Rod Liddle on Home Education!

First things first, there was a very positive article in the Spectator last week from James Bartholomew on his decision to home educate his nine year old daughter.

Predictably enough, given the Spectator's history of seeking balance, in this week's edition we have Rod Liddle setting about Bartholomew's article and home education in general. Rod doesn't appear to have changed his position on home education since the time he attempted to ridicule it on The Wright Stuff. Perhaps he still bears a bit of a grudge - the wry smile of a homeschooled girl spoke volumes in response to Rod's attempt to produce a valid criticism of home education on that particular programme. However, to give him his due, Rod has now clearly brushed up on his criticisms since some of them are no longer completely run of the mill. For example, he writes:

"...a growing number of parents from the middle class - and especially the media-monkey, metropolitan middle class - are incalculably pleased with themselves and think that they know everything; enough at least, to think that teachers are useless and that they can do the job themselves a damned sight better.

"Are they right? The obvious answer is a resounding "no" - and simply because a thing is obvious does not mean that it should be treated with suspicion. It is a colossal arrogance- and a self-indulgence - on the part of those 180,000 parents that a) their knowledge of such diverse disciplines as, say fine art and pure maths should exceed that possessed by the specialists; and b) that even were they to possess such encyclopedic knowledge, they may not have the necessary skills to impart the ground rules of those disciplines to children."

(See! My ad hominems were forgivable under the circumstances!) But seriously, where does one start?

First off, Rod, I haven't met a single HE parent who assumes that they have nearly enough knowledge to cope with every problem a child will ever face. (At least we are often clear that helping our children solve whatever problems they may face is something we are attempting to do with an education - an objective that all too often gets lost when maniacally trying to fulfill the often spurious requirements of the National Curriculum - for more on which see below).

What most HE parents do believe is that there are many ways of accessing knowledge that will meet children's needs. In case you hadn't noticed, we do actually live in an information-rich age. We use the internet to get information and feedback on almost anything, often from specialists we would never be able to access in school. We travel to lectures in science museums, art galleries, historical buildings, field trips and libraries and we skill share with other home educating parents, many of whom are teachers themselves. We take courses on-line, use various bits of software, and take exams through the usual boards. We hire tutors when necessary. We go to after school classes and activities.

In case you doubt that this will work, we know of home educated children whose parents never studied anything other than very basic maths, physics and computing, who have got into elite universities, achieving top grades in precisely these subjects and who have even been offered the chance of doing MScs during their first undergraduate year, so something in your argument clearly needn't stack up.

I also think you have the demographic wrong. I don't know any media monkeys. Perhaps it applies to the Notting Hill set, though it certainly doesn't if you go only a mile further north, since the Kilburn set with whom I am very slightly familiar, certainly don't match your description. In my part of the world, I haven't met a single arrogant or over-confident HEor. Most of us spend a lot of time worrying about what we are doing, being intensely self-critical, seeking out resources, wondering if we are providing enough and also fighting our corner, for there is nothing that many educrats would like better than to destroy this last bastion of educational freedom.

Luckily for many new HEors, they can join HE groups and see that Home Education actually works for a large number of children for whom school would often be an unmitigated nightmare and an educational black hole.

I'd say from my experience, that educrats would be most unwise to try to corral many HE children back in through the gates, since the learning style of many of these kids does not suit school. This doesn't mean that they won't be able to find work - simply that their learning style does not suit SCHOOL. Some children, for example, learn at very different speeds to the majority, either much more slowly or more quickly, or slowly to start with and then suddenly much faster; others like to focus intensely upon one area of knowledge, and find it difficult and pretty meaningless to have to be to seen to jump through loads of hoops to acquire a bundle of information that will never be useful to them again. Fitting all of these different learners into a classroom full of conventional pupils would be a nightmare for all concerned. And of course, many of those who HE have found their way there because the school system was failing them so dramatically.

It is a ridiculous meme, (an arrogant assumption if you will), that everyone must be made familiar with the contents of the National Curriculum. The sum total of knowledge is so enormous that restricting everyone to learning the same body of information looks like the most profoundly stupid thing to do, and that is even if you are only thinking about moulding children to suit the workplace, which of course is not the sole purpose of an education.

It is also ridiculous to assume that jobs require workers to jump from subject to subject. In fact, very often precisely the reverse is required, since an employee very often needs to focus attention in one particular area and strive to achieve an exaggerated skill in this, so you could argue that focused learning that is possible in the home is actually FAR MORE appropriate training for the world of work.

Rod also writes:

" There's another section of James's piece which is interesting, the bit where he is aghast that no school is prepared to teach Italian as a foreign language. Well, let us look at this problem rationally: there is a limited opportunity for children to learn foreign languages, particularly at such a young age as nine, and the finite number of languages; say, in Alex's case, 30. So you have to make your choice. Should Alex be taught a foreign language which figures in the top five of the world's most widely spoken tongues, (Hindi, Mandarin, English, Spanish and Bengali)?...

My suspicion is that the National Curriculum has it right and that Italian is about as much use in the wider world as Inuit or Welsh, although of course your perspective will be very different if you rent a villa in Lucca every year."

James wasn't aghast at the fact that Italian isn't taught in any London preparatory school. He was merely making the point that it isn't. It seemed to me that his inference was almost exactly the same as the point you make above, namely that utilitarian judgments about the greatest relevance to the greatest number have to be made when it comes to choosing which languages will be taught in schools. He seemed to me to be concluding that personalized learning is the only way to overcome the problem of needing to acquire a specific kind of information that isn't available in schools.

It is the case, as you in fact at least partially concede in your last sentence, that there may be significant reason to learn an unusual subject. By way of an example, a chunk of my close family are Italian, many of them not speaking any English at all, which actually makes Italian a very attractive option for us, but we'd have to forget all that, should we choose to go to school where we would have to learn French.

Incidentally, a number of HE children in our part of the world do learn Mandarin (rather than the less, by your standards, useful French), so in this case, by your own argument, home education wins.

As to your point that the choice of subjects in the National Curriculum is usually wise, just over the border from us, school children are compelled to learn Welsh, despite the fact that almost no-one in this part of Wales actually speaks it. Many familles there grumble considerably about having to learn it.

Sorry, Rod, your arguments still don't stack up.

School Children Strike

And it's now in its fourth day. The children have had enough of injustice, and are out on the playing fields, refusing to budge. PJ is apparently very popular and normally gentle - the headteacher must be regretting not considering his motives as a mitigating factor when deciding his fate.

(PJ's brother is not only autistic and therefore defenseless, but reportedly also unwell in other ways. )

Social Workers Oppose the Database

Yep, some of them clearly get it too!

Home Education in China

At first glance, it is possible to think "Good grief, same old, same old..." what with all the usual claims about the impossibility of socialising a child in the great wide world, but actually it isn't hard to spot the differences between the situation in China and the UK. Most obvious and yet unexceptional of these is the extreme high-handedness of the Chinese authorities - something that is yet to be matched in this country.

"China's revised Compulsory Education Law, which came into effect this month, says carers of any school age child should send them to school for nine years of education... home education is absolutely not advocated," said an official involved in revising the law. "

All in all, and despite the impending invasion of the family by the state as a result of recent UK legislation, it makes one grateful for the British Liberal tradition. Those in the UK government, despite their preference for taking over people's lives, would never dare to express themselves like that, or be so draconian, for however much they would love to do just this, they know that they will be letting themselves in for trouble. The habitual urge to limit the powers to the state is way too ingrained in us.

The Good Childhood Inquiry

Ahh, here it is. (Thanks ARCH ). Here's your chance to have your say as to what contributes to a good childhood.

