Sunday 2 May 2010

Motives for home education

I have written before about the large number of home educating parents who seem to undertake the education of their own children in reaction to problems at school, rather than because they are keen on home education. Typical problems which precipitate this decision are bullying and the school's inability to cater for some special educational need. I am thinking today about another factor which might cause parents to choose home education; their own experiences in the school system.

I have noticed that an awful lot of well known figures in the home educating scene have negative views about schools in general. A lot of the time, these are based upon their own childhood experiences. Paula Rothermel is of course one such individual whose own life dictated her interest in home education; there are many others. I shall not give any names, but the kind of things I am talking about are as follows. One well known person from Education Otherwise was subjected to sexual abuse and still feels bitter many years later because the teachers at her school were unsympathetic to her resulting depression. Another woman was withdrawn from a boarding school and sent to a comprehensive, where the teachers were a little suspicious of her, seeing her as snobbish. Both these women taught their own children at home for a while and in both cases, the decision to home educate was directly connected with their own childhoods. I can think of quite a few others in a similar position.

The reason that I have been musing about this is because I get the feeling sometimes that many home educators are not so much pro-home education as they are anti-school. Listening to parents, I seem to hear far more about the iniquities of the educational system than I do the joys of teaching one's own children. This is curious. I did not particularly enjoy school myself, but I don't think that this affected my decision to home educate. I certainly have nothing against conventional education, except that it can be a bit inefficient. With a lot of home educating parents though, even those who have chosen to do it and not just been forced into it by bullying and so on, there is a repugnance for the very idea of conventional teaching. Such things as broad and balanced curricula are regarded as the Devil's work, as is the very idea of planning an education at all. It strikes me that these people are opposed ideologically to ordinary education.
Of course, it might simply be that a lot of these parents have sat down, researched the literature and then concluded that traditional teaching is a dead loss. I can't think that likely though. After all, apart from a handful of cranks like John Holt and Roland Meighan, academics in the field of education are pretty unanimous about what tends to make a good education. Teaching is certainly a big part of it.

It is definitely the case that many on the Internet lists seem to have some kind of grudge against schools and local authorities. I can certainly understand this is a school has let down their child and failed to provide a good education. It also makes sense if the child has been exposed to harm and the school has not protected her. Even so, this would really only suggest that a particular school was falling down on the job; not that the entire educational system was based upon a faulty theory. The dedication with which some parents embrace crank ideas such as homeopathy, autonomous learning or the dangers of vaccination, cause me to think that there is more to this than meets the eye. Whether it is simply one aspect of an anti-scientific world view, or if it is because they and their families were badly let down in the past by doctors or teachers, it is fairly plain to me that there is more going here than people just examining the evidence and then making a rational and objective choice. After all, if they examined the evidence in an unbiassed way, they would plump every time for conventional teaching! There are clearly other factors at play and I would very much like to know what they are.

14 comments:

  1. >>>>>>>>>>I am thinking today about another factor which might cause parents to choose home education; their own experiences in the school system.<<<<<<<<<<

    Yep. It was my experiences in the school system as a TEACHER which made me realise my daughter would be far better off being home educated. :-)
    And she was.

    I quite liked school as a kid.

    Mrs Anon

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  2. >>>>>>Such things as broad and balanced curricula are regarded as the Devil's work,<<<<<<<<<

    You've explained before about how exaggeration for effect is a literary technique you like to employ quite a bit on your blog, Simon, but this is a little too far, don't you think? :-)

    Mrs Anon

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  3. You wouldn't say so if you had seen Mike Fortune-Wood of HE-UK fulminating against the Green Party and their desire for a broad and balanced curriculum. It is anathema to many autonomous educators because it means deciding beforehand what a child should learn. This is seen as being wicked and a denial of the child's rights to decide for herself what, if anything, she wishes to learn.

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  4. Green Party manifesto : 'Where parents choose to educate their children at home this would be supported by Local Authorities, which would work to ensure that all young people have a broad and diverse education of a high quality.'

