I have remarked before on some of the ways that typical home educators in America differ from many of those in this country. I want to look today at this in the light of a fundamental difference in viewpoint, a difference which I find a little disturbing. This is the emphasis place in the USA on the rights of parents, as though these rights were somehow different from and in some ways opposed to the rights of children. I have been thinking about this because of the names on the application to the European Court of Human Rights which is being made in connection with Dominic Johansson. The representatives named are Ruby Harrold-Claesson, Roger Kiska and Michael Farris. All three of these people are strong advocates of parental rights.
Perhaps the main strand in American home education is that of Christians who choose not to send their children to school. They tend to achieve excellent academic results because the main motivation for educating their own children is in fact education. There is another reason that they choose this lifestyle and that is that they often feel that schools are attacking the family and taking away or diminishing the rights of parents. The perception here is that the family should be the basic unit of society and that the state should not be involved except as a last resort. The Bible of course sets out the family as the ideal way for people to live and this means one man and one woman raising their children together. They are answerable to God, but nobody else. I tend to agree with this view in many ways: certainly one of the motivations for educating my own child was religious.
In Europe, the trend is for the emphasis to be on the rights of the child. This means that from the modern European perspective, if a parent wishes to spank a child or take her to church, for example, these things must only happen with the consent of the child. many feel that this is harming the structure of the family, that it means that the state is intruding into the family and getting between the parent and child. This is a big issue for American home educators at the moment, because they are worried about the implications of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child. This would, if ratified in the USA, outlaw corporal punishment and allow children to refuse to follow their parents' religion. It is also bound up with the idea of sex education and gun ownership in the USA, both very hot topics.
I was surprised to see that people who are very active in this campaign against implementing the UNCRC on the papers for the European Court of Human Rights. Obviously, one connection is that both they and the Johanssons are Christians. This would give a powerful motive for helping a Christian family who are fighting state interference in their family life. I wonder though if this case is also being used by the American groups as a way of fighting against the idea of the erosion of Parents' rights as they see them? Again, there would be nothing wrong with this as such, but it is something which I would like to know a little more about.
The problem which I have with the American perspective on all this is the same that many have in Europe. Children have rights. They have a right not to be beaten or starved, they have a right not to be sexually abused, they have a right to their own religious beliefs. This is the legal situation in Europe, not some abstract principle. If I were to compel my child to follow my own religion or wished to hit her, then I would be on dubious ground from several points of view. Not the least of these is that I do not believe for a moment that the Bible enjoins me to ride roughshod over my child's rights. In other words, the idea that my daughter's rights could ever have been opposed to mine is absurd, both from a legal and religious point of view. Proverbs 22:6 says, 'raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it'. I took this instruction quite literally and felt it my duty to teach my own child. My duty, by the way, not my right. I also believed that as Proverbs 1:7 says, 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom'. For that reason, I felt that I had a duty to teach my child about God and to help her to become familiar with the Bible. Again, this was a duty. I did not have a right to impose my own belief upon her or force her to attend church.
It is this distinction between duties and rights that seems to be so very hard for many people to grasp. In the USA home educators are pretty sure of the matter: parents have rights and these take precedence over the supposed rights of the state when it comes to their children. Have a look at a group founded by Michael Farris called parentalrights.org and you will find that even the right of parents to allow their children access to firearms if being firmly defended!
I never supposed for a moment when my daughter was small that I had any rights at all over her. She is a human being; nobody owns another person. I had instead duties which I was required to fulfil. Some of those duties were laid upon me by the state, but other and greater duties had been given to me by the Lord. Among these duties were to teach her right from wrong and try to help her become wise. It was a pretty raw deal really, because all I had was a big bunch of duties and no rights. When she was little, my daughter had many rights but no duties. Things change though as a child grows and she also gradually acquired duties. The idea that parents' 'rights' should have any role at all in the debate on home education is a very strange one and I hope that the Johansson case is not the start of some sort of campaign of this sort. It is because of the implications of this case and due to the fact that people like the Alliance Defense Fund and the HSLDA are becoming involved in the affair that I felt that I had a right to express an opinion about this . I feel pretty strongly about this distinction between rights and duties and if there is going to be any debate about the rival merits of parents' rights and children's rights then I would like to see it take place openly.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Why is Dominic Johansson still in foster care?
I think that I might now be getting some idea of what this whole case is actually about. Those following it will perhaps have seen that the lawyer engaged by the Johanssons has been banned from acting for Dominic. Scandal! She is a 'top human rights lawyer' according to some sites. In fact she is nothing of the sort. She isn't even a lawyer. Her name is Ruby Harrold-Claesson and her main interest in life seems to be spanking. She is so enthusiastic about this that four years ago she flew to the other side of the planet to try and persuade the New Zealand government that it was a bad idea to prohibit smacking. The organisation which flew her to New Zealand is called Family Integrity and they are also heavily into spanking. I say spanking; ritual child abuse would be a better way to describe it. They advocate 'driving out foolishness' from children by fifteen minute 'discipline' sessions. Yes, that's right, beatings which last for a quarter of an hour! I have to say, I would not allow such a person into my home, never mind engage her as my child's lawyer. You can read a bit about her here;
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2007/04/02/who-is-ruby-part-ii/
She has done some work with families in Sweden who have had their children taken into care. All these families had one thing in common; they believed in hitting their children as a form of discipline and this is why they lost their children. It is this strange woman whom Christer Johansson is determined to have to represent his son. The Swedish courts don't want her to do so, partly because she is very evangelical about spanking and also because she is not a member of the Swedish bar. (Try googling her name together with smacking or spanking. She has written a lot of really interesting stuff about how good it is to hit children.)