Second Home Education Fair

Short notice, but reportedly well worth getting to, if you can:

The Second Home Education Fair is taking place

on: Saturday, September 23rd, from 1-5pm,

at: Westbourne Grove Church, Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill, London W11 2RW, (corner of Ledbury Road and Westbourne Grove.)

"There is an exciting afternoon of activities with talks and workshops planned. Some of the support groups represented at the fair will be will be Education Otherwise, Choice in Education, Home Education Advisory Service and others. Other home educating parents will also be on hand to help answer any questions and discuss any aspects of Home Education relevant to individual families."

Tubes: Notting Hill (Central, Circle), 10 min walk
Westbourne Park (Hammersmith) 15 min walk

Buses: 7, 15, 27 and 36. (no walk to speak of).

Improvements for Children

It must be in the air. Following the letter from Susan Greenfield, Philip Pullman et al. in the Telegraph (which does indeed come over in a slightly more reasonable fashion than the related piece on the BBC), The Children's Society is now initiating research into the causes of childhood unhappiness.

The reason why the Telegraph seemed a more balanced piece? It didn't just bat on about screen culture and junk food. The authors dared to mention hyper-competitive culture and academic pressures as possible causal agents of childhood stress. This looks hopeful for any subsequent inquiry because it appears as if the researchers have been given permission to seek out causes of childhood unhappiness that challenge prevailing societal memes and requirements. By societal memes, I mean erroneous theories such as the one that school is essential to education and that it is impossible to socialise children anywhere else. Also that children must be achieving such and such at such and such an age, or else they will be forever compromised; or that they must learn such and such, or that they must compete to be the very best or they will not stand a chance. By societal requirements, I mean that school is used by adults as a form of childcare and often becomes an unchallengeable meme for this reason too.

Just how far the research will go in challenging these memes is another question. It may be all too easy to forge responses. For example, if you ask a child who has clearly been horrendously bullied over a long period of time how he would like to improve his life, he most likely won't even fully recognize that he is appallingly bullied, let alone know what he can do about it. He may simply have no context for recognizing the abnormality of the behaviour to which he is subjected. Or he may, perhaps, have cut himself off from his own feelings, having found that this was the only way he could cope. He may therefore have no idea that there is any problem, or he may want to appear as if he can cope with a superficial bravado or avoidant type behaviour.

You may say this sort of thing sounds impossible. It isn't. I spent at least six years of my adolescence living with moderately severe depression which never registered with anyone. Significantly, it didn't even register with me. I didn't realise that life needn't be utterly bleak. I knew I hated school but thought this was normal and that there was just nothing I could do about it. I therefore never mentioned it to anybody and probably would not have done so had anyone asked, since I barely recognized it as an abnormality and there appeared to be nothing I could do about it.

So my worry for this research: they may ask a child how to improve his life, and one way or another, he may not be able to give you an accurate answer. In addition, given societal norms, researchers may not really want to listen to his answer.

How would it be if the BBC Poll asking children if they would prefer to be home educated turned out to be about right...(and bear in mind that this figure is one which may suffer from the problem as mentioned in the preceding paragraphs)? What if more than 50% of children who have already said they preferred to be HEd continued to say that their lives would be significantly improved if they didn't have to go to school? Would the researchers dare to publish? Or would policy makers step in first and make sure it didn't get a proper hearing?

If, (blow me down), all of this happened, how creative could policy makers possibly get? If they really did have to confront such a statistic, could they really rise to the challenge?

My guess it that answers to childhood unhappiness are very often much more easily within our grasp than many of us have realised. If there were indeed a mass exodus from schools, we could find ways of coping: small co-operatives of families, working together in this information rich world! Easy peasy, and all the easier if we are allowed to think big.

There is a remote chance of bending Mark Thompson's ear within the next couple of weeks. It may be awkward, as I think I am meant to be working, but I keep fantasizing about what I would say to him. Something along the lines of: "Tell Mr Blair you need a bit more of a budget and he will be able to close schools. Then pile on the great internet resources, loads of free imaginative educational resources and you will end up saving the country a packet!"

Pipe dream or a genuine hope? Perhaps, with these sorts of initiative and research, the country really is gearing up to make significant changes for children.

Young Mums

We made it to a meeting of Home Educators that we've failed to get to for a while now. Full of new faces, and interestingly, many of them not fitting the usual HE parent profile in that quite a few of them were very, very young. I'm curious to know whether this is a nationwide trend, or simply a matter of there being plenty of first time buyer homes around this particular area.

There was also a mum who had been HE'd herself. She came with her mother. The whole family was wonderful.

The New (and Better) Moses

No...honestly, in many ways I mean it, since for me it is an extremely unusual experience to feel passionately that someone is producing deep truths, that these truths are vitally important and that they dignify human nature and endeavour.

Diary

We joined in with the International Beach Clean Up yesterday. The children loved it and I could see why. Leaving a beautiful beach looking spick and span - there can hardly be a better feeling.

The Museum staff also threw in free Geology and Marine Life lectures. A very satisfactory package. Only complaint - too much sun!

Breastfeeding Meme

How many children have you breastfed and for how long?

Two - (that's all I have). For seven years in total.

What were your reasons for breastfeeding?

I set out with the intention of managing 6 weeks max and this for the obvious health benefits. I didn't think I'd manage more than than this, seeing as there's a history of working mums in my family and I fondly imagined I'd be back at work as soon as the C section scar had healed.

How little I knew! My first born has taught me practically everything I really value, and this has included, " Hey, don't imagine you can play around with my attachment needs like that, you fool!"

Who was the most supportive member of your family?

My husband was very accomodating about it and didn't resent sharing the bed, which made the whole thing infinitely easier. (I learnt about co-sleeping the hard way too, having sat bolt upright in the baby's room feeding all hours God sends for the first six months. FOOL - again!)

My dear mum was supportive for the first year, and then started to get twitched up. By the third year, she admitted that she had gone to see the GP who had taken over her practice, in order to have a friendly, off-the-record chat about it all.

There are times when providence does indeed seem divine, for though this GP looked like the female equivalent of a stuffed shirt, she was actually married to a Lebanese guy who had encouraged her to think that it was perfectly normal to feed all your children until they are at least four, which she herself had done, thank you very much and so what was my mother talking about! Mum has been nothing but extremely supportive ever since.

Did you have any support from a group or Breastfeeding councillor?

Yes, LLL (La Leche League) saved my sanity at just the right moment. I was panicking when Ds reached the 15 month mark. We didn't seem to be close to weaning when everyone else we knew had stopped, apparently effortlessly, months before. Every time I tried to slow down on the whole proceedings, DS would seem devastated, and terrify me with an appearance of failing to thrive. You'd be right to think that I was in a pretty bad way when I walked into April's sitting room in Twickenham that sunny day, and saw a whole roomful of women feeding 3 and 4 year olds. It was a damoscene moment and just goes to show how ignorant someone with an expensive education can be.

Has breastfeeding changed the way you feel about your body?

Yep, I mostly ended up feeling powerful and useful but this wasn't just the breastfeeding, it was the pregnancy, the attempts to give birth, the skilled sleeping with the children and then the carrying as well. Good for the biceps.

What do you wish you had been told about breastfeeding?

That children don't clock watch and aren't interested in four hour gaps. This was something I'd been told I should be aiming for, and I do feel very angry that the health visitor didn't correct me. My son suffered for this.

What was the most surprising thing about breastfeeding?

I think the whole thing is quite surprising really. I can't think why I find it more surprising than say the miracle of birth or consciousness or the whole of existence, but my irrational response is honestly this: that yes, breastfeeding is a really surprising evolution.

Where did you first publicly feed?