    'Ensure'? Political parties love this word at the moment, don't they?

    When someone seeking, or in, govt uses the word 'ensure' (my children have something) I get almost as concerned as when they say they will 'support' me.

    Let's be clear about this (politicians say that all the time too), the meaning is that, even though politicians can't provide good quality educations for ALL school-educated children, they plan to snoop and meddle with parental provision of HE.

    Oh joy.

    Mrs Anon
    Non-autonomous HE'er

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  5. "After all, if they examined the evidence in an unbiassed way, they would plump every time for conventional teaching!"

    Presumably you know of research that compares conventional teaching with autonomous education that proves that conventional teaching is better then. Can you please provide the links?

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  6. Karl Popper's theories on learning have much to do with our reasons for choosing HE over school. Here are some quotes about him and his theories:

    "His philosophy led to concerted efforts to develop a new pedagogy which emphasizes active problem solving as the best learning method. This pedagogy should promote autonomy and critical thinking."

    "Also, emphasizing Popper’s insight that science only makes advances in social settings, they have added the demand not to ignore the fact that learning involves social interaction, whereby autonomy, as the needed prerequisite for critical thinking, is also deemed a prime goal of any good pedagogy."

    “Instead of encouraging the student to devote himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in him a real love for his subject and for enquiry … he is led to acquire only such knowledge as is serviceable in getting him over the hurdles which he must clear for the sake of his advancement.”

    "In many schools worldwide, teachers initiate most of the planned activities and students become reliant on the teachers for fundamental decisions about what to do and when to do it. Mostly, too, students are not encouraged to question or criticise the material with which they are presented. The task of the student is to learn the syllabus, not question it. For much of the time, students are expected to replicate the arguments of others rather than develop arguments of their own. Creativity is a concept largely confined to 'the arts', and outside of those fields (and to some degree even within them) it is not usually encouraged. Not only are opportunities to engage in trial and error-elimination limited, many schools are also unsafe places in which to discover errors and inadequacies because revealing them tends to occasion a penalty of some kind. Teachers are put under pressure to produce individuals who are able to perform a limited range of tasks according to narrowly conceived standards. In such circumstances, the tendency is to penalise the student for failing to understand, failing to give the prescribed answer, failing to agree, failing to conform."

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  7. Karl Popper was a philosopher rather than a scientist. He said, of his first teacher, " Who taught me the three Rs. They are, I think, the only essentials a child has to be taught". In other words, he favoured a compulsory curriculum for young children consisting of literacy and mathematics. Is this what you mean by autonomous education, AnonySue? He was in any case precisely the sort of person of whom I wrote above; his views on education were shaped by his dislike of formal schooling as a teenager. Popper was actually one of the people I had in mind when I wrote this post!

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  8. "Karl Popper was a philosopher rather than a scientist."

    Yes, he is generally regarded as a great philosopher of science. Many scientists have testified to the beneficial impact of Popper's work on their own work.

    "He said, of his first teacher, " Who taught me the three Rs. They are, I think, the only essentials a child has to be taught". In other words, he favoured a compulsory curriculum for young children consisting of literacy and mathematics."

    I said I was influenced by his theories, not that I agreed with every thought that passed through his mind. I do believe that the three Rs are 'taught' but teaching is not necessarily sitting down at a desk following an adult decided route through a pre-set body of knowledge and being taught the three Rs does not rule out a child autonomously choosing to be taught. I believe that all children will ultimately learn the three Rs (either informally or more usually an informal/formal mix according to the child's choices) as long as the resources are made available because they form such an integral part of our society and this has been my experience with my own children. Compulsion was unnecessary and I think an imposed curriculum would have slowed and distorted their progress.