How is this relevant to the matter of Dominic Johansson? You have to bear in mind that a great deal of the fuss about this case is coming from the United States. Specifically, a lot of it is from right wing Christian homeschooling groups. Many of these are fervent believers in spanking and regard any attempt to ban the practice as an infringement of their rights. In fact a lot of these characters believe that the Bible instructs them to hit their children. I can only say that my view of scripture is a little different! The Johanssons are of course very devout Christians themselves and a lot of sites are soliciting prayers for them. Many of these same sites also carry pro-spanking messages. It is curious that a peculiar woman like Ruby Harrold-Claesson, a woman who blames all modern society's ills upon the lack of spanking in so many countries, should have been the lawyer of choice for the Johanssons. Do they themselves believe in hitting children? I don't know, but if so, this would certainly put them in the sights of Swedish courts and social workers.
There is a clue to this business that somebody might want to follow up. The opposition to Christer and Annie Johansson's home education of their son was not completely random. On a blog about home schooling in Sweden, I read this:
'Christer was once involved in an alternative on-line news mag that expressed politically incorrect ideas and as near as anyone can tell, this was the reason his home schooling plans were opposed.'
This suggests that there is more to the opposition to his plans than meets the eye. The authorities also received anonymous letters about him and his family. I wonder what the 'politically incorrect ideas' might have been? Might it have been something to do with physical punishment of children, which would have been deadly for any hope of being allowed to home educate in Sweden? Does anybody have any idea what this was all about?
On an unrelated note, something else which I find odd is that it is hard to figure out just what the Johanssons were actually doing and planning to do in India. When they were heading back there Christer Johansson said on one occasion that they were going to minister to the poor in an orphanage, but on another that they wanted to, 'commence construction of an ecological village where we could live and be self-sufficient' I suppose that this ecological village might have included an orphanage. When they were there in 2000 and 2001, the situation is no clearer. He said:
'My wife Annie is an Indian citizen, and I was inspired by The challenges I saw in her home country to find a way to share my ideas Practically and talents to help the poor in Suffering Ways to Give Them independence as opposed to Seeking handouts'
On the photograph of the large, extended family though it says that he and his wife were running a travel agency and lost everything in the earthquake of 2001. This is given as their reason for returning home. The clear implication is that the earthquake destroyed his travel agency and left him destitute. In an email to a Pastor in America though, he says that he travelled to the earthquake area to try and help people. This suggests that he was not living in the area affected by the earthquake. Elsewhere, he writes that he and his wife were in a taxi heading to the airport when they were robbed of all their money and possessions. Some of these stories simply don't match up and I cannot help wondering why the fellow has given so many and varied accounts of himself. Can anybody help out here with a definitive narrative?
I don't believe for a moment that the authorities in Sweden have taken this child into care as an act of spite because they wish to persecute a home educating family. It would in any case be counter productive. It has brought Sweden a lot of bad publicity and obviously they would have done better simply to allow the family to leave. I think that this has been done for the welfare of the child and that many home educators are blindly supporting a cause about which they know nothing. Now that the Friends of Dominic Johansson are reading this, I expect that they will be able to clear up all these points for us.
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2007/04/02/who-is-ruby-part-ii/
She has done some work with families in Sweden who have had their children taken into care. All these families had one thing in common; they believed in hitting their children as a form of discipline and this is why they lost their children. It is this strange woman whom Christer Johansson is determined to have to represent his son. The Swedish courts don't want her to do so, partly because she is very evangelical about spanking and also because she is not a member of the Swedish bar. (Try googling her name together with smacking or spanking. She has written a lot of really interesting stuff about how good it is to hit children.)
How is this relevant to the matter of Dominic Johansson? You have to bear in mind that a great deal of the fuss about this case is coming from the United States. Specifically, a lot of it is from right wing Christian homeschooling groups. Many of these are fervent believers in spanking and regard any attempt to ban the practice as an infringement of their rights. In fact a lot of these characters believe that the Bible instructs them to hit their children. I can only say that my view of scripture is a little different! The Johanssons are of course very devout Christians themselves and a lot of sites are soliciting prayers for them. Many of these same sites also carry pro-spanking messages. It is curious that a peculiar woman like Ruby Harrold-Claesson, a woman who blames all modern society's ills upon the lack of spanking in so many countries, should have been the lawyer of choice for the Johanssons. Do they themselves believe in hitting children? I don't know, but if so, this would certainly put them in the sights of Swedish courts and social workers.
There is a clue to this business that somebody might want to follow up. The opposition to Christer and Annie Johansson's home education of their son was not completely random. On a blog about home schooling in Sweden, I read this:
'Christer was once involved in an alternative on-line news mag that expressed politically incorrect ideas and as near as anyone can tell, this was the reason his home schooling plans were opposed.'
This suggests that there is more to the opposition to his plans than meets the eye. The authorities also received anonymous letters about him and his family. I wonder what the 'politically incorrect ideas' might have been? Might it have been something to do with physical punishment of children, which would have been deadly for any hope of being allowed to home educate in Sweden? Does anybody have any idea what this was all about?