I can't honestly remember. One of the first places where I got a negative reaction was in a church. (Despite not being a Christian, I know my liturgy, so it definitely wasn't an ignorance of this that cleared the pew.)

Is there anything you would change about your breastfeeding experience if you could?

Yes, I would transform the first 15 months of my first born's experience. He would feed on demand, we'd co-sleep and I would carry him in a sling. These things make sense.

What advise would you give to someone who was about to start breastfeeding?

I'd wait to be asked, unless there was anything glaringly obvious that required help, and then hopefully the advise would be appropriate to the problem. I don't have a thing about not offering advise, (a meme that has developed out of the counselling culture). Not offering advise when one patently could seems to me to be absurd, and a way of protecting professions from the threat of auto-didacts and the wisdom of the lay teacher.

Who are you tagging with this meme?

I dunno. A difficult one to tag, I'd say, as it is intimate, so I would rather hope that anyone who fancies would take it up.

Chimps and Early Hominids Interbred

Is there a creationist explanation for this, I wonder?

HT: Samantha

Home Education on the Politics Show

Oh goodness, poor Sheffield. Not only is it one of the areas where the Children's Database is being piloted, but they have a certain Mr Makin who seems to need to be put right. You can help him out in the Politics Show comment section.

IQ and The Nature of Talent

Hope it's OK to pull your comment up Tim, but just wanted to think further about it:

"While, as I would undertand, no-one has ever determined precisely what it is that IQ tests are measuring, if you turn things around and use them as predictors then they are quite reliable in predicting behaviours and performance. There is an interesting (American) chart called Economic and social correlates of IQ in the USA here."

Bearing in mind your caveat that no statistical analysis is going to predict the outcome for any individual, I gather this seems to be so (see below for exceptions/possible refutations), and wonder why exactly this should be the case. Could it at least partially be a matter of reliably being able to produce the goods on the day and that this consistency in problem solving translates well into the skills required for working environments?

Having been subjected to quite a number of IQ tests during my time (starting from the age of 4), I know full well that IQ results can be completely unreliable. At various times, I have produced scores with a difference of over 60 points, which would not seem particularly useful in terms of prediction. In fact I have just done two on-line tests to see how similiarly I score, and even within a space of 20 mins have managed a difference of some 14 points, which according to this list

IQ Career
140 Top Civil Servants; Professors and Research Scientists.
130 Physicians and Surgeons; Lawyers; Engineers (Civil and Mechanical)
120 School Teachers; Pharmacists; Accountants; Nurses; Stenographers; Managers.
110 Foremen; Clerks; Telephone Operators; Salesmen; Policemen; Electricians.
100+ Machine Operators; Shopkeepers; Butchers; Welders; Sheet Metal Workers.
100- Warehousemen; Carpenters; Cooks and Bakers; Small Farmers; Truck and Van Drivers.
90 Laborers; Gardeners; Upholsterers; Farmhands; Miners; Factory Packers and Sorters.

would mean that my life course would be different. Given my own experience of this variance, I find it hard to take IQ scores too seriously as a reliable predictive mechanism across populations, unless the consistency argument holds.

But on the subject of exceptions/possible refutations to the theory that IQ will, across populations, predict success, the New Scientist this week, in piece entitled "How to be a Genius" states:

"No accepted measure of innate or basic intelligence, whether IQ or other metrics, reliably predicts that a person will develop extraordinary ability. In other words, the IQs of the great would not predict their level of accomplishments, nor would their accomplishments predict their IQs. Studies of chess masters and highly successful artists, scientists and musicians usually find their IQs to above average, typically in the 115 to 130 range, where some 14 per cent of the population reside - impressive enough, but hardly rarefied as their achievements and abilities.

"The converse - that high IQ does not ensure greatness - holds was well". (Study from a selective elementary school quoted).

What I cannot work out, with my absense of understanding of statistics, is whether your caveat about individuals applies to the situation of predicting genius, or is this a more general refutation of the notion that IQ predicts life outcomes?

Instead of IQ, the circumstances that did seem to contribute to the fostering of exceptional talent almost invariably involved the "10 year rule"; in other words, a decade of hard and focused work in order to master something.

"Pete Sampras didn't possess more talent than Andre Agassi, but he won 14 grand slams to Agassi's eight because he worked harder and more steadily. And as cellist Yo-Y0 Ma once said, the most proficient and renowned musicians are not necessarily those who outshone everyone as youths , but rather those who had "fire in the belly".

The 10 year rule of course requires resourses: time and space to work, a mentor, support and fire in the belly - a love of what you are doing.

"Bloom came to see great talent as less an individual trait than a creation of environment and encouragement. "We were looking for exceptional kids, " he said "and what we found were exceptional conditions". He was intrigued to find that few of the study's subjects had shown speical promise when they first took up the fields they later excelled in, and most harboured no early ambition for stellar achievement. Rather, they awere encourgaged as children in a general way to explore and learn, then supported in more focused ways as they began to develop an area they particularly liked. Another retrospective study, of leading scinetists, similarly found that most came from homes where learning was revered for its own sake."

From the editorial:

The notion that people love doing things because they're good at them is back to front- they're good at them becaue they love doing them and will spend hours practising."

All in all, although the reasons for doing it are entirely different, you can't help feeling that autonomous education is coming out of this pretty well, what with there being an explicit aim to help children foster their interests. Autonomous educators set out to facilitate the interests of their children because they believe it is the morally right thing to do to, not because they want to create a genuius; but the fact that this appears to be the way in which talent is fostered seems to suggest that the epistemology underlying the faciliation of freedom is sound, and that being able to enact the theory that is active in the mind does look to be the most effective way to learn.

There's more in the article about how the talented manipulate information, but I guess I shouldn't really blow the NS's last chance of a subscription.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

Neuroscientist Prof. Susan Greenfield popped up on the BBC morning news yesterday, having put her name to a letter which claimed that children of a decade ago were notching up a good three more IQ points than our children can manage nowadays. The way the piece was introduced, you'd have thought there was some startling piece of research which somehow definitively pinned this apparent refutation of the Flynn Effect upon the usual suspects, ie: junk food and screen culture, but of course that was just the headline.

The Prof wasn't actually saying this at all. What she was saying was that this decline in IQ points had been observed, and although she had put her name to this letter which apparently did pin the problem on the above causes, she herself was maintaining an open mind, and wanted to know more about causes.

Hmmm...not entirely honorable, I'd say. Grab attention with a complete travesty of what you genuinely want to say, get this headline message across, then quietly say something entirely different. It is an old trick, but it constitutes a bundle of pseudo-scientism and will lead to a load of bullying of children which may well not be warranted.

Of course, it is very easy to pick on apparent causes that fit the prevailing memes and requirements of society, and much less likely that other possible causes will be sought. People want to hear what the Prof has to say because it only involves bullying children in order to put it right. It won't mean that grown-ups have to risk inconveniencing themselves in the process.

So what possible anti-memetic and inconvenient causes could there possibly be?

The other day, in fact the very day that DD would have otherwise started school, we went out to buy her a school uniform, because this was the only thing she thinks she missed out on by not going to school. We got the whole bundle in a sale and she wore the shirt and trousers proudly (risking the truancy patrols), for two consecutive days, though not for their entirety. She didn't look to be doing anything particularly unusual, but by the end of two days, the knees on her trousers were already wearing thin, the cuffs on the shirt were frayed and grey. All in all, the useful life of these clothes appears to be very short, and yet my guess is that they are expected to last most school kids at least a term or so.

