Smoke and mirrors in informal education

The type of home education to which my daughter was subjected is that popularly known as ‘hot housing’; whereby the intellectual development of a child is ‘forced’ by intensive stimulation according to a programme devised by the parent, almost invariably the father. She was reading fluently at two and took IGCSEs earlier than is usual. This kind of approach has been contrasted unfavourably with the more relaxed and laid back way adopted by those who believe in  informal, child-led education. I want to look at two cases of how this latter kind of education is represented by those who undertake it, one of them very well known.  I will not use real names, but both the parents involved are well known in home educating circles, having  appeared in newspapers and on television and radio. Both are fierce opponents of monitoring and advocates of autonomous education.


A few years ago, I expressed certain views on home education in the Times Educational Supplement. Among other things, I said:

Many autonomous educators are dismissive about GCSEs and A-levels, saying, “They can be taken later.” However, without at least five GCSEs at C or above, a teenager will find it all but impossible to get into college or sixth form to study for A-levels.

Before we continue, yes I am aware that an autonomously educated child might choose to take GCSEs, but this is not at issue here. The point is that I am suggesting that without GCSEs, it will be difficult to get a place at college. A rebuttal was written of this piece, which said:

XXXX, now completing a biomedical research PhD, was autonomously educated from birth until he went to college, aged 14, to take A- levels.

Since this is being written to refute my own claim about the necessity of GCSEs, the impression is that this boy got into college to study A levels without needing GCSEs. I thought when first I heard this story that there was something deeply fishy about it, as who would not; of which, more later.

Here is another case of autonomous education. A child who taught himself to read for the intrinsic motivation of the process. He needed to read to pursue his hobby and so at the age of six, he ‘picked it up’. How much better than my own mad scheme of teaching a two year-old with flash cards! This is a natural type of learning, where the whole thing is initiated by the child himself. From a newspaper report:

he didn't want to start learning to read until he was six, and has rejected the system of phonics which is used in many schools. XXXX was not forced to read, but instead started to pick it up when he realised it would be useful for him to learn about other things.

There now, the wonders of a child-led approach. It really does seem that it is not necessary to teach a child to read; he can just pick it up on his own! Fancy me fussing around with flash cards when my daughter was two, rather than just letting her develop at her own pace!

Now for the missing elements in these two accounts. I feel a bit like one of those spoilsports who explains how some baffling magic trick was performed, so those who wish to retain their illusions should look away at this point.  For several years, those like me who suggested that home educated children without GCSEs would find it hard to get into college were referred to the case of the boy mentioned above, who got a place at college to take A levels at the age of fourteen. You see, it can be done! There's me, getting my daughter to sit IGCSEs early; all quite unnecessary. The part which we were not told when this particular account was going the rounds was that this boy’s mother had arranged for him to take GCSEs years before he started at college. He took his first GCSE at the age of twelve. This fact was somehow left out of the anecdote until it had been circulating on the internet and in newspapers for several years.

As for the boy who taught himself to read; this is on the face of it a classic case of intrinsic, rather than extrinsic motivation for learning. He was eight when the article appeared in the newspaper. Six years earlier, when he was two, his mother had actually taught him to read systematically in precisely the same way that I hot housed my daughter; by the use of flash cards of numbers and letters. Here is a lesson from January 29th, 2004

http://www.evilsusan.com/susan/Recording3.mp3

Here is one from five days later, where he is being taught to recognise individual letters:

http://www.evilsusan.com/susan/kitalphabet.mp3


Anybody think that this teaching, four years before he ‘started to pick it up’ might have had some bearing on his learning to read?

Many of the cases of informal and child-led education that one hears about are similar to this. Crucial bits are left out of the story and the result is a misleading account of a child getting into college without GCSEs or teaching himself to read. I wonder whether any of those who comment here can guess the motivation for these deceptions? It is not a sinister one and if nobody can hit upon it, then I shall post another piece on this subject in a few days time.

Progressive education

For most of recorded history, the formal education of children entailed an adult teaching a body of knowledge or skills to those a good deal younger than himself. Perhaps the earliest reference we have to schooling of this kind comes from a clay tablet unearthed in Nippur, in Iraq. Dating from around 1700 BC, it says;

The man in charge of Sumerian said: 'Why didn't you speak Sumerian?' He caned me. The teacher said: 'Your handwriting is unsatisfactory.' He caned me. I began to hate learning...

Sounds a lot like my own school days!

There were experiments with other methods of education, especially from the late eighteenth century onwards and including places like Summerhill, but until the 1960s, most schools remained pretty much the same as they had been in Victorian times and before. Rows of children, sitting at desks, facing the front and being handed knowledge by the teacher in charge. No nonsense about the teacher as friend, guide or facilitator; this was the teacher as pedagogue. Those of us who were at school in the 1950s will remember classes of over forty primary school children being taught in this way; all sitting quietly at their desks, copying down what had been written on the blackboard.

The 1960s saw many changes in society. The legalising of homosexuality and abortion, the pill, abolition of censorship, increased freedom of young people and of course enormous changes in the way that schools were run. These changes were part of the revolution which was taking place generally in society at that time. The scrapping of the 11+, the introduction of new and informal methods to primary schools, these are the kind of things I am talking about as regards schools. The changes to primary schools were especially dramatic. Many schools chucked out the desks and arranged the classrooms with small groups sitting around tables. Everything became a lot less formal. Much of what was happening in schools at that time was known by the general term of 'progressive' education.

It is important to realise that the motivations which prompted these changes to the traditional classrooms and teaching methods were philosophical rather than empirical. I mean by this that it was not that objective observers studied what was happening in schools and concluded that the techniques used there were not working. Instead, it was noticed that schools were still being run in a very old fashioned and authoritarian way and this seemed to be increasingly at odds with the changes taking place in the rest of society. The feeling was that it would be nicer if children could stop being regimented and made to sit quietly in rows and if they, like others in sixties society, were allowed more freedom for self expression. Thus did 'progressive' education begin to take over British schools.

From this progressive educational movement grew many of the teaching methods which are common today in schools. Collaborative learning, discovery learning, enquiry-based learning; all these flourished as a result of the ideas which became popular in the 1960s. A lot of the child centred teaching methods used by home educators had their roots too in this period. As I said above, the adoption of all these techniques was not a result of any sort of educational research or evidence that the old, didactic methods had been found wanting. Rather, it was an ethical and philosophical decision because many people felt that it was wrong to boss children about so much and make them sit still while adults taught them. It is important to understand this distinction and not to muddle up the ethical basis for child centred educational methods with any supposed educational benefits. This is not to say that there are no such benefits, but if there are, then these are definitely by way of being a by-product of the whole business.

As I have pointed out recently, questions are now being asked in some quarters about the efficacy of progressive educational methods. Some evidence is emerging which suggests that these methods may not be as effective as straightforward, old-fashioned teaching. Anybody who has watched 'collaborative learning' in action in a classroom setting will readily understand these concerns. It is not uncommon in a primary school to see an entire morning wasted on letting a group of ten year olds find out which substances will float and which will sink in a tank of water. The huge amount of time wasted in some of these episodes puts British children at a great disadvantage educationally compared with the children in some other European countries where more traditional teaching is the norm.

In any debate about unschooling, child centred learning, natural learning, autonomous education, enquiry-based learning and other strands of the progressive education movement, it must always be borne in mind that the motivation behind these things has always been social and ethical, rather than educational. If progressive education were a great improvement in terms of education alone, then we would by now be reaping the fruits of it in a big way. That this does not seem to have happened is causing an increasing number of professionals in the field to start scratching their heads and asking what the educational benefits have been of this revolution.