The origin of the British home education 'movement'; Part 1

We looked yesterday at home education in this country during the early 1970s. There was no home education ‘movement’ or ‘community’ at that time and relations between home educators and local authorities were generally amicable. This was to change dramatically over the next decade or two.


To understand the modern British home education movement, it is necessary to examine its roots, which lie in the Alternative Society of the late 60s and early 70s. Many young people and also a few older ones, felt that traditional society was finished and that the future would consist not of a monolithic, capitalist system, but rather of small communes and self-sufficient farms. The people living in such places would grow their own food, make their own furniture and clothes, treat illnesses without conventional doctors or medicine and, above all, avoid schools like the plague. Schools were seen as being quasi-fascist institutions which indoctrinated children into taking their places as cogs in capitalism’s machine. There were many attempts at this time to set up self-sufficient communities. The television sitcom The Good Life mocks this sort of mentality, which was pretty common in the early 1970s.

In 1972, a man called Stanley Windlass was running a Children’s Rights centre in North London. Children’s Rights were another big thing in those days. The idea was that children were being treated as second class citizens and should enjoy the same rights as adults. This movement too was opposed to schools. Windlass took a lease on a farm near Swindon and set it up as an alternative place, where he could grow organic vegetables and prepare for the collapse of conventional society; long predicted by Marxist ideology and now seemingly imminent. The closest parallel to the mindset of people who followed this pattern of thought is perhaps the present-day American survivalists.

Once he had his farm running, Windlass got in touch with a man called Dick Kitto and offered him a job at Lower Shaw Farm. Kitto had run a project at a school in the north of England, working with what we would today call disaffected pupils. The raising of the school leaving age to sixteen in 1972, had caused a bit of a crisis in some schools. Kitto worked with a group of fifteen and sixteen year-olds, providing an ‘alternative’ education which consisted of visits out and and about and practical work with their hands. Kitto was also a keen organic gardener and believer in complementary medicine. He is best know to day for his book; Planning the Organic Vegetable Garden. He also arranged for John Holt's books to be published in this country and drew attention to Gatto.

The two men shared the same views on education. Roughly, these were that school education was hopeless for practical survival. Instead of teaching children about quadratic equations and the date of the Battle of Waterloo, we should instead be showing them how to grow their own food, weave clothes and treat illnesses without needing doctors. They made contact with a half dozen or so parents who were similarly opposed to conventional education and refused to send their children to school. One of these was Iris Harrison. She shared the belief of Windlass and Kitto that children were better off digging the soil, mending furniture and learning about alternative medicine. None of these parents were at all like the average home educator at that time. All were radical unschoolers who, for various reasons, hated school. Iris Harrison’s husband, for example, had truanted a lot as a boy and felt that he had learned more while truanting than he had in the classroom. The overall feeling of this small group was less pro-home education than it was anti-school. It was from this beginning that Education Otherwise grew. From the very start, those involved were a tiny and unrepresentative minority of British home educators.

I think that we have covered enough for one day. I shall continue the story over the next week or so, tracing the development of the home education ‘movement’ in this country and examining whether it has been a force for good or ill. Before we finish, I think that I should address a few words to those who will dismiss all this as an historical curiosity, with no conceivable relevance for today’s home educators. I would like to point out that the ideology which was current in the 1970s is still going strong among many members of the home educating ‘community’. I shall restrict myself to two examples. Commenting on this blog a few days ago, somebody claimed that;



A person who can make their own clothes, grow, cook and preserve their own food, account for and manage money will have a skillset that is not only saleable but will ensure they can ever after provide for their needs without falling back on the public purse. To me, that is what defines a suitable education.



Here is somebody who still thinks that it is possible in this country to achieve self-sufficiency in food and clothing, just like The Good Life! It would be interesting to meet even the most successful farmer who is able to rely only upon the food which he grows to provide for his needs.

Here is another interesting case which shows that the home education movement in this country still tends towards this Utopian vision. A very well known home educator fled to Ireland last year, because social services were about to take action to protect her children. Readers might have seen the appeal for funds to help her, signed by many prominent figures in British home education. How had she fallen foul of social services? We do not know the full story, but she says it was because:



A few months ago I shamefully attended a meeting about how to obtain Organic Food, leaving my young children in the care of their 17yr old brother,



There is of course more to it than that, but it just had to involve ‘organic food’…

The origins of Education Otherwise and a major strand of British home education

British home education may be roughly divided into two major strands. These may not inaptly be called the sensible and silly movements. Over the last week or two, we have mainly been looking at the silly movement; founded  by the sort of people who would advise their children to shoot local authority officers, rather than show them what they have been doing lately in history or mathematics. (I think Iris Harrison knows who we’re talking about here!) Many of these early and high profile home educators were associated with, or were fellow travellers of, the so-called ’Children’s Rights’ movement in the early 1970s.