It is hard not to wonder whether the lack of exercise caused by schools is not at least partially responsible for the problems that seem to be plaguing children, such as poor academic results and obesity. The amount of physical exercise DD takes in one day, when she would otherwise be sitting in a classroom, is phenomenal. If we have a day which is predominantly sedentary for one reason or another, she has the opportunity (because she doesn't need to go to bed at a prescribed early hour), to get out on the trampoline, along the monkey bars, over an assault course, belting around on her bike, one handed cartwheels, forward flipping, dancing, whatever. She never does not do this at some stage in the day, and the total amount of exercise would usually come to at least three hours of this sort of intensive activity. How many schooled children could manage this? Yet few of us dare to contemplate this as a cause, for school is such an integral part of the way adults cope with the world.

Here are some other examples largely unquestioned memes that seem to me to threaten the status quo and therefore don't get examined: that schooled children must eat at prescribed times, ie: not when they are hungry, but when they are told to and that children must have three good meals a day. How often in human history has this happened? Could some children do better with a different kind of meal set-up, such as five small meals per day, or missing breakfast, and having something at 10 am. I personally always remember hating eating so early in the morning, before we went into school. It always made me feel sick and neither of my children choose to eat before 10.00 am.

Or that screen culture is necessarily bad for you. There are numerous fMRI scans which reveal the oxygen uptake in brains undertaking various activities, but even these could look highly suspect and merely a confirmation of prevailing memes and societal requirements. We all feel the difference when we watch TV for relaxation or to learn something specific. Surely our brains are doing something entirely different when we are vegging out, paying only half a mind to the screen, or when we are dancing up and down and shouting at it, for example. Similarly, in a maths lesson, one child's brain may be flooding with activity, and the next may be staring out the window. It seems likely that the degree of activity of the brain has much less to do with the type of activity and much more about how the brain engages with it.

We also have no idea whether oxygen uptake correlates to functions of the mind. Thinking deeply actually registers very low in terms of mental activity on MRI. MRI scans could also therefore very easily be used to confirm existing prejudices and requirements.

The objection could be raised that children have been made to do this and that, and prevented from doing this and that since the introduction of effectively compulsory schooling, and that the proposed causes as above could not therefore account for a recent decline in IQ and increase in obesity. These problems must be due to something demonstrably different. But junk food has been around a while. So has TV. It is, of course, convenient to assume that these things are definitively responsible, but it could just be that there has actually been a change in other causal circumstances. For example, as a child, I was well aware of many other children being allowed to go to school without having breakfast. How often does this happen nowadays? There cannot be many children in the country who are not fed before they get in through the gates. Harrying by public services and cereal advertisers has made sure of that. We also know that the amount of sport in schools has declined.

But most importantly, so what if there really is a three point decline in IQ? Is it really going to be devasting to our way of life? Is it really the case that people will not solve their problems as efficiently, or that they will not be able pull upon intellectual resources as they require?

Indeed, is it necessarily adaptive and useful to have those three extra points. I personally find motherhood more frustrating when I know I am very fired up, with brain working in the sort of direct fashion that scores well on IQ tests. I find the multitudinous, distracting and sometimes apparently irrational demands of childcare harder to cope with. Perhaps skills that are not registered in IQ are more adaptive for parenthood.

But by far the most important point of all, and one that should inform this whole essay, is that we shouldn't be doing this to our children at all. An individual should be the master of his own mind. He is not a hoped-for end-product to be bullied and molded into shape. Fine if he chooses to be tested and wants to improve, but to submit him to a miserable, non-autonomous life on the basis that someone else thinks his brain should be performing in such and such a way, is to restrict fundamental freedoms that would genuinely allow for the actual development of his mind, for coercion - being forced to enact a theory that is not active in the mind - can only limit rationality and creativity.

Recommended Reading

Arch Blog is right. This article from The Friday Thing is well worth a read. It covers the subject of the thinking (or rather, lack of it) behind TB's recent plans to intervene in potentially problematic families.

Only Investigate if There Appears to Be a Problem

Dana has laid out the case against over-involvement of the state in home schooling. It may be specifically about Indiana but it applies universally.

Brain Training

We've had so much fun with Nintendo DS's Big Brain Academy! No glitches to speak of and it gets your prefrontal lobes going apace.

We've also gone for Brain Training, which does have at least two potential glitches, (it doesn't like high pitched voices and won't reliably recognise the number 8), but these problems are not overwhelming and the two games work well together.

The most peculiar effect of which I am aware is that they seem to have improved my eyesight, which leads me to the slightly alarming conclusion that the small failings that I had recently noticed with my vision are due to cerebral processing, rather than the more expected (given that my mother has been appallingly myopic all her life), alterations in lens shape.

Children's Views of the Database

I apologise for this, but I cannot help it: I TOLD 'EM SO. I've been batting on about the consequences of abuse of confidentiality since the inception of the database fiasco. The Guardian reports that children agree and that it will stop them using services.

(Could this be the hidden agenda after all?)

HT: ARCH Blog

BBC Vote on Home Education

Last time I checked, it was 57% of children in favour of being taught at home - in their pyjamas.

Causes of Autism

We must all have seen this story by now, but the general reaction in the parts of the HE community I have encountered so far is that the MMR theory is not going away.

I, personally, am booking Dd in for her booster, and thanking my lucky stars that I married a younger man.

Diary

Dave Hill reports, (very enviably), that his daughter's mispronunciations frequently not only convey her meaning, but do so with added value.

If only the same could be said here. It can't because as a general rule, mispronunciations and misapprehensions in this household breed utter befuddlement, acute irritation and panic. I wrote not long ago about the cannonball/cannibal situation, but this, lamentably, is far from unique. By way of another recent example:

Me (trying to break into a run): Please hurry up. We're SO late.
Ds (9) (running, obligingly): Where are we actually going?
Me: We said we'd meet them at the Tourist Information Centre.
Dd. (4) (stopping, already ten yards behind): I'm not going.
Me: Oh for goodness sakes.
Dd: I'm staying here.
Me (Scampering back with rapidly diminishing hope that I might be able to mobilise her): Only two minutes ago you said you couldn't wait to see X and Y.
Dd: I don't want to any more.
Ds: Why on earth not?
Dd: We aren't terrists.
Me: What? Oh for goodness sakes, just run. (At a hobbling trot): Look, I do see what you mean. They can be a pain, but we're all tourists every now and then.
Dd: I'm not.
Ds: You are, derr!
Me: Shut up. KEEP MOVING. Look, we all are when we go on holiday abroad, say.
Dd: I'm NEVER a terrist.
Me: Actually, I think we could count ourselves as tourists right nowww....

Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Ds now has come to a halt with his index finger poking in the air.

Ds: "Aahhh, I see! (He approaches Dd, apparently helpfully.) Look, we're only going there to pick up some bomb making information and a free balaclava.
Me: SHUT UP. What are you talking about?
Ds: It won't take long. We could pick up a few land mines while we're there.
Dd: (now wailing), STOP, STOP.
Me: STOP IT. STOP IT.

At this point, we somehow actually reach the Tourist Information Centre which, to Dds very evident relief, is closed. There's no sign of the people we were supposed to be meeting and it's raining quite heavily. We take the opportunity to sit down on a wall in order to try to muster an appearance of knowing what we're up to.

More on the Child Snatchers

Here, with yet more appropriately strong language, we have The Devil's Kitchen on the impossibility of maintaining a genuinely open society when all your children are databased. I think it unlikely that he exaggerates the case. Children, once codified and checked over, will indeed effectively be owned by the state.

He also addresses the issue of awkward PR for those who campaign to expose the dangers of a kiddie database.

