Fewer American home educators motivated by religion

Interesting piece from the National Centre for Education Statistics in the USA, suggesting that only 16% of home educating parents in America now have religion as their primary motivation for educating their children at home:

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-10/fewer-home-school-families-cite-religion-their-main-motivation

An American perspective on home education

I thought readers might be interested in this blog, which is written by an American who was herself home educated. It gives an insight into the world of American home education.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/homeschooling

Home education in America

I am always interested to read about home education in the USA, because a lot of the time it is so very different from the scene in this country. Possibly because there are so many more home educated children in America, compared with here, the death rate is considerably higher; to the extent that most months one reads of  home educated children killed by their parents, often after hideous abuse. Here are a couple of  examples in the last few  weeks:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/mother-murder-adopted-daughter-freeze


http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=9265022


One of the things one notices about many of the American cases is that they have strong similarities. The two cases above are good instances. The first common theme is that the kids being killed are either black or from other ethnic minorities. The second is the number who are not the natural children of those who murder them, but are instead fostered or adopted. The final point which one sees very frequently is that the killers claim to be Christians. I’m sure that readers will soon turn up any number of such cases with these features if they look around a bit.

The reason that I am interested in this phenomenon is that although there are few  deaths of this sort in the United Kingdom, we most of us know that where America leads in trends; this country tends to follow.  As I said, very few cases of the abuse or murder of home educated children occur in the United Kingdom, but of those which do, there are some faint indications that ethnic minority children are more likely to be the victims than are white children. There aren’t of course enough cases to draw any conclusion yet, but that may well be because there are perhaps forty or fifty times as many home educated children in America as there are here. I would be interested to know what would happen if the numbers of home educated children in the United Kingdom rose substantially.

More about home education and worries about child abuse

Commenting here yesterday, some mischievous fool wrote;

'if the LAs can claim control of >90% of HE kids, they'll have big bragging rights - and that translates into power, glory and money.'

This must surely be the most stupid thing that anybody has ever said  on this blog and the competition for that unenviable distinction is pretty stiff! Let us try to see why local authorities really appear to be hounding certain home educators and what those parents can do to avoid being, as they see it,  harassed.

I mentioned a case of abuse yesterday that involved home educated children. Predictably, most of those commenting here could not see the problem. This is in stark contrast to everybody who is not a home educator; that is to say the other 99.9% of the population. Every parent of a child at school who reads that story can see precisely why some professionals are concerned about home education. Let me give another example and see if readers will get the point. On some home education lists, parents who do not want to be known to their local authority have said that one way they avoid this is by not registering their children with a GP. Some talk of moving from one area to another and leaving no forwarding address for their old LA. Combining this with not registering with a doctor, means that they can stay ‘under the radar’, as home educating parents call it. Here is an experiment that any reader can try. Tell some parent with a child at school that you know somebody who keeps their child at home, not sending her to school. Now explain that this parent is so desperately keen that nobody find out about this, that she refuses to register her child at a GP. What do you suppose that any ordinary parent will make of this? Try it and see. I have so far found 100% rate of parents who think that the parent behaving in this strange way must be trying to conceal something that is going on with her child.  Why else would she jeopardise her child’s health in this way?

This is an instance of what I am talking about. To many home educators, this sort of thing is perfectly normal and understandable; to the rest of the world, it is sheer lunacy and probably indicates something very wrong in a family. Things get even worse when you ask social workers and health professionals about this kind of profile. Unfortunately, moving from one area to another with a child and then trying to lose the kid’s records by not leaving a forwarding address for a local authority education department, combined with keeping the child from school and failing to register with a GP is classic behaviour of an abusive parent. It is textbook stuff, which would set alarm bells ringing all over the place if it came to light. I don’t want to debate the rights and wrongs of this; I am simply telling readers that this is the  unmistakable footprint of an abuser.

The problem here of course is that those home educators who carry on in this mad way are almost certainly not abusers. However, if you set out to mimic the lifestyle and behaviour of a certain type of criminal, then you really cannot be surprised if you are mistaken for the real thing! If I put on a mask to conceal my face and start prowling around back streets in the small hours, then I can hardly complain when the police mistake me for a genuine burglar or potential rapist.