On an unrelated note, something else which I find odd is that it is hard to figure out just what the Johanssons were actually doing and planning to do in India. When they were heading back there Christer Johansson said on one occasion that they were going to minister to the poor in an orphanage, but on another that they wanted to, 'commence construction of an ecological village where we could live and be self-sufficient' I suppose that this ecological village might have included an orphanage. When they were there in 2000 and 2001, the situation is no clearer. He said:
'My wife Annie is an Indian citizen, and I was inspired by The challenges I saw in her home country to find a way to share my ideas Practically and talents to help the poor in Suffering Ways to Give Them independence as opposed to Seeking handouts'
On the photograph of the large, extended family though it says that he and his wife were running a travel agency and lost everything in the earthquake of 2001. This is given as their reason for returning home. The clear implication is that the earthquake destroyed his travel agency and left him destitute. In an email to a Pastor in America though, he says that he travelled to the earthquake area to try and help people. This suggests that he was not living in the area affected by the earthquake. Elsewhere, he writes that he and his wife were in a taxi heading to the airport when they were robbed of all their money and possessions. Some of these stories simply don't match up and I cannot help wondering why the fellow has given so many and varied accounts of himself. Can anybody help out here with a definitive narrative?
I don't believe for a moment that the authorities in Sweden have taken this child into care as an act of spite because they wish to persecute a home educating family. It would in any case be counter productive. It has brought Sweden a lot of bad publicity and obviously they would have done better simply to allow the family to leave. I think that this has been done for the welfare of the child and that many home educators are blindly supporting a cause about which they know nothing. Now that the Friends of Dominic Johansson are reading this, I expect that they will be able to clear up all these points for us.
Monday, 5 July 2010
Dominic Johansson
I have been following this case closely since last year and I must say that there seems to be more to it than meets the eye. The story as it is being reported in home educating circles is that Christer and Annie Johansson, who live in Sweden, wished to home educate their seven year old son. They were harassed by the authorities and tried to leave the country so that they could home educate their son in peace somewhere else. As the plane taking them from Sweden was on the runway, it was halted and the police took the boy away and social workers then placed him in foster care, where he still remains a year later. And all because his loving parents wanted to home educate him!
Now one of the things which aroused my suspicions was the slick way that this story is being presented by some home educators. We read that 'armed police stormed the plane'. This conjures up images of a SWAT team armed with sub-machine guns bursting in through the windows and grabbing the child. In fact all uniformed police officers are armed in Sweden. They did not 'storm' the plane, simply boarded it with social workers and asked the Johanssons to come back to the terminal. There are a lot of little embellishments to the story of this sort. Another curious thing is that in Western Europe, the fact that the Johanssons are devout Christians and that this was the motivation both for their home educating and also for leaving Sweden, is played down. Sometimes it is not mentioned at all. In the USA though, this is the main line that is being taken on the case. So what is the background?
Christer Johansson is a Swedish man who lived for a while in India. While there, he met and married a woman called Annie who belonged to a very religious Christian family. She became pregnant and the couple went to live in Sweden, where their son Dominic was born on September 9th 2001. Both parents suffer from severe depression. When the boy was two, Christer was very depressed. So depressed in fact that he became addicted to anti-depressants and was recommended for electro-convulsive therapy, which he declined. His wife has also had mental health problems for which she has been hospitalised. Neither parent wished their son to see health workers, possibly for religious reasons, although this is not certain. Both parents also apparently suffer from heart problems;
" Annie has been in bed with a heart condition that was exacerbated by the abduction of their son. (Tonight Christer emailed me that he had fallen into a state of semiconsciousness with an irregular heart rhythm.)"
It is agreed by all sides that the Johanssons did not follow the correct legal procedure for those wishing to home educate in Sweden, which involves submitting a home school plan. Instead, they reached an informal arrangement with the principle of the local school when their son turned seven in the autumn of 2008. At this age, Swedish children start school.
Now things get a little strange. In the summer of 2009, Christer and Annie Johansson disposed of all their belongings. They announced that they intended to go and live in India so that they could minister to the poor; this was in connection with their Christian faith. Two things strike one at once. Firstly, if an individual wishes to sell all that he has, give the money to the poor and then follow Jesus and tend to destitute children in an Indian orphanage, that is a very praiseworthy and good thing to do. I have nothing but admiration for such people. When you have a seven year old son, matters are a little different. Secondly, a person with a history of severe depression who disposes of all his belongings in this way sets alarm bells ringing in professional ears. This sort of behaviour is sometimes a prelude to suicide. When two people with a history of mental health problems and severe depression do this, there can be an awful suspicion that they are on the verge of taking their own lives.
So what actually happened on June 26th last year? Two people, both with histories of mental health problems got rid of all their belongings. They told everybody that they were going to live in poverty in India, tending for children in an orphanage. Their physical health was also poor; both had heart problems. They intended to take their seven year old son with them, a child who had been raised in rather odd circumstances. I don't think we even need to think about home education here. Given this background, I would also be very worried about the child's future welfare. The concern of the social workers in Sweden was not that this child was being home educated. It was that a Swedish child was being taken abroad to an uncertain future in the company of two strange and possibly disturbed people. They acted to protect his welfare, but not because he was being home educated. If a similar case occurred in this country, I for one hope that social workers would behave in exactly the same way to protect the interests of a vulnerable child.
