I have been repeatedly reproached for ignoring what others claim to be powerful and objective evidence of the efficacy of autonomous education. Since most of the large scale research on home education has taken place in North America, I propose to focus upon this.
The research on home education in this country, whether autonomous or structured, is sparse in the extreme. I have mentioned Rothermel's work with thirty five children, five of whom were tested for their reading ability. The most detailed study of autonomous education in the UK is probably Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison's book "How Children Learn at Home", Continuum 2007. In it, they ask twenty six parents to talk about informal learning. This is of course a small, self-selected group. Seven of them were well known figures in the home education world and all but one belonged to home educating groups. There was no attempt to measure in any structured way the attainments or achievements of these people's children; the book is more an exploration of a philosophy and an answer to the question, "Could informal learning work and if so how?" The conclusion is that children learn lots of things apart from what they are taught at school and perhaps they learn more about reading and mathematics in this way than some people think. Interesting, but hardly solid evidence for the foundation of a new theory of pedagogy!
Turning now to the large scale research in North America, some of which has involved over twenty thousand home educated students, we run at once into a serious problem. Namely, that we are not comparing like with like. In other words, what is happening in the USA is not really comparable to what is happening in the UK and it is misleading to present evidence from America and use it to support any sort of teaching method used here. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, as I have already said previously, the motives for American home educators tend to be very different from those in this country. The main reason given by parents in the USA for educating their own children is to give them a better education. In this country it ends to be more of a lifestyle choice, with the main reasons given being to spend more time together as a family and to be able to do as they wish. When children are withdrawn from school this is seldom because they are not felt to be learning enough. Rather it is because they are being bullied or their supposed special needs are not being adequately catered for.
Perhaps the greatest difference in America and this country is the legal situation, which cannot but make a huge difference to how parents go about the business. Even those who describe themselves as "autonomous educators" probably mean something quite different from what is generally meant by the term here. Here is the reason.
Laws relating to home education in the USA vary from state to state. California is among the strictest and actually succeeded in banning home education briefly. Texas, despite a previous attempt to outlaw home education, is widely regarded as the most liberal and welcoming in its approach to home education. Sometimes people move there from other states in order to take advantage of tis liberal policies. Let us look at those "liberal" policies. Any parent home educating in Texas is legally obliged to teach reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and citizenship to their children. It is a legal requirement that these be taught "in a bona fide manner". In other words, no leaving it to the child to decide when she will learn. Half of the states in America also require regular testing of home educated children in order to check on their progress.
It is not hard to see that requirements such as those above would have a very great effect upon the educational standard of home educated children. If one is obliged by law to teach spelling and grammar, then what they call autonomous education must surely be a little different from what we mean by the term? Similarly, many parents here claim that regular testing would make autonomous education impossible. So for half the states in the Union, we should presumably disregard any idea of the education being autonomous? This is why we need to treat reports of success in autonomous education from the USA with a certain amount of caution. When we combine this with the fact that at least half of home educating parents there are teaching their children because they think that they can do it better than the schools, we should begin to ask ourselves how much use the statistics there are in telling us anything about home education in the UK
I have said many times before that the only way of assessing home education in this country would be a large scale study involvng at least a thousand or so children whose outcomes were tracked throughout the age of compulsory education and beyond into adulthood. In order to be of any use, this would need to be combined with correlation of the educational methods used on the children. Until such a study is conducted in this country, then the whole question of whether autonomous education is a worthwhile enterprise remains open. That being so, it is quite permissable for any of us to begin statements about the topic with words such as, "I believe..." or "I think....", another thing for which I have been reproached.
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Suggesting that American homeschoolers would call themselves autonomous educators shows how little you know about the subject. Try googling unschooling.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your source for the following statement?
ReplyDelete"Half of the states in America also require regular testing of home educated children in order to check on their progress."
tracked/study by who? nice LEA officers? it is not permissable to use words such as i belive like Badman did because he is wanting to change the law on home education. Badman reivew was a load of rubbish he did what he was told to do by DCSF/Ed Balls and maybe he become Lord Badman sounds good Lord Graham Badman CBE(here to help)
ReplyDeleteYes, I am quite aware that American home educators refer to unschooling rather than autonomous education(See Holt). I thought it easier to use one expression all the way through the article, rather than switching constantly from child-led to informal to autonomous to unschooled.
ReplyDeleteAs to my source for the assertion that half of American states require testing, go to the HSLDA site and find the section about individual state laws. You will need to plough through a lot of stuff, but all the relevant law is there.