Essentially, what is happening is this. A group of people, most of whom are quite innocent, are deliberately setting out to imitate the lifestyle and adopt the actions of abusive parents. In the process, they waste everybody’s time by generating hundreds, perhaps thousands of false positives; each of which must be investigated. Having set out in this way to do their best to fit into the classic profile of serious abusers, they squeal their heads off when those coming into contact with them sometimes mistake them for the real thing. Idiots! They are the architects of their own misfortune and I have little sympathy for them. I have a great deal of sympathy for the poor devils whose professional duty entails sifting through all this chaff to find the wheat. Their job is made immeasurably more difficult by these antics and then on top of it, some clown suggests that they are checking  these silly parents for the ‘power, glory and money’! Why, you damned fool,  they are doing their job and attempting to find out who is the real abuser among these identical cases and which are just irritating, middle class parents playing silly buggers.

Using Einstein's name

Almost sixty years after his death, Einstein’s name is still a very potent one. Advocates of this or that belief still feel that it is in some way a trump card to claim that Einstein supported their views. The implication is clear; if the world’s greatest brainbox agreed with me, who are you to argue? We see both theists and atheists using the great man’s name to support their positions on religion and Einstein is even quoted as a secret believer in such strange ideas as telepathy and ESP. Forty years ago, when Velikosky’s mad book Worlds in Collision enjoyed a vogue among the less well intellectually endowed, much was made by the publisher of the fact that when he died, Einstein had a copy of this book on his death; as though that in some way endorsed Velikovsky’s theories. Einstein’s name is even used to sell things. I am sure that some readers have come across the Baby Einstein products, designed for those who wish to accelerate their baby’s development.


It was inevitable that home educators would latch on to this trend and try and pretend that Einstein was one of their own! You will regularly see him in lists of famous people who were home educated and a company in America even sells a tee-shirt printed with the slogan, ‘Einstein was home schooled’. He wasn’t of course, but a few days ago we saw people here trying to show that Einstein was in fact an autonomous learner. This is true as far as it goes. Many bright children at school have always  pursued  interests outside the academic curriculum and this is still the case today. Those commenting though went a little further than this and suggested that Einstein learned most of his mathematics and physics at home by himself and that he was somehow a supporter of home education and an opponent of schools. This is less certain.

What we must bear in mind when considering Einstein’s views on schools is that he attended school in Germany during the 1880s and 1890s. This was not a good time for a restless and brilliant intellect to be in one of that country’s schools. The educational system was hugely restrictive and independent thought was discouraged. Einstein’s dislike of formal schooling was rooted deeper than that though. At the age of five he, a Jew, was sent to a Catholic primary school. There was a great deal of anti-Semitism about at that time in Germany and the child experienced the full brunt of it. During a lesson about Jesus’ life, for instance, the teacher handed round six inch long nails and asked the children to consider what it would be like to have these hammered through their ankles and wrists. He then told them that the Jews had caused this to be done to Jesus; whereupon all eyes in the class turned to the little Jewish boy. It is hardly to be wondered at that Einstein grew up with a bad feeling about school!

Like all children, Einstein’s home background played a great part in his later academic success. He was given a book on calculus at the age of twelve and his family used to talk a lot about various topics. There can be little doubt that this conversation served to stimulate the child and awaken his interest in mathematics and physics. Whether this would have been sufficient education in itself, without the teaching he received at school, is doubtful.

I was accused on the thread where this was being discussed of ignoring the points which were made, but this was only because I am not sure really what the points were. Einstein went to school and learned about mathematics and physics. He hated school and felt that his family stimulated his interest in these subjects more than the school did. This was without doubt true. It is still true today. The family attitude to education and learning is of far greater importance than the school attended. It is so and always has been.

I saw nothing controversial in what was said about Einstein and so did not feel the need to dispute any of it. If anybody feels that Einstein’s life, education or later opinions about the schooling which he received has anything useful to tell us about home education, then I would be pleased to hear it.

How well do home educated children do academically?

We looked yesterday at a ‘briefing paper’ about the proposed Welsh law on home education. This was designed to bamboozle education professionals into believing that there is good evidence that home education in this country is likely to lead to strong academic outcomes. One of the ways that this was done was to talk of a page on a website intended specifically for home educated children’s examination results and then pretend that these were the achievements of members of one home educating support group. We also saw evidence from the USA which apparently tended to suggest that home educated children did well academically and were more likely to go to college and university than schooled children. This is also implausible and for much the same reason.