Data NOT Safe in their Hands

This week's Spectator (full article under subscription, but well worth a read) expands upon just one of the dangers of the database culture. Private detectives are, it seems, already onto a nice little earner, selling stolen confidential information from such places as the DVLA and the Police National Computer to anyone willing to pay. Information is apparently fairly easily acquired through blagging and the bribing of corrupt officials. The penalties for getting caught are not considerable.

This is London carries another story about corrupt officials doing it for themselves.

"Home Affairs spokesman Mark Hunter said: 'These revelations show it is folly to put all the precious personal data of our citizens in one place.' "

Given the above, the children's database seems to carry potentially terrifying implications for families at risk from abusive partners or the like.

More on Children's Database

Following the recent publicity in the Guardian, Telegraph and the Mail and on Channel 4, it looks as though there are more bloggers to add to the list of those opposing the establishment of a children's database.

For example:

A View From England

The Devil's Kitchen

The Last Boy Scout

IT Law in Ireland

Stumbling and Mumbling

Think Mojo

Unlimited Jargon

and an update, including appropriately strong language, from Mr Eugenides.

Causes of Childhood Obesity?

This Guardian article makes a good deal of sense to me. Thanks Jax.

It reminded me of a recent conversation during which the point was made that food should not be consumed as a way of satisfying anything other than hunger, the implication being that to do otherwise constituted a form of addiction.

Funnily enough, the gentle person who made this point had been a long term breast feeder and also had, I distinctly remember, breastfed her children when they hurt themselves. I missed the chance to ask her whether she regarded herself as having been responsible for creating and feeding an addiction, which is probably only fair, given that I think she is only harsh in labelling herself.

Anyway, my point here (which was not directly covered in the article) is that one of the key factors in the argument that breast feeding appears to help with limiting obesity may be that infants who are breastfed do apparently naturally seek comfort for things other than hunger. They use breast feeding both as a means of emotional support and a way of dealing with physical pain. Breastfeeding has this advantage over bottle feeding in that breast milk is very often instantly available in times of emotional need or when the child hurts themselves.

The fact that many breastfed kids are skinny, long-limbed and fit seems to suggest that eating when stressed can make sense and that this may actually not be a terrible thing, an addiction, a cause of obesity etc, but simply the body responding appropriately to it's needs. After all, many foods produce calming or analgesic hormones and neuro-transmitters.

Intentionally, self-coercively avoiding food in these circumstances may not actually help for any number of different reasons. It could, for example, set up a sort of self-loathing, and obsession with food, which could result in being unable stop thinking about it, possibly resulting in some sort of eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia.

Simply eating when you feel stressed could mean that you just eat less later on, when you would otherwise have been hungry.

Of course, I didn't manage to make the most of the above points . Instead the libertarian in me, predictably enough, kicked in and I think I made a point that the label "addiction" is simply a pejorative description of people's free choices, and that so labelled, the behaviour does immediately become more problematic. I could have added that the pejorative label may have evolved during times when food was scarse or difficult to produce in times of emotional need. Now we have microwaved hot milk on tap, so to speak.

Would I have been talking rubbish, do you think?

1984

If anything was going to make me deeply sociopathic, prone to drug and alcohol problems, violent reactions, depression, unwanted pregnancies, (you know, the works), Mr Blair's suggestions contained herein, would probably do it.

Good One, Mike.

Mike was just SO RIGHT and the German Prof. approximately 95% wrong in this piece from the BBC World Service. Mike successfully tied the Prof. up in knots, despite an HE sceptical interviewer. Annoyingly and nonsensically, however, the Prof. was allowed to conclude that compulsory schooling was the best possible mode of education for a democratic society. Whaa?

Honey, I Suckle the Kids

There's an interesting discussion on the merits or otherwise of the Channel 5's Attachment Parenting Programme over at Playing it by Ear. Liz, who was featured, has contributed to it.

My feeling: that the essential goodness of the British family did indeed shine through, despite heavy attempts by the editors to make them look peculiar. I also agree with Clare that there was some strange goings-on in the single child American family - the child will in all probability suffer terribly from the mother's narcissistic investment. The other American family struck me as potentially suffering from a similar problem, the mother appearing so extremely zealous that the children run the risk of seeing themselves as products of her ideas, and not individuals in their own right, but I may be wrong here. This could well have been another problem of the editing, with the editor prompting mum to proselytize about AP instead of relaxing and just getting on with it.

The Down Side

Ouch, Owwww...ow and general twisting and turning and moither. This is definitely one of the downsides of Home Education!

The problem is you have the opportunity to fall in love with other HE people and their families. You spend so much time with them. Your kids love their kids. You learn so much from them. You get to know them so well. You're in and out of their lives and homes. It becomes a part of one's own life. Then sometimes, for very good reason, they have to go.

You twist and turn. The move would be great for them. It is the right thing, clearly. It would solve problems that could not otherwise easily be solved. They will be happy in the new place. It will provide them with exactly the right opportunities. And yet....Whaa...Sorrry, I am crying.

JFT...DOOOOONNNNNNTT GOOOOO...and that applies to you too...SP and family. New Zealand is a lucky country.

The CAF - Why We Should be Scared

Here's Spy Blog detailing some of the problems (technological and otherwise) with one of the most sensitive areas in the children's database fiasco. The list is long enough already, and that's without touching upon such major issues as whether lives so micro-managed can possibly be considered free.

Detachment Parenting and the Ezzos

Of course it isn't just the Pearls who advocate an utterly unnecessarily cruel approach to child rearing. Here's Hailey on the Ezzos with their arguments for detachment parenting.

Attachment Parenting & Home Education in the Independent

The Independent has a piece on attachment parenting from a home educator. Rings a lot of bells.

Home Education and Exam Results

The Home Education GCSE list has contained a good number of success stories. We hear of people who were miserable at school and not doing as well as it seemed they should, who at home have achieved results well beyond that which was predicted for them at school. MANY CONGRATULATIONS!

For anyone who did struggle and does still need these exams, there is always the option to try again.

Diary

Blogging life is getting easier all the time, for not only does the ARCH Rights blog cover more or less everything that I would feel obliged to write about if I had the time and the general clarity of thought, but bf Georgia (no relation) has now also taken to blogging.

She accounts for some of what we got up to yesterday, and I would agree with her assessment of the goings on in the philosophy circle, though the problem that I took away with me was that of the common perception in the group of the free market being a coercive or perhaps simply an ethically or aesthetically unpleasant environment. Whilst this doesn't come as much of a surprise, I was slightly taken aback by the misunderstandings that underpinned or informed or even inflamed these opinions. For example, Ayn Rand's perception of humans as consumers who are responsible for the perpetuation of their own existence, having made a free decision that this is the way they want to go, was translated entirely pejoratively into "Ayn Rand thinks that humans should be allowed to be selfish". (The philosophy lecturer).

Ho hum. I think Georgia and I both left with the overall feeling that the general notion of personal liberty was well received but that the economic and political structures that would allow for such an existence were either not well received or perhaps not well understood.

Cheered up afterwards due to b-i-l (a free marketeer if ever there was one) listening attentively over supper as I got a sort of debriefing lecture on Milton Friedman out of my system. (Thanks, W!)

I then got an A minus on Big Brain Academy - the first one I have managed when fully sober. I think I can hear my liver offering up a thanksgiving prayer. Ds now concedes that I am better at it than him...but only for the moment. He is improving all the time and I will have to work to keep ahead.

Children's Databases on Air

We're set to record this one: next Friday September 1st at 7.30pm, Channel 4 "30 Minutes" programme is on children’s databases.

People at Action on the Rights for Children have been working with the documentary team.

They say:

"As it is a 30-minute documentary, it can only outline the problems but we hope there will be more programmes to follow. "

Goodbye Data Protection

Despite risking becoming just a referral site for ARCH blog, I feel compelled to point people in the direction of this one.