    Children can learn to read without formal lessons (one of mine did) but they are still taught in the sense that adults provide information and resources that the child uses in order to learn to read (even hole-in-the-wall children had computers provided to them by adults to enable the to autonomously learn computing skills). The parent may read books to the child and the child learns that books and writing convey stories and ideas. They may provide a TV showing a programme teaching phonics so the child learns that letters or individual words on the page correspond to spoken sounds or language and gradually new information is added and existing understands are modified through a wide variety of inputs until they can read. Other children ask to be taught via a series of lessons that will look very much like school but is still autonomously chosen by the child and much groundwork will have been laid by process like those that enabled the first child to read without formal lessons.

    " Is this what you mean by autonomous education, AnonySue? He was in any case precisely the sort of person of whom I wrote above; his views on education were shaped by his dislike of formal schooling as a teenager. Popper was actually one of the people I had in mind when I wrote this post! "

    His ideas may have been influenced by his upbringing (whose aren't?) but that doesn't alter their validity in my experience. I have seen his ideas about learning evolving in practice and have experienced and observed them in my own learning. I quite enjoyed school but at the same time found that I learnt more outside of school (something I think Popper experienced too), so whilst my experiences influenced my choice to offer home education to my children it wasn't the result of a negative experience of school. I have suggested now and then through the years that they might enjoy school and some experimented with the idea, but HE was ultimately preferred.

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  9. Autonomous non-compulsory education works for adults, why not children?

    http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=10536&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

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  10. "Autonomous non-compulsory education works for adults, why not children?"

    Adults often know enough to make informed choices. A child, lacking knowledge of vitamins and so on, might not realise that it would be a bad idea to live on sugar. This is why we generally choose their diets for them. An adult is more likely to know about such things and so can be left without supervision. It is a very similar case with learning and education. The older the child and the closer to adulthood, the more likely to make wise and sensible choices.

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  11. "A child, lacking knowledge of vitamins and so on, might not realise that it would be a bad idea to live on sugar. This is why we generally choose their diets for them."

    Wouldn't you tell your child about vitamins being needed to help your body grow and repair itself when you have bumps and bruises and point out that sugar doesn't have any? Why would a child not take this knowledge into account once they know it? That's what being a parent it about whether you are autonomous educators or not.

    "An adult is more likely to know about such things and so can be left without supervision."

    Do you think a normal healthy child could live in our world with helpful enabling parents offering multiple resources without realising the significance of the three Rs?

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  12. Great talk by Sugata Mitra (of the hole in the wall experiments)

    Indian children learning computer literacy and enough English to make that possible by themselves.

    Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves

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  13. It was thinking about my school experience that finally let me agree initially to home education. Stuck in lessons in which I had no interest learning subjects I've never needed since and the subjects in which I had an interest, I'd read the textbook and pretty much knew the course content well in advance of the lessons. Indeed, I have a chemistry report in which the teacher states that he thought I was learning more from my own reading than I did in his classes. I was never particularly social at school, blowing that bit of the usual argument out of the window.

    We find that child-led education works best, but that doesn't mean that we don't plan trips to museums or other places in an attempt to spark interest - I think that's where you misunderstand the autonomous side of things, Simon. Parents can dangle different incentives in front of their children and then provide resources based around whichever ones attract interest.

    As for school, having watched the education debate last night, I don't think any of the major parties are capable of fixing state education.

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  14. It was thinking about my school experience that finally let me agree initially to home education. Stuck in lessons in which I had no interest learning subjects I've never needed since and the subjects in which I had an interest, I'd read the textbook and pretty much knew the course content well in advance of the lessons. Indeed, I have a chemistry report in which the teacher states that he thought I was learning more from my own reading than I did in his classes. I was never particularly social at school, blowing that bit of the usual argument out of the window.

    We find that child-led education works best, but that doesn't mean that we don't plan trips to museums or other places in an attempt to spark interest - I think that's where you misunderstand the autonomous side of things, Simon. Parents can dangle different incentives in front of their children and then provide resources based around whichever ones attract interest.

    As for school, having watched the education debate last night, I don't think any of the major parties are capable of fixing state education.

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