The research quoted in the ‘briefing paper’ yesterday was that conducted by Larry Rudner and Brian Ray. Although extensive, it suffered from the same disadvantage as the statistics from the British website; that is to say, it was all self-selected. One sees at once the problem. Those volunteering to take part in such research are those for whom home education has been a success. Those who remain semi-literate after ten years of home education are unlikely in the extreme to offer to take part in any project looking at academic achievement. What is needed is a large group of young people, some of whom have been to school and others of whom have been home educated, so that we may compare their academic levels. Such a study has in fact been running in America for over ten years and the data from this provides a far more realistic and objective measure of the educational quality of home education than anything produced by Rudner or Ray.

Those wishing to attend college or university in the United States sit either the American College Testing assessment or the Scholastic Aptitude Test; the ACT or SAT. These measure such things as English, including reading ability, science and mathematics. Since the late 1990s, those taking these tests have been asked if they were educated at home. Of course, in a sense, this too is a self selected sample consisting only of those wishing to attend college, but that too reveals interesting information, as we shall see.

The first thing that one notices is that although home educated children taking these tests do tend to be slightly ahead of those who went to school, the differences are not dramatic. The ACT is scored from 1 to 36. The average schooled pupils score is 21, but home educated teenagers come in a little higher at almost 23. It gets really interesting when you break down the individual components of the scores. Home educated kids are quite a bit ahead on English, especially reading. This is not surprising really, since they spend much of their time in the company of adults; one would expect them to be more articulate and have a better vocabulary than those who spend their days in the company of other children. There is no difference at all in science and in mathematics, the home educated children lagged noticeably behind those who had been to school.

Another point to consider is that the proportion of home educated teenagers applying to go into further education seemed to be less than expected, given the numbers. In other words, it looks as though home educated children in America are less not more likely to go to university.

Of course, these figures must be treated with caution, but they are never the less intriguing. They do seem to suggest that the educational advantages of home education are not quite as pronounced as some would have us believe. The teenagers might have greater vocabularies, but they are worse at mathematics. There is no discernible advantage in science. The fact that a lower proportion of home educated children than expected is applying to go to university is also worth thinking about. This all gives a far more balanced picture of home education than one normally gains from looking at research financed by people like the HSLDA.

More about the monitoring of home education

When I wrote recently on this topic, I was surprised to find that there was broad agreement about many points. Here are a few more points with which few home educators will disagree. First, there will always be cases of cruel or abusive people mistreating or even murdering their children. Most of these children are at school and a few are home educated. Such abusers can be very cunning and a brief visit once a year will almost certainly miss some of these wicked parents.


A second point is that annual visits for every home educating family is an expensive and not particularly effective way of keeping an eye on the situation. To give an example, one need only look at my own case. Essex County Council chose to involve themselves and start visiting our home when my daughter was eight. We live in Loughton and their office is in Colchester. Each visit entailed a seventy mile round trip for the woman. By the time my daughter was thirteen and taking IGCSEs, it was clear to both us and the local authority that such visits were a waste of their time and ours. There are many similar cases. This sort of thing is not a good use of resources.

On the other hand, I do not believe that we should just assume that every parent is capable of undertaking this civic duty. Just as somebody who volunteers to undertake the duty of policing, as special constables do, is required first to demonstrate his or her fitness to undertake the task; so to with those who would educate a child. The easiest way to assess the suitability for exercising this duty is for somebody from the local authority to make an initial visit to the home and speak to both the parent and child. In this way, I would guess that a chat and a look around the home would make it clear that a large proportion of those parents were quite capable of taking on this duty. The remaining people, I am thinking a ballpark figure of perhaps 10% to 20% could be offered the choice of continuing to home educate with some involvement and monitoring by the local authority or, if they declined, a School Attendance Order would be issued.

Of course, such a rough and ready method would result in some unfit parents being overlooked and other perfectly capable parents being offered closer supervision. On the whole though, I think that this would work better than the current system, where some parents are never seen at all. The beauty of a system like this is that it would require no new legislation. All that would be necessary would be for local authorities to tell parents that they could not be convinced that a suitable education was taking place without visiting their home. Of course, parents have no duty in law to comply with this and those that refused would automatically be issued with a School Attendance Order.