As I said yesterday, this case is a bit of a red herring as far as home education is concerned. I think that the Swedish authorities would have behaved in precisely the same way had the child been a pupil at a school. The real question here is one of protecting the rights of a child when those rights conflict with the desire of his parents to live an unconventional lifestyle. It seems to me that social workers were faced with a very tricky problem and made what seemed to them to be a good decision in the interests of the child. We have to ask ourselves one final question. Is Dominic Johansson better off now living a in a comfortable home in a prosperous European country than he would have been had he spent the last year living in poverty in an Indian orphanage?
Now one of the things which aroused my suspicions was the slick way that this story is being presented by some home educators. We read that 'armed police stormed the plane'. This conjures up images of a SWAT team armed with sub-machine guns bursting in through the windows and grabbing the child. In fact all uniformed police officers are armed in Sweden. They did not 'storm' the plane, simply boarded it with social workers and asked the Johanssons to come back to the terminal. There are a lot of little embellishments to the story of this sort. Another curious thing is that in Western Europe, the fact that the Johanssons are devout Christians and that this was the motivation both for their home educating and also for leaving Sweden, is played down. Sometimes it is not mentioned at all. In the USA though, this is the main line that is being taken on the case. So what is the background?
Christer Johansson is a Swedish man who lived for a while in India. While there, he met and married a woman called Annie who belonged to a very religious Christian family. She became pregnant and the couple went to live in Sweden, where their son Dominic was born on September 9th 2001. Both parents suffer from severe depression. When the boy was two, Christer was very depressed. So depressed in fact that he became addicted to anti-depressants and was recommended for electro-convulsive therapy, which he declined. His wife has also had mental health problems for which she has been hospitalised. Neither parent wished their son to see health workers, possibly for religious reasons, although this is not certain. Both parents also apparently suffer from heart problems;
" Annie has been in bed with a heart condition that was exacerbated by the abduction of their son. (Tonight Christer emailed me that he had fallen into a state of semiconsciousness with an irregular heart rhythm.)"
It is agreed by all sides that the Johanssons did not follow the correct legal procedure for those wishing to home educate in Sweden, which involves submitting a home school plan. Instead, they reached an informal arrangement with the principle of the local school when their son turned seven in the autumn of 2008. At this age, Swedish children start school.
Now things get a little strange. In the summer of 2009, Christer and Annie Johansson disposed of all their belongings. They announced that they intended to go and live in India so that they could minister to the poor; this was in connection with their Christian faith. Two things strike one at once. Firstly, if an individual wishes to sell all that he has, give the money to the poor and then follow Jesus and tend to destitute children in an Indian orphanage, that is a very praiseworthy and good thing to do. I have nothing but admiration for such people. When you have a seven year old son, matters are a little different. Secondly, a person with a history of severe depression who disposes of all his belongings in this way sets alarm bells ringing in professional ears. This sort of behaviour is sometimes a prelude to suicide. When two people with a history of mental health problems and severe depression do this, there can be an awful suspicion that they are on the verge of taking their own lives.
So what actually happened on June 26th last year? Two people, both with histories of mental health problems got rid of all their belongings. They told everybody that they were going to live in poverty in India, tending for children in an orphanage. Their physical health was also poor; both had heart problems. They intended to take their seven year old son with them, a child who had been raised in rather odd circumstances. I don't think we even need to think about home education here. Given this background, I would also be very worried about the child's future welfare. The concern of the social workers in Sweden was not that this child was being home educated. It was that a Swedish child was being taken abroad to an uncertain future in the company of two strange and possibly disturbed people. They acted to protect his welfare, but not because he was being home educated. If a similar case occurred in this country, I for one hope that social workers would behave in exactly the same way to protect the interests of a vulnerable child.
As I said yesterday, this case is a bit of a red herring as far as home education is concerned. I think that the Swedish authorities would have behaved in precisely the same way had the child been a pupil at a school. The real question here is one of protecting the rights of a child when those rights conflict with the desire of his parents to live an unconventional lifestyle. It seems to me that social workers were faced with a very tricky problem and made what seemed to them to be a good decision in the interests of the child. We have to ask ourselves one final question. Is Dominic Johansson better off now living a in a comfortable home in a prosperous European country than he would have been had he spent the last year living in poverty in an Indian orphanage?
Sunday, 4 July 2010
The Swedish model
It was, to say the least of it, unfortunate that Michael Gove should have chosen to announce his 'free schools' initiative and trumpet the wonders of the scheme as it works in Sweden, only a few days before the Swedes began moves to abolish home education in their country. It goes without saying that many home educating parents in this country smelt a rat and saw the introduction of free schools as the beginning of the end for British home education. There are no coincidences in Home Education Land and it wasn't long before conspiracy theorists were seeing a sinister pattern. Here's how the theory works out.
The Swedes have free schools which seem to do very well. They also grudgingly allow home education. Then they introduce a law which simultaneously outlaws home education for philosophical or religious reasons and also imposes a state approved curriculum in all schools. Could this be the shape of things to come in this country?
One can see why some home educators might be getting a little twitchy about this sequences of events. Here's the Education Secretary in this country shooting his mouth off about how wonderful Sweden's educational system is and then a few days later their parliament approves a law which effectively bans home education. As if this was not enough, the case of Dominic Johansson also came back into public awareness at pretty much the same time. I am a little dubious about this case. The more we learn about it, the more it seems that the Swedish authorities were acting in the best interest of the child. I think that the Johansson case is really a bit of a red herring; nothing to do with home education in fact.