ReplyDeletewho going to pay for all of Graham mad ideas Tax payer? council tax payer? when we know most councils are very short of money? it cost to much your have to employ extra staff it juss cost to much people do not want their counci ltax spent on this rubbish
ReplyDeleteIf unschoolers are as different from autonomous educators as you say, why not use a different term? Looking at the definitions, I agree with you, they do look the same.
ReplyDelete"five of whom" is a lie.
ReplyDeleteIn the Independent Simon Webb wrote that autonomous educators "are denying their children one of the most important rights that other children in this country enjoy; the right to a proper education".
ReplyDeleteOn this page he writes: "the whole question of whether autonomous education is a worthwhile enterprise remains open".
This HSLDA page is an easier way to check regulation levels, http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp
ReplyDeleteIf you check the map half of the states make no requirements at all or only require parental notification. Most of the other states do not require home visits, many allow umbrella schools, many do not require that test results be submitted to the state, an independent evaluation is acceptable...
It looks as though well over half of the US has less regulation and requirements than the UK today.
Have you seen Alan Thomas' previous study, Educating Children at Home, which involved interviews with 100 families and 210 children in Australia and the UK?
ReplyDeleteSimon said,
ReplyDelete"the motives for American home educators tend to be very different from those in this country. The main reason given by parents in the USA for educating their own children is to give them a better education. In this country it ends to be more of a lifestyle choice, with the main reasons given being to spend more time together as a family and to be able to do as they wish."
Why are you still making this claim when the source of your conclusions that in this country the choice to HE is more of a lifestyle choice is the Rothermel study? You appear to be suggesting that this will necessarily reduce the quality of the education, yet the Rothermel study results agreed with US results so the reason for HE appears to be irrelevant.
I think Simon want home education banned unless you do it the right way? what is the right way Simom?
ReplyDeleteCertainly Rothermel mentions this, but that is not my only reason for saying so. If you watch what home educators themselves say, not only on the message boards, but also in magazines and when one meets them, a similar pattern emerges. One seldom hears a home educating parent say, "I'm not sending Jimmy to school because I am convinced that I can teach him better here." On the other hand, one often hears that children have been removed because they were unhappy or being bullied. My contention is that the primary motive for home education in this country is not education per se. And yes, I am familiar with Thomas' Australian work and will deal with it separately in a later piece.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous says, "five of whom" is a lie. An elliptical reference to what I said in the article that Rothermel tested five children for their reading ability. It may well be a lie, but is so, not one of my making. This is what she claimed herself; that forty nine NLS tests were sent to parents and that she then carried out five herself on these children to see if they tallied with what the parents had found. I disregard the forty four carried out under unsupervised or controlled conditions and count only those conducted by Rothermel. Where is the lie?
ReplyDeleteSo Rothermel just happened to test and confirm the accuracy of the only 5 that were carried out accurately? That's a bit of a stretch, even for you.
ReplyDeleteNo, I am saying that to send out a mailshot of IQ tests, reading tests and so on and then hope that they will be carried out properly under controlled conditions is not good practice. Rothermel herself drew attention to this problem. In one family that she was working with, the mother told her that there was no point asking the child to name the letters of the alphabet, because she would not know them In the even, she did. th reverse case could easily be imagined, where a mother thoguht that her child did know the letters and so simply ticked this task without actually checking. The tests which Rothermel carried out seem to have been in a fairly informal setting, actually in the homes of the subjects. In these circumstances one must gurad particularly against problems such as the so-called "Clever Hans" effect. I am accordingly only taking note of the reading tests carried out by Rothermel herself and disregarding the others. How am I telling a lie?
ReplyDeleteYour comment is so poorly written that it is difficult to tell what most of it is supposed to mean.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of what you disregard, the fact is that more than five children were tested. Perhaps you don't like the way they were tested, but the fact remains that they were tested.
As said before, "five of whom" is a lie, and you are a liar.
Well, anonymous, we will have to agree to differ about this. Thirty eight children were tested with the PIPS baseline. Rothermel tested them. Forty nine children's parents had tests sent to them. These tests were returned and I have no idea and nor does anybody else whether the tests were carried out properly on the children concerned, or if so whether they were helped, or indeed whether the parents or other siblings did the test. That is why I did not include them and said that five children were tested for their literacy skills. These were the five that Rothermel actually tested. If we carried out research on literacy by sending out the tests and telling the kids to do them at home, we would save an enormous amount of money. The same of course goes for many other tests such as SATs, GCSEs and A levels. The reason that we do not do this and insist on controlled conditions should be obvious even to the meanest intelligence.
ReplyDeleteBlah, blah, blah. You're off on a tangent again.
ReplyDeleteThe fact remains that more than five children were tested. You know this as well as you know that Rothermel tested five children.