Here's a taster, as quoted by them from the Guardian:

"Ministers are preparing to overturn a fundamental principle of data protection in government, the Guardian has learned. They will announce next month that public bodies can assume they are free to share citizens' personal data with other arms of the state, so long as it is in the public interest.

The policy was agreed upon by a cabinet committee set up by the prime minister, and reverses the current default position - which requires public bodies to find a legal justification each time they want to share data about individuals."

If this really is all in the public interest, what is the problem?

The problem with this proposal, apart from the complete destruction of privacy, the likelihood of a massive increase in data sharing - most of which will be unnecessary, the probable abuses of the system and high chance of errors, increased state expenditure, and the assumption of statist rights to intrusion and by implication to exist as if by divine right, is that the public interest is decided centrally. A state-decided "public interest" may not actually be in the interest of the public, or it may be in the interests of some and not other members of the public.

By way of an example, it is now assumed that it is in the interests of the public to know where children are being educated. Whilst this may be in the interests of a section of the population, such as those children who are being educationally neglected, it contravenes the inclinations of home educating parents who want to be left alone by the state to educate their children as they see fit and without an LEA officer with their unsupported assumptions that they know best, telling parents how to do it.

There are no obvious and established answers to the question of public interest and the current precedent should therefore remain.

Not a Surprise

ARCH Blog has more on the problems with the NHS records system computer upgrade. Guess what - it isn't working out too well.

And what is it with having problems with getting software developed in India? Everyone I know who has tried this says that they wouldn't do it again.

The Meme of Three

Jonathan from Liberal England sent this meme this way. Thanks Jonathan.

1.Things that scare me:
Iran
Asteroids
Skiing holidays

2. People who make me laugh:
Bill Bailey
Peter Cook
People who've decided to go on skiing holidays

3. Things I hate the most:
Tyrannies of any variety (including parental and schooling)
Infallibilism
Wasps

4. Things I don't understand:
Why so many parents think school the answer
How the BBC gets away with it.
Why Kate Moss?

5. Things I'm doing right now:
Ignoring Ds as he straps water balloons to his trousers. I don't 'think' it is an extremely sick joke. (Oh bother. It is).
Ruffling fur on wolfhound with my left foot.
And yes, fairly predictably, I've just been told to be quiet, even though I was only making a very soft tapping sound. Apparently this is enough to wake up dollies.

6. Things I want to do before I die:
Be around when someone works out a way not to.
Be able to go to Israel and feel safe.
Find Dd's other shoe

7. Things I can do:
Ummm...be very uncertain about how to answer this question.
Let's get back to basics. I clearly can turn on my computer.
Access the internet.

8. Ways to describe my personality:
Anxious
Irritable
Scatterbrained

9. Things I can't do:
Solve the energy crisis
Stop worrying about asteroids
Find Dd's other shoe

10. Things I think you should listen to:
Anything you fancy
Elgar's Cello Concerto, 3rd movement, but only in the English countryside on a sunlit evening.
Me

11. Things you should never listen to:
The Archers
Homeopaths
The UN

12. Things I'd like to learn:
More maths
Some chemistry
How to put a functioning lock on the bathroom door.

13. Favorite foods:
More or less anything cooked by somebody else
Coriander
Tsatsiki


14. Beverages I drink regularly:
Tea
Wines
Diet Coke

15. Shows I watched as a kid:
Blue Peter
The Dam Busters
The Longest Day (ie: only anything very, very earnest)

16. People I'm tagging to do this meme:
Clare at Playing it by Ear
Jax at Making it Up
Dawniy at Our Learning Together

To Do

Oh joy! Top of my "to do" list this lovely am: *Fill in tax return and *Find the hornets' nest.

The hornets demonstrate qualities of intelligence and evil in equal measure, pursuing the children out of the garden and into house with an appearance of such malign intent that it is truly chilling. They terrify the horses in similar fashion. A normally sanguine friend, recently stung, reports that it felt as if someone were pressing a cigar to his forehead for a whole week. There is good reason to believe that I am allergic to wasp-type stings. Hornets are truly gross, yet somehow I still feel drawn to this issue.

Random School Allocation

Dr Eamonn Butler has yet another prospective reason to choose home education.

Studying Arabic

...after doing maths, biology and art. Think we can see where government priorities are pushing things at the mo!

Databased USA

Oh dear...it looks as if there is nowhere to run if Spunky has it right.

The Side Effects of Testing

With all this talk of A-levels, and the general all round jollity that the latest batch of best-ever results has inspired, I can't help thinking back to my own experience of that time.

Whilst we hear from many academic sources that various types of testing are beneficial to learning...eg: see the discussion in this piece from the Digital Library, I personally found that almost every lesson that I derived from this kind of testing had very little to do with anything constructive.

Ann Lahrson Fisher from the National Home Education Network sums up my experience very neatly and it is worth adding another one which is that over the long term, I have retained very, very little knowledge about the actual subject content of my A-levels. B-I-L confirms that despite only just having got a very good degree, he already remembers diddly-squat about huge chunks of it.

Side Effect Lessons:

Someone else knows what you should know better than you do.

Learning is an absolute that can be measured.

Your interests are not important.

The subject areas being evaluated on the test are the only things that are important to know.

Thinking is not valued; getting the 'right' answer is the only goal.

The answer (to any question) is readily available, indisputable, and it's one of these four or five answers here; there's no need to look deeper or dwell on the question.

Your worth can be summarized by a single mark on a paper.

The purpose of learning is to get a high score. High test scores are the only purpose of testing.

If you score very well, you are better than other people who do not score as well.

Poor test scores mean that you are a failure.

If you score poorly, there is nothing you can do to change it. Why try?

I haven't learned to read yet. I am not smart.

Since we are tested once a year, we have to spend the rest of the year preparing for the test.

The test was too hard. I am not smart.

The test was easy. I don't have to learn any more.

The test was easy [hard]. Public [home] [private] school kids are dumber [smarter] than I am.

The questions on the test are what is important. What I have been studying is not important.

I have to get a higher score next year to show that I am learning.

Fisher notes that there are indeed some anxieties in academic departments about the effects of testing. Here are some:

Standardized tests cannot measure creativity.

Test scores reward children who have one style of learning, and penalize all other children for having a different style of learning.

Standardized tests cannot measure the ability to think, and actually teach children bad thinking habits, such as trying to outguess the test makers, rather than thinking for themselves.

Standardized tests result in a type of evaluation that is easy to manage (true/false, multiple choice).

Thinking skills are very difficult and time consuming to evaluate.

Standardized tests are designed not to test individual progress, but to compare a child's progress to the progress of other children. Thus, tests promote competition, not cooperation.

Poor test scores decrease self esteem, possibly leading to social and discipline problems.

Testing can damage the trust relationship between teacher and student.

Test scores and grading are a divisive force in families, separating parents from their natural position as the child's first and most committed teacher. (Wow! Some educators know this! Dare I hope for a positive future?)

Reliance on standardized test scores reduces initiative, independence, creativity, and willingness to take risks in learning situations.

Test scores become the goal of student work (extrinsic reward) rather than the sense of satisfaction and wonder that naturally follows discovery of something new (intrinsic reward).

The drive for high test scores creates unnecessary, unproductive stress.

Standardized tests promote under achievement.

Test makers assume that all children have equal readiness for all subjects at the same age.

Tests focus on a narrow band of learning, emphasizing memorization skills.

Reliance on test scores and grades causes students to drop courses of study.

