Schools

I have remarked before of the delight evidently felt by some home educating parents every time a tragedy occurs in a school or nursery. Whether it is toddlers being sexually abused or a boy choking to death in the course of an asthma attack, there are invariably smug remarks on some of the lists about the perils of the state education system. The latest example of this is to be found on the HE-UK list, where a number of those posting are exhibiting signs of gloomy satisfaction that they have eschewed such a dangerous institution for their own children. This is of course apropos of the teacher who beat the kid round the head with a piece of metal.

Of course, some children will come to harm in schools. They will also be injured at Girl Guides' meetings, in the swimming pool, on holiday and even when they are at home in bed. That's how the world is; it can be a hazardous place to live in. The impression though that one gets is that some of these people regard school as a uniquely horrible place, where education is grotesque and distorted and children are constantly falling prey to sexual maniacs and mad teachers wielding metal dumb-bells.

I have never seen school in this light personally. I don't think it the most efficient way of educating a child; that is without doubt through one-to-one tuition. However, most of the schools with which I have had dealings seem to have made the best effort that they could. True, some of them are lousy, but that is as much due to the low quality of the pupils as it is the fault of the school and its teachers. Truth to tell, I have a certain amount of sympathy for the fellow who battered that fourteen year old kid around the head. Teenagers today are extremely awful and with the sanction of flogging removed, there is little that can be done to control them.

As I say, I am not opposed to schools by any means. I think that they need a good shaking up and that there is much wrong with them, but if we accept the need for the mass instruction of millions of children each year, they are probably the best way of going about the process. There is certainly a need though for some alternative provision for those children and young people who are determined not to learn at school. My own preference would be to set them picking oakum in a large silent room, or failing that the treadmill. Realistically, I accept that this is unlikely, so perhaps special, vocational centres would be a more practical proposition. One thing is for sure; there are quite a few pupils in secondary schools who are unlikely to learn and whose presence prevents others from learning. Clouting them round the head with metal weights may not be the answer, but something does need to be done about this.

The scourge of the anonymous message

I have had occasion before to remark that I am singularly unimpressed by anonymous messages. I am not apparently the only one. Over on the HE-UK list, somebody is puzzled that her parliamentary candidate won't enter into correspondence until he is sure of whom he is talking to. What I find intriguing about this is the hurt tone of the woman, as though anonymity were somehow a human right!

Until the advent of the Internet, anonymous letters would by most people be consigned straight to the wastepaper basket. Even newspapers would not deal with somebody who was not prepared to put his name at the bottom of the letter. How times change. It is incredibly common now for people expressing their views on the Internet to conceal their identity. Often, this is because the person is a spiteful and malevolent individual who would not dare to say these things unless it were possible to keep his identity secret. As I say, until quite recently, such people were viewed with contempt and their communications simply ignored. These days those, it has become almost respectable to send poison pen messages in this way.

I am bound to say that if I were standing for parliament, I too would be reluctant to answer any questions put to me by somebody who lacked the courtesy even to give her name. The whole business is really a little puzzling. I have strong views about many subjects which I am quite happy to reveal to others. It goes without saying that I put my name to these views and allow people a chance to rebut them if they are able. Why on earth would I send these views to people anonymously? What sort of sneaky little reptile would this make me, if I were to adopt this as a regular practice?

Of course, home educators are not alone in this desire to keep their names secret. Many blogs are anonymous and so too are the majority of comments made. Perhaps it is because many people seem to think that the normal rules of human behaviour do not apply in cyberspace. It is as though they feel that they can be anybody they wish on the Internet and that giving their names would somehow break the spell. I am sure that many of those who post anonymous messages online would not dream of sending abusive, anonymous letters through the post!

Meanwhile, the poor woman who wishes to discuss home education with her candidate has reached an impasse. I do find this a little odd. Presumably she does not intend to abuse or insult the man. After all, she could do that quite easily by email without revealing anything. She has sent him a message addressed by name and all he wants is for her to sign the thing. Interesting to speculate upon her motives for refusing to do so.

Long term consequences of the Badman review

I was wondering the other day what, if any, the long term consequences of the Graham Badman review of home education are likely to be. It certainly brought home education into the spotlight and drew the attention of the newspapers and public to the fact that it is happening and is perfectly legal. I am curious to know whether or not this has resulted in a surge of people deregistering their children from school.