I have an idea that a system of this sort would sift out quite a few parents who are not really educating their children, while leaving the 80% or so who are to get on with the job without any interference. For those who doubt that it would be possible to judge in the course of a two hour or so visit, which parents and homes were suitable for the education of a child; there are various strong indicators. The presence of many books is one. A home with no books on display is almost certainly a home where parents are not valuing learning and education. This would be easily spotted within the first few minutes of a visit.

Mangling the English language; using plain words when writing about home education

Readers were probably as amazed as I was to read S. L.'s comment here a few days ago, when she rebuked me for wreaking 'havoc and ill-repute upon the goodly cause of HE'. Why on earth, they might have been justified in asking, was this person writing English in a style which would not have looked out of place in The Duchess of Malfi? The answer is simple. For some reason, many home educators habitually write in a very strange way. Admittedly, not all sound as astonishingly weird as S.L., but many still manage to sound pretty peculiar when commenting on lists and forums or submitting evidence to select committees. They use a very stilted and slightly archaic style, as though they fear that using plain English will make them appear ignorant or naive. In fact of course, this sort of writing creates precisely the opposite effect.

I think that part of the problem is that parents feel that they have to write in a formal or 'posh' way when communicating with officials or saying anything about education. Perhaps they think that ministers, civil servants and teachers will look down on them if they write just as they speak. This is not so; the best written English is natural and unforced. I call this sort of language that so many home educators use as their written medium, 'ill-educated formal', as it is popular with people who do not really know how to express themselves or convey their ideas and so fall back on jargon or long and half-understood words. Mike Fortune-Wood provides some brilliant examples of this. We recall with pleasure one particularly pompous letter which he wrote, which included the phrase 'it ill behoves yourselves'! Perhaps I am doing him an injustice; maybe he speaks to his wife over the breakfast table in this way, although I am inclined to doubt it.

I recently came across the best example of this sort of thing that I have ever seen when reading about home education and felt that I simply had to share it with a wider audience. It is, regrettably, written by people from a university, who really ought to know better. The original document may be found here:

http://edyourself.org/research/primaryfuture.pdf

I want to look at one paragraph of this document, because it encapsulates what I have been saying about the forced and inelegant use of language which one often sees when people are writing about home education. My own opinion is that this is not really English at all, although it contains so many loan words from that language that it appears on the face of it to be a passage of English. Let us look at this paragraph, The authors are talking about different kinds of home educating parents in this country:

One substantial and growing group is comprised of those who have abandoned formal schooling because they believe it to be too constrained by the imperatives of performativity and the curriculum limitations imposed on the cultivation of the imagination in consequence thereof. In this group are parents who wish to see a greater emphasis on cultural and aesthetic engagements as well as those who want to see the world brought into learning in an unselfconscious way. What many home schooling families share across their political, religious and cultural differences (and indeed something shared with small school movements) is a significant emphasis on engagement with story. Moreover, there are many home school resource providers who offer curriculum materials that meet nationally determined targets. Most are values-based,

This truly is so dreadful that it has a weird kind of beauty! What can they mean by the 'imperatives of performativity'? One supposes that they mean that children at school are made to demonstrate what they know, to 'perform' in other words. The problem is that the word which they have used 'performativity' has a very precise technical meaning which does not fit this context at all. I think that they have used it because they think it looks grander and more impressive than simply saying 'performing' or 'performance'. What about, 'a significant emphasis on engagement with story.' Does this actually convey any meaning? I know what curriculum materials are which meet nationally determined targets; this is stuff which ties in with the National Curriculum. But how do such materials differ when they are 'values-based'? What about 'in consequence thereof' ? Do these people really not know how hideous and contorted this sounds? Why not 'because' or 'as a result' ?

There is something about the whole subject of home education which seems to attract poor writing and execrable English. Parents can make a start in tackling this by avoiding words like 'thereof' and 'whereby' when they are writing about it; words that no normal human being uses in ordinary speech. When one sees academics like those above writing in this way, it almost looks as though the battle is lost. With examples like this, no wonder ordinary home educating parents are coming on here and writing about 'goodly causes' and 'havoc and ill-repute'!