It is worth noting that standardized tests, in addition to being narrowly focused and frequently misused comparative measurements of academic progress, are powerful teachers in their own right. Only when these instruments have been imposed on huge populations of students for many years can we begin to see that the tests take on a teaching life of their own, quite apart from the intentions of their creators.


None of which applies to my recent self-imposed testing, which resulted in the over-riding lesson of remembering to make sure that our wine cellar is well-stocked. Hmm.


UPDATE:

Actually, I think testing is great. (Have just come third and then second in this. Na na na naa na. And I was stone cold sober.)

Performance Enhancing?

It is the case that most of us discover just how insightful and generally all round brilliant we really are after a couple of glasses of something or other. And yes, it turns out to be completely true...for yesterday night, in the interests of science, and after about four units of red wine, I increased my score on Big Brain Academy by a whopping three whole notches - which may not be good news for my liver, since the next day, I was back to my previous sober best.

Perhaps this is why I find the news from Future Pundit that human brain cells can replictate in culture so very inspiring. Brain cells or liver cells, either would be good enough for me.

Costs/Benefits

By way of consoling myself as regards the expense of home education, I regularly compare costs with private schooling. A recent estimate from Charles Moore of the Spectator set the price of putting a child through private school at approximately £250k, so there aren't too many worries there.

However we do have to concede the case with regard to state schooling, with current parental expenditure estimated at £14,000 for a school-life. But of course when you take value for your money into account, home education wins hands down.

Pearl Update

It seems that the number of bloggers and their commentators who will no longer tolerate the child beating teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl continues to grow. See here by way of an example.

Pot Calling Kettle Black?

With what is becoming a bit of a theme here - following on from the last post about ill-educated nursery nurses, we now hear that tests of teacher trainees show that one in 10 recruits has trouble with the spelling of words such as "receipt".

Just wondering what a Nursery Nurses Union would make of that? "Benny Hawkins in the Staffroom" would seem only fair.

HT: Tom Morris. (Bother...don't seem to be able to link to you right now.)

Vicky Pollard, the Nursery Nurse?

This story from the Guardian seems to have arrived courtesy of a press release from the Professional Association of Teachers - yes those them ones with a fairly recent notorious history of unresearched HE bashing and other frankly dotty suggestions, so perhaps all in all, one needn't take this story too seriously.

But whichever way you look at it, you wouldn't want your child in the school system since either the story is true, in which case, you don't, or it is not and you still don't, given that the voice of teachers would therefore be so out of whack.


HT: Jonathan

The Home Educator's Town Square Test

Home educated Lulie stands up for what she believes in and wonders whether Britain is really a free society. Hmmm...looks like the jury might be still out on that one.

Moral Equivalences

Gil posted this a while back but it comes to mind on a daily basis atm, and seems as pertinent as ever...so here it is.

What's Going On?

DS's sense of humour is getting in the way these days. For example after watching me beavering away as quickly as possible to get some work at home done, he chimes in, not awfully helpfully,

"You servants are all the same. Taking money from the rich and keeping it for yourselves."

The thought that he may be mutating into Eric Cartmen has completely put me off my stride.

"Bully"

This new game from the makers of Grand Theft Auto looks set to cause a stir. Not only does it contain scenes of violence (which will result in the usual splurge of outraged condemnation), but the violence takes place in a school, which will doubtless also result in school advocates getting in a tizz at being so represented.

Note, I didn't say mis-represented since from the little that can be gathered from the blurb, it doesn't look as if it is far removed from at least two of our local senior schools, where we know of children who have been headbutted, knifed, pushed downstairs, had their heads slammed against walls and mirrors and fingers slammed in doors as well as having all their stuff repeatedly nicked.

But that is only a tiny reason why we HE. We HE because HE is a fun and great way to learn!

Muddle Puddle

Hey, it's happened...I'm there, on the Muddle Puddle Early Years Blog Ring! (See side-bar). Yippeeee...and thanks Jax for sorting this.

Costs of Creativity

Daniel at Key Words coincidentally almost exactly duplicates a conversation I had yesterday with someone who has just completed their physics doctorate. Daniel and this person both maintain that intelligence is often perceived, particularly in early stages of education, to be linked to the replication of accepted dogma and that more lateral, creative and critical thinking (of the kind that best serves post-doctorate researchers, for example), is often regarded very poorly during this same early stages.

I suppose I did have an inkling that this was the case, but it's nice to have it confirmed by people in the field.

What We Do in the Countryside

We had a fantastic night out in a beautiful local pub not so long ago. Sounds rather peculiar when you know what it was exactly, but it really was one of the best nights I've ever experienced, for a number of completely unforgettable reasons.

It happened to be the first time that I have managed to get to the local Philosophy Circle...format: one hour lecture, followed by discussion from the floor. I have never listened so attentively as I did that hour. (The first memorable thing). It felt as if my life depended upon what was said, so intriguing was the subject, and so relevant with regard to what is currently going on with the terrorist threat.

Second memorable thing: I simply basked in the reflected glory of accompanying two people who's minds quite clearly don't fit easily into their skulls and both of whom spoke with such intelligence, clarity and humility.

Third memorable thing: there were other people there whose precision of thought and expression rocks you to the very core, almost as if someone had held a very pleasurable source of electricity to your stomach.

Fourth memorable thing: towards the end of the discussion, one of my accompanying egg-heads very, very mildly shook the entire foundations of the lecture.

Fifth memorable thing: the lecturer said effectively "Hey, you know what, I think you're right". Good grief, that one blew me away too!

Sixth more embarrassingly memorable thing: I did manage to stumble out a proposed solution to the problem, which being a newbie I imagined would be disregarded. Instead it received the sincere recognition from a very experienced and eloquent philosopher.

Anyhow...just realised what the next two lectures are about...yes...my fav topic: two talks on liberty from two different philosophy lecturers. Can't wait!

Desire of Success Causing Childhood Neuroses

There is much that I agree with in this article - A Nation of Wimps from Psychology Today.

The central argument: that parental hyper-concern for children is inhibiting children's development. Other related themes: that this parental hyper-concern and attendant scrutiny is borne of parental perception of the competitive nature of the world out there, that children must be assisted by their parents to win in this race, that children know about and are diminished by this assistance and that unstructured play is an important means towards developing the qualities that lead to an unneurotic adulthood.

I don't have any complaints here. I agree with all this but there are some problems with the extent of the arguments. For example, I don't think hyper-scrutiny is solely the fault of parents; it comes from schools too. The pressure/hyper-scrutiny that is applied to kids in schools means that children realise that significant weight is given to success in various forms, so that they feel devastated when they cannot achieve. School assessments can be almost entirely responsible for this kind of self-appraisal and damage, leading children to develop the paradigm that the world is indeed relentlessly competitive, that co-operation is not an option, that they must always strive to be on top and yet are forever unlikely to get there. All of which doesn't look like a recipe for terrific mental health.

This does undoubtedly all go on, so what is the answer. Of course I am going to say HOME EDUCATION, but then one of the common criticisms of home education is that the children are over-protected by their parents, therefore giving their child the impression that the world is a dangerous place out there, and generally turning their kids into neurotic messess that way. These claims, though, are usually a load of old hogwash, particularly if children are educated autonomously. Not only are they not clossetted away in a classroom, having a better chance of actually seeing how the real world actually works, but they also have choices over their own life right from the beginning. They can be assisted to make rational decisions when they need the help, but they only rely on their own appraisals to test the success of their own ambitions, which means that very little terrifying weight is given to the idea of success and failure. The autonomously educated child can fail at things and it is only by his own assessment that this failure matters. He knows that he is still safe to carry on, that failure doesn't risk the loss of love, attention, or in anyway compromise his survival.