So what is it about the whole free schools thing that some home educating parents find a little alarming? It seems that the suspicion is that some home educating parents, probably the more structured, organised and middle class ones, will take the opportunity to set up such schools. After a while, more home educated children might be enrolled in free schools and the number actually learning at home could dwindle. This could be a chance for a new government to start trying to discourage the practice and perhaps imposing new restrictions. And then, as we have seen in Sweden, there is nothing to stop a government imposing a very detailed and prescriptive curriculum on the free schools, something a bit like the National Curriculum. In Sweden from now on, every child will be compelled to learn precisely what the government dictates. This will be the case whether they are at a state school or one of the soc-called free schools.
I have to say, I don't see this scenario as being very likely. To begin with, the number of parents who will be setting up schools here is likely to be very tiny indeed. I doubt that many of those who have expressed interest in this scheme will get past even the first stage of the process. Any new schools which are set up are far more likely to be run by charities or churches than they are by groups of parents. Besides, I can't see the government being willing to fund a places like Summerhill. If they do give out taxpayers' money, it will only be to schools which are providing teaching and will have measurable outcomes. I think that might just rule out most autonomous educators right from the start. Secondly, I have never felt that anybody in either this administration or the last is actually opposed to home education. True, there is an uneasiness about some aspects of it and a feeling that new regulations are needed, but I honestly don't think anybody wants to ban it. This is in stark contrast to Sweden, where the practice has always been discouraged and home educators have been viewed as being dangerous cranks.
Personally, I can't see that the free school thing is going to make any difference at all to home education in this country. I suppose that one or two groups of home educators might get it together to start schools, but I find even that pretty unlikely. I certainly don't think that home education is going to be squeezed out of existence by all these new schools and that after a time some new government will begin acting like Sweden.
The Swedes have free schools which seem to do very well. They also grudgingly allow home education. Then they introduce a law which simultaneously outlaws home education for philosophical or religious reasons and also imposes a state approved curriculum in all schools. Could this be the shape of things to come in this country?
One can see why some home educators might be getting a little twitchy about this sequences of events. Here's the Education Secretary in this country shooting his mouth off about how wonderful Sweden's educational system is and then a few days later their parliament approves a law which effectively bans home education. As if this was not enough, the case of Dominic Johansson also came back into public awareness at pretty much the same time. I am a little dubious about this case. The more we learn about it, the more it seems that the Swedish authorities were acting in the best interest of the child. I think that the Johansson case is really a bit of a red herring; nothing to do with home education in fact.
So what is it about the whole free schools thing that some home educating parents find a little alarming? It seems that the suspicion is that some home educating parents, probably the more structured, organised and middle class ones, will take the opportunity to set up such schools. After a while, more home educated children might be enrolled in free schools and the number actually learning at home could dwindle. This could be a chance for a new government to start trying to discourage the practice and perhaps imposing new restrictions. And then, as we have seen in Sweden, there is nothing to stop a government imposing a very detailed and prescriptive curriculum on the free schools, something a bit like the National Curriculum. In Sweden from now on, every child will be compelled to learn precisely what the government dictates. This will be the case whether they are at a state school or one of the soc-called free schools.
I have to say, I don't see this scenario as being very likely. To begin with, the number of parents who will be setting up schools here is likely to be very tiny indeed. I doubt that many of those who have expressed interest in this scheme will get past even the first stage of the process. Any new schools which are set up are far more likely to be run by charities or churches than they are by groups of parents. Besides, I can't see the government being willing to fund a places like Summerhill. If they do give out taxpayers' money, it will only be to schools which are providing teaching and will have measurable outcomes. I think that might just rule out most autonomous educators right from the start. Secondly, I have never felt that anybody in either this administration or the last is actually opposed to home education. True, there is an uneasiness about some aspects of it and a feeling that new regulations are needed, but I honestly don't think anybody wants to ban it. This is in stark contrast to Sweden, where the practice has always been discouraged and home educators have been viewed as being dangerous cranks.
Personally, I can't see that the free school thing is going to make any difference at all to home education in this country. I suppose that one or two groups of home educators might get it together to start schools, but I find even that pretty unlikely. I certainly don't think that home education is going to be squeezed out of existence by all these new schools and that after a time some new government will begin acting like Sweden.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Good education
I am a great believer in education. Indeed, it might not unjustly be said that it is by way of being an obsession of mine. For this reason, I am no great fan of many modern schools. This is because they fail to deliver a good education a lot of the time. I'm not much interested in why this should be; however much we tinker with them, the quality of education produced tends to fall far short of what I regard as acceptable. This is of course why I educated my daughter at home. The sort of intensive, one-to-one tuition which can be provided in a relaxed, domestic setting is infinitely more efficient than the conveyer belt, one size fits all, production line which is operating in many comprehensive schools. For this reason, I feel that more should be expected of home educated children than of those stuck in schools. They have more opportunities to learn, fewer distractions, no negative peer pressure; everything is perfectly geared towards a first class education.
When I see a sloppy, half baked, ineffectual education being delivered by a school, it makes me angry. Still, at least they have some excuse for it; conditions are hardly ideal for learning in the average school! When I see or hear about the same sort of thing in home education, I also feel angry. Here, there is no excuse at all; the conditions for a decent education could hardly be better. It is the difference between a large factory turning out a shoddy, mass produced article and a craftsman devoting his life to producing one-off, beautiful works of art. If the craftsman then also turns out something just as shoddy and worthless as the stuff being churned out by the factory; one wonders why he is bothering in the first place. He might just as well let the factories do the job.