Before we go any further, here is a question for modern home educators. What sort of irresponsible lunatic would say that it is fine for an eight year-old girl to have sex with a grown man? Can nobody guess? Here’s a clue, it is the same person who also thought that children should be allowed to take heroin if they wished, work in factories, vote at the age of six and drive cars at literally any age at all. I am surprised that some readers did not get the answer to this! It was of course that great ideologue and founding father of home education; John Holt.

I know that I have talked before of John Holt and his mad beliefs, but last night I re-read his masterpiece; the book in which he sets out his vision for the future of childhood. This book, Escape from Childhood, E. P. Dutton 1974, is a vision of hell. Children are working in factories and mines, rather than being educated; they are drinking alcohol and using heroin; having sex with adults as and when they feel like. This then is John Holt’s Utopia, his vision of the ideal childhood. Not going to school is only a small part of this new world that he envisages and urges us to bring into being.

John Holt was writing from the same perspective as many of those in this country who became known as militant home educators in the 1970s, the sort of people who founded Education Otherwise. I am not at all sure that those today who speak enthusiastically of John Holt really know what he was up to and the things that he believed. This is relevant to home education in this country today, because the ideas that he espoused are still going strong among some parents. We shall be looking into this in detail in future posts and trying to distinguish this type of political or ideological home educator from the more traditional ones; those whose interest in home education is purely… educational.

Children’s rights

We looked yesterday at New World Order ideology. Today, I wish to consider one aspect of this theory and how it has permeated, one might almost say contaminated, British home education and those connected with it in any capacity.

In the early 1970s, I was very heavily involved in the Children’s Rights movement in this country. For some of us who went to school during the fifties and were teenagers in the sixties, the helplessness of children was an absolute scandal. They could be beaten without any legal redress by parents and teachers and any adult who wished could strike them a passing blow with impunity. It was not uncommon for park keepers or even bus conductors to hit children and they had no legal remedy. In many ways, their position was almost that of slaves in the eighteenth century. Gradually, this changed and a good thing too. One area where these changes are currently being opposed in Britain is in the field of home education.

I mentioned yesterday that one of the big things with American home educators was ’parental rights’. This means, among other things, the right of parents to hit their children whenever they want. This is an important issue in the USA. Another aspect is the right of parents to allow their children to carry and use firearms. Both these ’rights’ would be under threat if America ratified the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child. The USA and Somalia are the only countries in the world which have not ratified this treaty. Home educators in America, of which there could be as many as two million, are among the most vociferous opponents of the UNCRC.

This attitude has crossed the Atlantic and is now prevalent among British home educators as well. Perhaps it has something to do with the Internet and the ease with which crazy ideas are able to travel the world so readily these days. At any rate, British home educators are also very keen now on their ’rights’. Parental ’right’ to home educate has become a big thing on the home education scene here. I have quite a different perspective on this and I rather think that my own viewpoint was more common twenty years ago than it is now. It is based upon the idea of children’s rights, which has, as I mentioned above, been very important to me for forty years or so. When my daughter was little, she had the right to the best possible education which I was capable of providing for her. If I was able to provide the best education at home, then I had a duty to do this; no matter what sacrifices this entailed my making. If on the other hand, I was unable or unwilling to provide a decent education at home and a local school could give her a better education, then my duty was to send her there. Where ’parental rights’ entered into all this, I really could not say. This was my duty.

Reading the 2007 guidelines for local authorities on home education is very revealing. A child’s right to education is mentioned only once in this document, but the parents’ right to home educate rates five mentions. Interesting, no? Government pronouncements on home education these days always talk of parents’ ‘right to home educate’. I suppose that this is in keeping with the spirit of the age. We are all very concerned now that nobody’s rights are infringed and if we fail to acknowledge the parental right to home educate, then who knows? Perhaps they will be bringing a case against us under the Human Rights Act? This is a disgustingly craven way for the government to behave. The reason that they are so keen to emphasise parents’ supposed rights in this matter is that it is the parents, as adults, who will cause trouble. They are the people who must be fawned around and placated. You will notice that there is ten times more talk of parents’ right to home educate whenever anybody is talking about this subject, than there is of children’s rights to education. This is awful and it is a definite step backwards, as least as far as children’s rights are concerned.

As I say, this kind of thinking has drifted over here from the USA. It is popular with both right wing Christians and New World Order nuts; both of whom are over-represented on the American home educating scene. I am horrified to see British parents adopting this reactionary viewpoint and look forward to the day when a more progressive stand is taken on the matter and children’s rights move to the centre of the debate on home education, where they belong.