Judging purely from the lists such as HE-UK, EO and so on, I seem to notice a hardening of positions both on the part of parents and also the local authorities. I don't know if this is significant or indeed anything to do with the Graham Badman review at all. The impression I get is that some local authorities are behaving as though the Children, Schools and Families Bill had been passed and are talking as though they have new powers. On the other side of the fence, a number of parents, with the enthusiastic backing of others on the lists, are refusing to provide anything beyond the barest information about their educational philosophy. The feeling I get is that both local authorities and home educating parents are digging in. Of course this is not the case in every local authority area; Somerset and Hampshire being notable exceptions. I would like to know though if this is a trend that anybody else has noticed.

I have a suspicion that matters are not about to rest with the defeat of the CSF Bill and that whoever comes to power next month will eventually get round to looking at home education again. I can't somehow see anybody wishing to go through the whole business of trying to get a bill through Parliament again. I should think that once was quite enough for all sides! I have an idea that it might be possible to push through some of the provisions as amendments to existing acts like the 1996 Education Act or The Education (School Attendance Targets)(England) Regulations 2005. It is not uncommon for such things to be added, even years after the acts were passed. I doubt that the whole rigmarole of the CSF Bill would be put through in that way, but I rather think that the requirement to register could.

My own feeling is that one way or another, the Graham Badman Review has changed things. Simply by drawing everybody's attention to the fact that many children have been taken out of school and are not being prosecuted for aiding their children's truancy must have come as a surprise to many ordinary parents. It will be interesting to see what happens now under the next administration. One thing is for sure, I doubt that things will just go back to how they were before January 2009.

A broad and diverse education of a high quality

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

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

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

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

The effects of home education

My daughter and I were musing recently upon how differently she might have turned out had she gone to school rather than been taught at home. It is true that she is fairly sociable and reasonably well balanced, but it is interesting to wonder if the very experience of spending her formative years largely in the company of adults has affected her adversely in any way. She suggested that the best way of testing this would be if we could get hold of some pairs of identical twins and try sending one to school and keeping the other at home. I was compelled to point out to her that experiments like this with twins have rather a bad image since Dr Mengeles activities during the war!

One thing which does stand out with her, and I have noticed this with other home educated teenagers, is that she shows little respect and no deference at all to adults simply because they are adults. This can make her appear arrogant or rude sometimes. The only problem here is that I am myself a very rude and arrogant person, so this might just be a bad habit which she has picked up from me, rather than anything particularly to do with being home educated. I think though that there might be a bit more to it than that. One of things she noticed when she started college was that many of the other sixteen year olds called the lecturers 'Sir' or 'Miss' as a matter of routine. This really is a bit strange. When did you last here a woman being addressed as 'Miss'? Come to that, how many people address superiors as 'Sir'?

There is no doubt that schools teach this weird attitude that adults are somehow deserving of respect simply by virtue of being adults and not children. This has the effect of creating a peculiar relationship between the ages which more or less precludes friendship and equality. I don't personally find this a brilliant thing and I'm not sorry that my daughter never acquired this mindset. Apart from anything else, it can be quite dangerous. If children grow up thinking that adults are usually right and their wishes must be heeded, then one is setting the stage for all sorts of dodgy situations! An awful lot of the sexual abuse of children stems from precisely this sort of power imbalance, where children's inbred desire to please and obey adults is exploited for the gratification of a pervert.

In a more general sense, I don't find this whole respect for adults thing very good because it has the effect of stopping children from thinking for themselves. If adults are viewed as being wise and knowledgeable, then there is no need for children to think things out for themselves. The adult already knows best, knows all the answers. This is the sort of thinking which is useful in schools of course. If you are teaching thirty children, you really don't want them all arguing you and challenging what you say. It is enough if they simply learn what you say and believe you to be the fount of all wisdom.

For my own part, I was always pleased when my child refused to take my word for something. It showed that she had a mind of her own. If this has developed over the years into a tendency to be sceptical of what she is told and a determination to find out for herself; well, there are worse things.

Everybody lies

One of the recommendations in Graham Badman's report which irritated home educating parents was that when their children were deregistered from school to be home educated, then the school would be expected to send the local authority a record of their child's achievement and also their expected future achievement. It was felt that the schools might give an unrealistic assessment of the child and thus put the parents into the position of fulfilling unrealistic goals for their children's development.

