see whether or not it really would have this effect.

Here is a very simple curriculum; English, Mathematics, History, Geography, Science, Art, Music. How could such a curriculum work in practice? Let's look at one subject, Art. This could involve painting, drawing, making models from plasticine, visiting art galleries, looking at books about artists, watching television programmes, the list is endless. Just by doing one or two of those things each week, Art has been covered. What about science? Visits to zoos, keeping and observing an ant farm, hunting for fossils, watching tadpoles grow, going to a museum, attending a lecture, reading a Horrible Science book, watching television. One or two of those activities each week and science is covered. And so it goes on.

Most of these things are already being done by most home educating parents. In other words, the lifestyle and educational techniques used with their children will not have to change in the slightest degree in order to comply with the recommendation for a "Plan of Work". I am guessing that many parents are following a curriculum already, even if they do not call it by that name and have nothing written down. Most of us arrange a programme of event for out children which cover areas like art and music. Few parents fail to read to their children or discuss aspects of science with them. A curriculum like the one above does not tie a parent down to any particular activity or force the child to do anything against her inclinations. There is nothing scary about it, still less is it likely to destroy the fun of the child's learning!

A good thing about a curriculum is that it can act as an aide-memoire, reminding us of what we hope to do each week. It would not of course be a disaster if we missed out on science one week, or spent more time on Music than on History. The curriculum just tells us what we hope to be covering one way or another. I honestly cannot see why so many people are afraid of it.

The Fraser Institute and home education

I have in the past been reproached for not paying enough attention to research on home education, particularly that from North America. I have decided to remedy this by taking a serious look at the paper on homeschooling published by the Fraser Institute in 2001 and expanded and republished in 2007. This piece is often quoted enthusiastically by the advocates of home education. I have to say, I found a very big problem almost as soon as I skimmed through it. For those interested in seeing for themselves, it may be found here;

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/product_files/Homeschooling2007.pdf

At first sight it appears to be a sober and measured overview of home education, with particular emphasis on the USA and Canada. A glance at page 14 will however at once give the game away. It says;

"For example, a three-year study conducted by
researchers at England’s University of Durham found
that home schooled students noticeably out-performed
their public school peers in both literacy and mathematics
(Livni, 2000). "

"England's University of Durham" tells us at once that they are referring to Paula Rothermel's doctoral thesis, but who on Earth are the "researchers" who "conducted a three year study"? Could the mysterious Livni, whom they cite, be one of these researchers? Well, no. Ephrat Livni is in fact a reporter for the ABC News in America. In other words, the authors of this widely quoted study from the Fraser Institute have not actually read Paula Rothermel's work themselves, but instead rely upon what they heard about it on the TV news! How scholarly is that? The truth is of course, that the the work at Durham to which they refer was actually a small-scale piece of research involving thirty five children carried out by an undergraduate. I suppose that talking about "researchers" made it sound more authoritative. They don't even credit Rothermel herself in their references.
The authors go on to say;

"The United Kingdom,
Germany, Japan, and Switzerland are some of the
developed nations with growing home schooling movements
(Billups, 2000)."

Who is Billups, cited as though she were an academic source? That would be Andrea Billups who is a reporter for the Washington Post. And so it goes on. Among the sources for this paper are The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Baltimore Sun, Newsweek, Time Magazine, Washington Post and ABC News. The authors of this much quoted piece of work have evidently not bothered to read a lot of the original work upon which they comment, but have instead relied upon what newspaper reporters and the television news channels have chosen to say about it. Need I say more?

Try and imagine for a moment if I criticised Paula Rothermel's research here and then finished by saying, "Of course I haven't actually read it, but I know what was said about it in the Daily Mail!". To say that I would be heavily censured for expressing any sort of an opinion about the research without actuallybothering to read it for myself is perhaps something of an understatement. I have not the time to go through every one of the references in this piece, but I think that I have shown clearly that this is not really a proper study of the subject of home education. One has to bear in mind of course that a founder member of the Fraser Institute was Friederich Hayek, the economist. The whole organisation is very heavily slanted towards free market principles and the main reason that they are in favour of home education is because is not regulated by the government. Finally, I thought that this sentence from Wikipedia was worth quoting;

"Critics of the Institute and other similar agenda-driven think tanks have claimed the Fraser Institute's reports, studies and surveys are usually not subject to standard academic peer review or the scholarly method"

They got that right!