As said before, "five of whom" is a lie, and you are a liar.
You know, anonymous, I rather suspect that you do not work in this field or you might see the problems and understand why posting off a test to an address and then receiving it back again is not testing a child. I visit families and do stuff like this routinely. Imagine if I said to myself one day, "Hey, I can't be bothered to traipse round to Mrs. Smith's house. I'll post her the test and get her to administer it". To begin with, Mrs. Smith might be a very busy woman with a large family. She might not get round to conducting the test at all and at the last moment, just when I am pestering her to send it back, she might just fill it out herself to save time. I know cases where this has happened. She might be busy and delegate the task to an older sibling, who in turn saves time by doing the test herself rather than sit down with her brother and spend half an hour doing the thing properly. In these cases it would be impossible for me to say whether or not the test had in fact been carried out on the child. And don't even get me started on the kids being prompted, the television being on, a visitor to the house helping the kid, the list of potential problems is endless.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's a shame that university examinations don't come up to your high standards.
ReplyDeleteHere's an example from the first page of a Google search: a graduate-level computer science course from the university of Cambridge. 75% of the marks on the course come from an exam that the students take away to their homes. (The remainder of the marks appear to come from take-away problems as well, although it is not quite clear from the syllabus.) This is by no means an unusual practice.
Do you really not understand the purpose of Rothermel's re-testing five children? Do you really not understand the significance of the close correspondence of the results of the two tests?
Regardless of all your nonsense, the fact remains that more than five children were tested. You know this as well as you know that Rothermel tested five children.
As said before, "five of whom" is a lie, and you are a liar.
I'll have one last try at explaining and then I think I'll call it a day. Listen carefully, Anonymous. If my boss tells me to administer the Griffiths Mental Development Scale, a kind of intelligence test, on child A, he would expect me to do it by seeing the child. If I decide to save myself the trouble and simply post it to the child's address, along with the manual, then I have not tested child A at all. Indeed, I have no idea whether child A has in fact been tested in any way. If my boss then asks me, "Did you test child A?" and I reply, ""Yes", then for all practical purposes I have told a lie.
ReplyDeleteThat you do not understand this, leads me to suppose that there is little point in continuing this discussion.To claim that a child has been tested, it is at the very least necessary to be sure that the test and the child have been in the same room at some stage. Posting them out like this does not ensure even this bare minimum. We are simply not in a position to say whether the other forty four children in this cohort were actually tested. We know that five were. We know nothing about the others.
tests and more tests with checks and more checks and then tests and more checks and the nwe need to test the person marking the test and then check and then test go on for ever liek that what you need is trust but simon does not trust people did you do that to your daughte? when she said i done this did you see lets check just to make sure?
ReplyDeleteAs usual, you haven't addressed any of the points I made. You're just repeating the same old nonsense. I understand the claims you are making perfectly well, but I don't share your view that they have any relevance to the question under consideration.
ReplyDeleteHere are some questions that appear to have escaped your attention earlier:
1. Do you really not understand the purpose of Rothermel's re-testing five children?
2. Do you really not understand the significance of the close correspondence of the results of the two tests?
Here are some more points that you seem to have missed:
3. Universities, including very prestigious ones, often use take-home exams, so it is clear that your views (that everyone should be treated as a fool or a liar) are not shared by those who administer important tests.
4. You write "We know that five were", but you do not know this, any more than you know whether all forty-nine children took the tests. In both cases, though, the available evidence is strongly in favour of all children having taken the tests.
The fact is that you dislike some aspects of the tests, and so you pretend that they don't exist. Pretend all you wish, but when you state that only five children were tested as if it were an established fact then you are propagating a lie.
You dismiss Rothermel's study as too small to be useful yet are happy to use her results to support your claim that home educators choose HE for different reasons in the UK from the US. Add to this the fact that despite the different reasons given in the Rothermel study, the outcomes were the same as the US studies.
ReplyDeleteYou claim that laws are stricter in the US but, on checking, their laws are less restrictive on average - 28 of the 50 states and territories either have no regulation or just require parental notification. Added to which the US research found no difference between outcomes based on level of regulation or style of education.
You mention the legal requirement's to teach various subjects in Texas but fail to mention that you do not have to register and the school district does not approve curriculum (home schools in Texas are private schools, and private schools are not regulated by the state). There also seems to be a thriving unschooling community in Texas. Here's an example of unschooling in Texas, http://www.rethinkingeducation.net/unschooling.html
You claim that they probably don't educate autonomously in the same way in the US. Unschooling is popular in the US and sounds just like autonomous education to me. The research found no difference in outcomes between styles.