This was a quite understandable fear. As those foolish enough to send their children to school will know, schools habitually lie their heads off about the ability of pupils. A child who can barely string two words together in French will be described as, 'One of our most able linguists'. One will be told that 'Jimmy has a good understanding of all the major world faiths' or that 'Mary has the makings of a first rate historian'. Of course parents usually know that these statements are completely untrue and make allowance for this. The fact that everybody knows that they are complete falsehoods is simply a fact of life for parents whose children attend school. The fear was that if such reports had been sent to the local authority, then their officers would actually have expected the children to behave like able linguists or first rate historians. An alarming thought indeed!

Still, everybody lies. Parents too lie their heads off about the children in their care. They claim that their own children are more artistic, more sensitive, articulate, compassionate, musical or what have you than the kids next door. This, after all, is human nature. You would hardly expect to take a parent's word for her child's ability and talents. I have been prompted to reflect upon this by a spate of parents posting on some of the Internet lists, parents who are determined to provide their local authorities with any information about their child's progress or academic work. Their attitude seems to be, 'I have told the local authority that Jimmy is receiving a suitable education and that should be good enough for them'. As I remarked above, everybody lies. Why on earth should the local authority take the parents word for this?

I remember when we came to the attention of the local authority and they began asking questions about my daughter's work. Now of course, I could have told them to mind their own business and take my word for it that she was being educated, but why would I do that? Life is very short and I wouldn't really want to be engaged in a battle with my local authority. It was far easier for all concerned simply to let them know what was going on and invite them to come and see for themselves. After all, their concerns were pretty much the same as mine; they wanted to be sure that an eight year old girl was being educated. Leaving aside the precise legal duties involved, it seemed a reasonable enough wish on the part of local authority officers from the education department. I accordingly sent them copies of my daughter's work and allowed them to visit for an hour or so once a year. I could see no reason not to do so.

Everybody lies. We lie about our income and our own achievements. We lie about what our children are capable of. We lie about our relationships and our beliefs. Why should we suddenly feel that we should tell the truth when the local authority is asking what our children are up to? the answer is that we probably wouldn't. If at the age of twelve our son were still unable to read and write properly, we would probably lie about it and tell the local authority that he had just finished The Forsythe Saga. If he spent all day on the computer, we would lie about that too and invent a flourishing social life and sporting activities for him. This is human nature; of course the local authority wants to see for themselves!

As I get older, I wish for an easier and less troublesome life. There are many occasions when I could stand on my rights and behave like a barrack-room lawyer, but then my life will become one long struggle. I really can't see why parents would want to deny the local authority access to their children and give them some idea of what they were up to. The only thing which would make this worthwhile would be if there was a real reason for not wanting the local authority to see one's home or speak to one's children. otherwise, the easiest and most straightforward course for all concerned would be to welcome them in once a year.( And yes, I am perfectly well aware that the case is quite different for children with elective mutism, Asperger's and so on. I am talking of children without special educational needs.)

Conservative ideas about schools

I have been reading with great interest the manifesto of the Conservative Party. I realise that the preceding sentence must sound grotesque in the extreme; after all, what sort of freak would read any manifesto with great interest, let alone one from the Tories? Never the less, there were one or two parts that might be of help to home educators.

The Conservatives are promising to make it easier for charities, religions and even groups of parents to set up their own schools. Now I have written before about the 'Free Schools' of the early nineteen seventies. This was essentially home education under a different name. Parents whose children had been withdrawn from school or expelled, would band together and register themselves as schools. Sometimes they would acquire premises, such as an old, semi-derelict building. On other occasions, the 'school' would be set up in a few spare rooms in somebody's house.

These 'schools' were all very free and easy and mostly based upon Summerhill. Although a few were set up by teachers, there was in general little attempt to teach much. the children decided for themselves what, if anything, they studied. With the huge amount of red tape which currently chokes so many new enterprises, I would not have thought this sort of thing practical these days. However, if it is a manifesto pledge, then there is at least some chance of holding the Tories to it if they get in on May 6th.

Of course, the whole thing might be so bound up with rules and regulations, a requirement to be inspected by Ofsted for example or follow the National Curriculum, that it would not suit home educators. On the other hand, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the groups of home educating parents who are already running educational activities might be able to convert them into a registered school with a little ingenuity. I suppose that i am thinking here of the long term future, because although the Children, Schools and Families Bill has gone, the intention to put home education on a more businesslike footing has not gone away. I wonder whether or not home educators might not be well advised to lay plans for making themselves into some sort of scheme which could, at a pinch, lokk enough like a school to satisfy any critics.