The attitude of many home educating parents seems to be rather like skiving factory workers; They wish to do the bare minimum necessary to keep the foreman off their backs. In this case the foreman is their local authority and for many such parents, as long as the local authority is satisfied then so are they. Shocking attitude. They are like the schools who are content to be described as 'satisfactory' in an Ofsted report. For those who are unfamiliar with the jargon, 'satisfactory' in this context actually means 'profoundly unsatisfactory'. So yesterday when somebody quoted me and then added her own comment, it made me think a bit. Here is the comment;
"The majority of home educated children in Britain have been deregistered from school."
In which case they are already 'registered' and therefore fulfilling LEA criteria of 'suitable education'.
See what I mean? As long as the local authority feels that the education is 'suitable', then we can all relax and stop worrying. At least schools have the decency to pretend to be striving for excellence! For many home educators, the sole object of the exercise is to persuade their local authority that they are providing a 'suitable education' for their children. We see this time and again on various Internet lists. The problem is not educating the child, it is getting the local authority off their back. There is no secret about this. Parents ask where they can find details of Key Stage 4 resources, not because they wish to use them for their child's education, but so that they can demonstrate to their local authority that they know about them, thus fobbing them off for a year!
I can imagine no more effective way of educating a child than by allowing her to remain at home and not attend school. It is an absolutely perfect arrangement from an educational perspective. All the talk of 'individualised learning plans' that one hears of in maintained schools can become a reality literally overnight for the home educating family. Somebody commented here yesterday saying;
Why do you think home educating parents should be held to higher standards than schools? It hardly seems fair.
Well it is quite fair. If a child is being 'educated' by complete strangers as one of a group of thirty in an institution, then he is unlikely to receive as good an education as when being taught one-to-one by a loving and concerned relative. Of course the standards should be higher; I would have thought this to be self evident. If parents feel that they can make a better job of their children's education than schools, then they can do so in this country. It's not that hard. I would fight to the death if I thought that this possibility was likely to be curtailed or abolished. If on the other hand they take their children from school and then for whatever motives provide them with a worse education, than this is an appalling state of affairs.
When I see a sloppy, half baked, ineffectual education being delivered by a school, it makes me angry. Still, at least they have some excuse for it; conditions are hardly ideal for learning in the average school! When I see or hear about the same sort of thing in home education, I also feel angry. Here, there is no excuse at all; the conditions for a decent education could hardly be better. It is the difference between a large factory turning out a shoddy, mass produced article and a craftsman devoting his life to producing one-off, beautiful works of art. If the craftsman then also turns out something just as shoddy and worthless as the stuff being churned out by the factory; one wonders why he is bothering in the first place. He might just as well let the factories do the job.
The attitude of many home educating parents seems to be rather like skiving factory workers; They wish to do the bare minimum necessary to keep the foreman off their backs. In this case the foreman is their local authority and for many such parents, as long as the local authority is satisfied then so are they. Shocking attitude. They are like the schools who are content to be described as 'satisfactory' in an Ofsted report. For those who are unfamiliar with the jargon, 'satisfactory' in this context actually means 'profoundly unsatisfactory'. So yesterday when somebody quoted me and then added her own comment, it made me think a bit. Here is the comment;
"The majority of home educated children in Britain have been deregistered from school."
In which case they are already 'registered' and therefore fulfilling LEA criteria of 'suitable education'.
See what I mean? As long as the local authority feels that the education is 'suitable', then we can all relax and stop worrying. At least schools have the decency to pretend to be striving for excellence! For many home educators, the sole object of the exercise is to persuade their local authority that they are providing a 'suitable education' for their children. We see this time and again on various Internet lists. The problem is not educating the child, it is getting the local authority off their back. There is no secret about this. Parents ask where they can find details of Key Stage 4 resources, not because they wish to use them for their child's education, but so that they can demonstrate to their local authority that they know about them, thus fobbing them off for a year!
I can imagine no more effective way of educating a child than by allowing her to remain at home and not attend school. It is an absolutely perfect arrangement from an educational perspective. All the talk of 'individualised learning plans' that one hears of in maintained schools can become a reality literally overnight for the home educating family. Somebody commented here yesterday saying;
Why do you think home educating parents should be held to higher standards than schools? It hardly seems fair.
Well it is quite fair. If a child is being 'educated' by complete strangers as one of a group of thirty in an institution, then he is unlikely to receive as good an education as when being taught one-to-one by a loving and concerned relative. Of course the standards should be higher; I would have thought this to be self evident. If parents feel that they can make a better job of their children's education than schools, then they can do so in this country. It's not that hard. I would fight to the death if I thought that this possibility was likely to be curtailed or abolished. If on the other hand they take their children from school and then for whatever motives provide them with a worse education, than this is an appalling state of affairs.
Long term outcomes for home educated adults
Yesterday, somebody commenting here gave us a link to some Canadian research about how home educated children fare as adults. This is it;
http://www.hslda.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60&Itemid=81
I had read this already and dismissed it as being irrelevant to home education in this country. However, perhaps I was wrong. Let's look at this and once again compare the situation in North America with that in Britain.
Perhaps the first thing to strike one about the Canadian adults is that this statement is made of their education;
The most typical pattern of home education covered the entire period from the ages of 5 to 18
This is very different from the general pattern in this country among home educated children. It is pretty rare to encounter any home educated child or young person who has not been to school or college between the ages of 5 and 18; in this group it is the rule. The reasons for home education are also interesting. In the Canadian study, they had this to say,
Most respondents gave many reasons for the decision to home educate, but the desire for a better education than that offered in schools was by far the most frequently mentioned and the most important.