You seem to dislike the practice of postal testing with verification. However, I've seen similar methods used in peer reviewed research before and it seems to be accepted. You can't really compare this to you carrying out tests when they are to be used to plan treatments or plan an educational approach for an individual child. Yes, you might consider that some of the results may not be accurate, but the high correlation between the 5 carried out by parents and checked by Rothermel suggests that this is a relatively minor risk, certainly not high enough to completely disregard the unchecked tests.
I've decided to stop reading and posting to your blog, Simon. You won't notice much of a difference (since you don't even know which of several anonymous posters I am!) except that the voice of opposition will be somewhat quelled. I thought I'd try to explain why I've decided to leave, though.
ReplyDeleteI've come to realise what a very sad place this is. All you ever post are various reasons why other people are inferior to you, why other parents are wrong for thinking what they do, why other families ought to be checked up on, and so on. Do you really not have anything positive to say? Have you learned anything during your time home educating that might be of interest or value to others? There is certainly the occasional glimmer in your writing of something other than suspicion and disdain, but it doesn't seem to make its way to the surface very often.
I initially started posting here because I didn't want your statements to go unchallenged in case some passer-by unfamiliar with the facts should stumble across your blog. That seems to be an imaginary danger, though, judging by the comments: there's a steady stream of opposition to your posts and a few mindless cheerleaders. In any case, Sharon and others do an excellent job in patiently responding to misleading statements where they appear. I'm glad that they do, because I don't have the heart for it. I'm going to spend the time I would have wasted here on constructive and enjoyable things instead.
I would, quite honestly, like to discuss home education with you; I think that you probably have some interesting views. There is no possibility of such discussion here, though, since you take some sort of perverse delight in posting things that are misleading, false, and defamatory, apparently in order to provoke a reaction.
I'm glad that your decade of hard work with your daughter has achieved the results you hoped for. I hope that you can find some new way to "make a positive contribution" now that that period of your life is over.
Well anonymous, I had better answer the specific points you raise. Points 2 and 3 hang together. Yes, I do realise why the five children were re-tested and I also understand the significance of the close match. Paula Rothermel herself spotted the potential problem here when she said that some of the procedures she used might, "raise the issue of collaboration leading to inflated scores". Quite. It is not hard to see several mechanisms which might account for the close match in the scores when the children had been re-tested. I'm guessing that due to the slightly unconventional nature of this testing that it is quite possible, likely even, that the papers were left laying around the house either before or after the tests had been administered. I assume that this was how one paper got splashed with egg white; it had been laying around in the kitchen. This alone makes the scores a little unreliable. Since the re-testing was carried out only three weeks or so after the initial test and assuming that the same paper was used, then I think it quite possible that the initial test had the effect of teaching the children the spellings of words. This would be particularly so if, as I said, the completed papers were left laying around where the child could see them.
ReplyDeleteSince you will no longer be coming on here, Anonymous, there seems little point in responding further. You are right, I do not know which of the many Anonymous you are. Indeed, beyond the fact that you spend the week in Durham, go home at weekends and are an artist, I Know nothing at all about you!
Anonymous, I presume that because I agree with some of Simon's views I fall into the category "mindless cheerleaders". I find this very unfair and offensive, there is no need to resort to abusive comments. Personally, I know I am not a mindless cheerleader, or indeed any form of cheerleader so therefore YOU are a liar.
ReplyDeleteNot the same anonymous but they might have meant people who post things like:
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
Well said Simon.
Sorry to see you go anonymous, I've enjoyed reading your posts!
ReplyDeleteP.S. hope you pop back occasionally - not sure how long I'll be here!
ReplyDelete'what a very sad place this is. All you ever post are various reasons why other people are inferior to you, why other parents are wrong for thinking what they do,'
ReplyDeleteyou got it sussed, surprised people are giving his destructive fire oxygen but some excellent comments that can help fight the stuck in the boxers.
Love the demotic style, Maire. Nobody would guess that you are the wife of a professor. I'm not sure what a "Stuck in the boxers" is, though. Sounds like some gay sexual mishap.
ReplyDeleteDemotic? Ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Delta, or the stage of the Egyptian language following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic?
ReplyDeleteAhh, or relating to the common people; popular. Makes more sense. Can't see what's wrong with her style of writing for a blog comment though. It's not like she's writing a thesis, LOL.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but for an educated woman in her mid fifties to say, "You got it sussed", does make me think that she is trying to be with it. She's not really an angry black youth from Toxteth, you know.
ReplyDeleteAngry black youth from Toxteth? Is that how they speak? Must tell my white, 70 year old mum to stop using that phrase then!
ReplyDelete