Thursday 11 August 2011

Home educated prodigies


The history of home education is littered with cases of supposedly brilliant children whose parents were convinced that they would be world champions in some area or another. Sometimes the chosen field is physical; tennis or gymnastics. In other cases it is intellectual; mathematics or chess, for example. Below is a recent piece from The Washington Post about this sort of thing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/home-schooling-for-child-athletes-raises-questions-large-and-small/2011/08/05/gIQASWDR4I_story_1.html


I do not think personally that children under the age of fourteen or so are really able to make informed choices about this sort of thing. It often looks as though the parents are fulfilling some need of their own in these experiments. Sometimes, matters seem to turn out well enough, as with the Williams sisters and their tennis. On other occasions, the child’s life seems to have been blighted by the pressure of living up to parental expectations. There is also the unfortunate fact that 99% of children whose parents believe them to be geniuses at tennis, gymnastics, mathematics or chess, turn out after adolescence to be nothing of the sort. This can be very dispiriting for both parent and child. It can also be damaging for the child’s future life. In addition to the loss of self-esteem, having to accustom one’s self to the notion that one is not after all a world champion, there is all the time which has been spent on that one chosen activity to the detriment of the child’s general education.

Home education does seem to be a fertile breeding ground for unbalanced childhoods of this type. Not that they are very common of course, simply that such odd upbringings are possible with home educated children in a way that school would not generally allow. I wonder what the long term prospects are for home educated children who have been raised in this way? I have recently been re-reading Joan Freeman’s book; Gifted Children Growing Up. For those about whom she writes, all of whom went to school, the eventual outcomes seemed to be pretty good. These were children who were objectively very bright. I would be intrigued to know whether the sometimes feverish atmosphere in the homes of the home educated gifted child produces radically different outcomes. Does anybody know of any research on this?

6 comments:

  1. where you and others go wrong is you think that the children just spend all day doing the thing they good at. some may but most dont! all parents want to do is give the children best chance they can with a bit of extra time to what ever the child is good at

    what is needed is help for these children you have gifted or children who are very good at sport being forced into stardard education the schools dont know what to do with the children as most schools are only intersted in the averge kid

    untill schools LA government help these parents nothing will change gone are the days when you can force people back into line Webb!

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  2. webb says-Sometimes, matters seem to turn out well enough, as with the Williams sisters and their tennis. On other occasions, the child’s life seems to have been blighted by the pressure of living up to parental expectations.

    plenty can turn out wrong in a state school for many children leaving school unabe to write or add up or worse bullying all sorts the trouble with you webb is your unable to think outside of the box!

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  3. It's hard to know what to say when you post blog entries like this. It's so obviously part of a personal response to the conversation you had with Peter yesterday.

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  4. ' It's so obviously part of a personal response to the conversation you had with Peter yesterday.'

    Well I am not so sure about that. I mentioned to Mt Williams yesterday that most people had more than two teeth, but am unable to tie that observation in with the subject of the present post! Actually, this post was prompted partly by the piece in The Washington Post and partly by my reading Joan Freeman's book. I suppose that Freeman's book might subliminally have put Peter Williams into my mind, she is involved in the Channel 4 series in which his son is featured, but if so it was wholly unintentional.

    Simon.

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  5. Webb says-Joan Freeman's book. I suppose that Freeman's book might subliminally have put Peter Williams into my mind,

    your be pleased to know Webb that Joan Freeman is really nice and Peter is friends with her! been to her house and she has also helped in other way to! she was also very very cross about the way Peter was treated by Hampshire county council! she been to our house to and had a cup of tea!

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  6. I did notice from one of the clips from the programme that Master Williams, talks in a way that imitates the synthetic syntax of a chess software package.

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