This is not the situation in this country. All the surveys carried out here, including the most recent study by Ofsted, show a very different pattern of reasons for home education. The majority of home educated children in Britain have been deregistered from school. The most common reasons for this are bullying and the perceived failure of the school to meet a child's special educational needs. Another popular reason relates to lifestyle and being able to spend more time with a child. This at once underlines a major problem with using studies from North America to make even tentative conclusions about the outcomes for home educated children in this country. The outcome for a child who was never sent to school at all because his parents wanted a better education for him than could be provided at school is likely to be vastly different from that of a child whose parents didn't plan to home educate him at all, but feel compelled to remove him from school due to some problem or other. The two cases are quite different and this alone makes the Canadian study pretty useless as a predictor of how children here might do in later life.
Another very great difference between the young people in this study is religion. 84% of these home educated adults participated in religious activities in the home at least once a week and 82% of them belong to religious groups. Does this sound like home educators you know? However, something that I have noticed in this country is that those for whom religion is important often seem also to favour a more structured and conventional educational approach, which is usually dependent upon teaching rather than simply the hope of learning taking place. I certainly fit into this pattern, being a fanatically structured teacher whose child has been attending church and reading the Bible since she was very small! I wonder if there is a fruitful area for further investigation there? I have noticed the same thing about American studies; religion is a very big factor and seems to go hand in hand with both structured teaching and good educational outcomes.
I have said before that these studies from the USA and Canada are not really likely to shed any light upon the outcome for home educated children in this country. There, we are looking at religious types who have chosen to educate their children for purely educational reasons. The educational outcomes tend therefore to be pretty good. Here, parents typically educate their children for reasons wholly unconnected with education. Most of them send their kids to school and then take them out because problems develop. They then often choose a system of education which does not involve teaching, again in contrast to the sort of parents we read about in North America. It is high time that some research was carried out about this in Britain, but judging by past reactions to any idea of this sort, I am not hopeful. When Ofsted launched their study, the lists were buzzing with messages calling for parents to boycott the thing. The DfE's pilot for a longitudinal study was also received with great suspicion and promises of non-cooperation!
http://www.hslda.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60&Itemid=81
I had read this already and dismissed it as being irrelevant to home education in this country. However, perhaps I was wrong. Let's look at this and once again compare the situation in North America with that in Britain.
Perhaps the first thing to strike one about the Canadian adults is that this statement is made of their education;
The most typical pattern of home education covered the entire period from the ages of 5 to 18
This is very different from the general pattern in this country among home educated children. It is pretty rare to encounter any home educated child or young person who has not been to school or college between the ages of 5 and 18; in this group it is the rule. The reasons for home education are also interesting. In the Canadian study, they had this to say,
Most respondents gave many reasons for the decision to home educate, but the desire for a better education than that offered in schools was by far the most frequently mentioned and the most important.
This is not the situation in this country. All the surveys carried out here, including the most recent study by Ofsted, show a very different pattern of reasons for home education. The majority of home educated children in Britain have been deregistered from school. The most common reasons for this are bullying and the perceived failure of the school to meet a child's special educational needs. Another popular reason relates to lifestyle and being able to spend more time with a child. This at once underlines a major problem with using studies from North America to make even tentative conclusions about the outcomes for home educated children in this country. The outcome for a child who was never sent to school at all because his parents wanted a better education for him than could be provided at school is likely to be vastly different from that of a child whose parents didn't plan to home educate him at all, but feel compelled to remove him from school due to some problem or other. The two cases are quite different and this alone makes the Canadian study pretty useless as a predictor of how children here might do in later life.
Another very great difference between the young people in this study is religion. 84% of these home educated adults participated in religious activities in the home at least once a week and 82% of them belong to religious groups. Does this sound like home educators you know? However, something that I have noticed in this country is that those for whom religion is important often seem also to favour a more structured and conventional educational approach, which is usually dependent upon teaching rather than simply the hope of learning taking place. I certainly fit into this pattern, being a fanatically structured teacher whose child has been attending church and reading the Bible since she was very small! I wonder if there is a fruitful area for further investigation there? I have noticed the same thing about American studies; religion is a very big factor and seems to go hand in hand with both structured teaching and good educational outcomes.
I have said before that these studies from the USA and Canada are not really likely to shed any light upon the outcome for home educated children in this country. There, we are looking at religious types who have chosen to educate their children for purely educational reasons. The educational outcomes tend therefore to be pretty good. Here, parents typically educate their children for reasons wholly unconnected with education. Most of them send their kids to school and then take them out because problems develop. They then often choose a system of education which does not involve teaching, again in contrast to the sort of parents we read about in North America. It is high time that some research was carried out about this in Britain, but judging by past reactions to any idea of this sort, I am not hopeful. When Ofsted launched their study, the lists were buzzing with messages calling for parents to boycott the thing. The DfE's pilot for a longitudinal study was also received with great suspicion and promises of non-cooperation!
Friday, 2 July 2010
How I raise and educate my child is my business, not the state's
Many home educating parents, particularly those who do not wish for visits, maintain that the way in which they educate their children and generally raise them is solely the parents' business. They simply cannot understand why the government or local authority should believe that it is also something to do with them and that these agencies might wish to come and make sure that the job is being done properly. Let us see the extent to which the home educators' argument is valid.
If we imagine a couple of people raising their children on a desert island and having no contact with any other human being or being part of any society, then the parents would indeed be solely responsible for their children. The decisions which they made about education would affect nobody else and if they muffed up the whole thing, then they alone would have to live with the consequences. The case is quite different for those living in a developed society, particularly one with a welfare state like that of the United Kingdom. Here, how I raise my child is likely to have many effects on others, some of them catastrophic. Below is an example of what can happen if parents adopt an extreme, 'it's nobody's business but mine' way of child rearing:
http://kccesl.tripod.com/hypertextstudy/humanlanguagespring03.html
This is of course an isolated case. I am not for a moment suggesting that many parents who do not send their kids to school do so because they would keep them locked in a cupboard instead! However, the principle is the same. Let's try and imagine a more likely scenario. Suppose that as a parent I keep my child with me instead of sending her to school. What if I am wholly reliant upon state benefits and teach my child that this is an acceptable lifestyle? Suppose then that she sees no need to work and simply lives off the state for her whole life? This would have a massive impact upon other people, because those working and paying taxes would then have to support my child. Of course it may be argued that this case, like that of Genie which I cited earlier, is unlikely. We are establishing a principle here though.
Now for another hypothetical case. Suppose that I allow my child to grow up to be barely literate. Perhaps I don't arrange for him to take any public examinations and he has little interest in working or taking care of himself. Does this affect other people? Of course it will. He may go on to claim social security payments and then, as before, others who work will be supporting him. What if I don't teach him the value of fresh air and exercise? Suppose he does not learn about vitamins, proteins, fats and carbohydrates? Without regular exercise and a good diet, he will become unhealthy. Who will deal with his health problems? Why the National Health Service of course! Paid for by? Yes, that's right, by taxpayers.
The way that we raise our children and the things which we teach them, or fail to teach them, will have a direct impact upon many other people. To pretend, as some home educating parents do, that it is entirely their own business whether or not they choose to teach their children about human biology, including the importance of diet and exercise in maintaining health, is not a position which can be maintained. I have given a few examples of the way in which how we raise and educate our children will affect many other people; there are many others. What I teach my child about religion and ethics will affect society, as will the attitudes which I teach about race, gender and nationality. If the education I provide results in an ignorant bully or a lazy psychopath, then these too are matters which will affect society. The doctors and hospitals which will treat my child in the future, the social security benefits she claims, the prison in which she may spend time, her attitude as a citizen; all these are heavily affected by the home education whcih she received and in turn have many effects upon others. That being the case, it is quite reasonable for society to take a look at what is going on in this respect, because it is society which will be expected to foot the bill if we as parents screw up on the job. To say that, 'It's nobody else's business!' , is so absurd as hardly to be worth responding to. Of course it is other people's business.
If we imagine a couple of people raising their children on a desert island and having no contact with any other human being or being part of any society, then the parents would indeed be solely responsible for their children. The decisions which they made about education would affect nobody else and if they muffed up the whole thing, then they alone would have to live with the consequences. The case is quite different for those living in a developed society, particularly one with a welfare state like that of the United Kingdom. Here, how I raise my child is likely to have many effects on others, some of them catastrophic. Below is an example of what can happen if parents adopt an extreme, 'it's nobody's business but mine' way of child rearing:
http://kccesl.tripod.com/hypertextstudy/humanlanguagespring03.html
This is of course an isolated case. I am not for a moment suggesting that many parents who do not send their kids to school do so because they would keep them locked in a cupboard instead! However, the principle is the same. Let's try and imagine a more likely scenario. Suppose that as a parent I keep my child with me instead of sending her to school. What if I am wholly reliant upon state benefits and teach my child that this is an acceptable lifestyle? Suppose then that she sees no need to work and simply lives off the state for her whole life? This would have a massive impact upon other people, because those working and paying taxes would then have to support my child. Of course it may be argued that this case, like that of Genie which I cited earlier, is unlikely. We are establishing a principle here though.
Now for another hypothetical case. Suppose that I allow my child to grow up to be barely literate. Perhaps I don't arrange for him to take any public examinations and he has little interest in working or taking care of himself. Does this affect other people? Of course it will. He may go on to claim social security payments and then, as before, others who work will be supporting him. What if I don't teach him the value of fresh air and exercise? Suppose he does not learn about vitamins, proteins, fats and carbohydrates? Without regular exercise and a good diet, he will become unhealthy. Who will deal with his health problems? Why the National Health Service of course! Paid for by? Yes, that's right, by taxpayers.
The way that we raise our children and the things which we teach them, or fail to teach them, will have a direct impact upon many other people. To pretend, as some home educating parents do, that it is entirely their own business whether or not they choose to teach their children about human biology, including the importance of diet and exercise in maintaining health, is not a position which can be maintained. I have given a few examples of the way in which how we raise and educate our children will affect many other people; there are many others. What I teach my child about religion and ethics will affect society, as will the attitudes which I teach about race, gender and nationality. If the education I provide results in an ignorant bully or a lazy psychopath, then these too are matters which will affect society. The doctors and hospitals which will treat my child in the future, the social security benefits she claims, the prison in which she may spend time, her attitude as a citizen; all these are heavily affected by the home education whcih she received and in turn have many effects upon others. That being the case, it is quite reasonable for society to take a look at what is going on in this respect, because it is society which will be expected to foot the bill if we as parents screw up on the job. To say that, 'It's nobody else's business!' , is so absurd as hardly to be worth responding to. Of course it is other people's business.
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