Because his successes or failures are only measured in his own terms, he doesn't introject the lesson that is implied by the school system, that the whole of life is relentlessly competitive, and that meaningful co-operation is a non-starter. Nor does he have to face the issue of where he comes in the pecking order, since he simply will not know most of the time, nor will it matter. What matters instead is that he solves the problems that he considers important to solve, which is surely as much as one could ask.

Parenting children to facilitate their autonomy is not a matter of being hyper-involved. It means being available to be asked for help, which is a different thing. Also, the play that is mentioned in the article as being beneficial to development is an integral part of learning for the autonomously educated child, there being almost no distinction between play and the work of learning.

HT: Karen at The Thomas Institute,

Leave Us Alone

It seems that home educators everywhere would usually prefer to be left alone. From the Washington Times, Michael Smith of the HSLDA puts a couple of arguments in favour of freedom for HEors.

Am only hoping that he has it wrong in the last paragraph and that we will eventually be able to put this whole tiresome issue aside. Perhaps, when state officials eventually realize that monitoring us when we don't want to be monitored, and telling us what to do when we would rather be doing something else, that this effectively means that parents are absolved of responsibility for the education of children, which therefore means that any family who has been let down by state education will have a righteous grievance and a case in court...perhaps then HEors will eventually get left alone.

Poor old Puerto Ricans...looks like their government hasn't got it yet. Here's hoping the HEors there have the nous to put the case.

HT: Spunky

The Muddles We Make

By way of demonstrating very neatly why it is so important to have a good grasp of ethics and theories of knowledge and to be able to express these as clearly as possible, we have the following:

I OWE MY MOTHER

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE .
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION .
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL .
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My mother taught me LOGIC .
" Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC .
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT .
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My mother taught me IRONY .
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS .
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM .
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA .
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER .
"This room of yours look's as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY .
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE .
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION .
"Stop acting like your father!"

15 . My mother taught me about ENVY .
"There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION .
"Just wait until we get home."

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING .
"You are going to get it when you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE .
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP .
"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20. My mother taught me HUMOUR .
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT .
"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS .
"You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS .
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM .
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

25. And my favourite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE .
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you"

Makes me realise quite how wonderful the theories of Taking Children Seriously really are. At least TCS grown-ups shouldn't be making these kinds of mistakes, ie: errors of thinking, judgement and expression!

Philosophy of Liberty

We all enjoyed this flash animation explaining the principles of freedom. Simple, straightforward, and triggering some important points of discussion, eg: whether or not it contains a particularly accurate perception of the nature of time, and then some quibbles over the "initiation of force" issue.

HT: Chris O'Donnell

David Deutsch on Fixing the Big Problems

Playing catch-up yet again. Here's an article from the Telegraph from November last, which is characteristic of the writer's work in that it is elegant, precise, informed, visionary and essentially optimistic. What more could one ask?

Big England

Dave at Temperama is continuing his Big England series with a post of mine on the subject. Was very flattered to be asked and have loved reading the other contributions, such at this from Roldy.

Education Research Also Gets a Fail

Continuing with the theme from the previous post, on the matter of the embarrassingly ignorant, misconceived, mis-directed state of thinking in and now behind education policy, we have this from the National Foundation for Education Research, (NFER), a body largely funded by the DfES and LAs.

Every home educating list, (well, all the ones I'm on anyhow) has carried strong objections to what looks like a propaganda piece for LAs. Home Educators are right to object. What more needs to be said when we hear that the researchers were teachers and the four home educating families who were selected to partake in the research were put forward by the LAs? No wonder you end up with this sort of response:

"Parents noted the benefits of local authority officers having a teaching background. A keen interest in, and a connection with, the children was considered key to the development of an effective relationship between the local authority and families. "

Whaaa? Effective for whom exactly? It might serve the authorities very well in their mission to control, but I've yet to hear of any HE family who has been bowled over by the help provided by an LA, teachers or no teachers, and even if we were to be offered all this help, we CERTAINLY don't want to HAVE to have it. The thing is, help will only come with scrutiny and this scrutiny is more than likely to actually damage learning in the situation that families feel the pressure to produce for the LA rather than attending to the specific needs of their children.

At least now we know what the LAs really want. It is out there, in its full awfulness:

"Local authority personnel's legal concerns led them to propose the following: that all parents register their intent to home educate with the local authority; that the term "efficient and suitable" full-time education be more accurately defined; and, because of the local authority's responsibility with regard to safeguarding children, a requirement for EHE children to be seen by professionals (although local authorities are responsible for safeguarding and promoting children's welfare, they do not have powers to enter homes). Other recommendations fell under the remit of monitoring and assessment and included the importance of monitoring the educational provision made for EHE children and the need for regular assessments to determine EHE children's educational progress. "

Ok, so where does all this monitoring actually stop? Perhaps we should monitor the monitors just to make sure that their learning is up to scratch. In fact, by their own argument surely they must see this as essential. Given the evidence so far presented, it is quite clear that the policy makers and the LAs haven't got a good grounding in very much at all that is pertinent here, eg: in how to undertake or read research, or in learning theory, or in the British tradition of freedom for the populace. It looks as if we must set rather a large amount of homework for marking with a final examination on the subjects of the problems of scientism and statistics, epistemology, ethics and including a large section on the reasons for the importance of freedom and the dangers of subjugation of people.

However, I personally would rather not bother. How about this idea: we will leave you alone to get on with stuff that might be useful, and you leave us alone to get on with stuff that will be useful?

Go here to lodge objections with the NFER and to provide further rather more accurate information than they've managed to seek out so far.

Education Policy Gets a Fail Mark

Blimey, if you followed my last post, you were doing well. To be fair, I was in a huge hurry this am, and it is interesting (well to me anyhow) to see what spills out in such a situation. Basically, it seems that my inclination towards pedantry, (a hopefully usually recessive genetic aspergic trait) pops up when I let myself go unedited.

By way of a contrast and as a picture of clarity and good sense, and a more legal viewpoint, please see the ARCH comment for a very satisfactory critique of Prof Archard's piece.

But before signing out, there is more on the matter of what the government is proposing for schools, on this occasion from The Times. Don't worry, I'm not going to start all over again, though GOOD GRIEF, it's tempting - all those hidden genes are bubbling to the surface at this very moment....just look at this for an example of provocation to pedantic criticism:

"SCHOOLS would no longer be required to teach children the difference between right and wrong under plans to revise the core aims of the National Curriculum. Instead, under a new wording that reflects a world of relative rather than absolute values, teachers would be asked to encourage pupils to develop “secure values and beliefs”.

Ummm, eerr....no STOP. What I just want to know is - who is it who's actually confused here? Is it government policy makers or the hacks, or as I strongly suspect, is it both?

Anyhow, whoever it is should go read Popper and get their heads slightly more round this subject matter. They could start with Bryan Magee's very succinct Popper if they have to get their policy or copy out in the next few days. Once they've done this and have got at least a basic grasp of ethics and theories of knowledge, and then visited the ARCH website just to make sure they aren't infringing any current legislation, THEN and only THEN should they start offering up their ideas on these sorts of issues.

Children: Products or People?

Jax pointed me in the direction of this one from the Guardian. Just when I imagined life was getting too full to blog atm, I can't help it, I'm back here! Couldn't let this pass.

Ooh, that article is rhetorically naughty and epistemologically dodgy, by turns. It's good on rhetorical devices that conceal the fault lines in the argument, vague about the implications of assertions, particularly in the key matter of learning theory, and apparently incapable of applying the logic leading to the first conclusion to the second instance.

The most notable rhetorical device centres around the use of the word "product". In the course of asserting that children are not, or should not be regarded as products, Prof Archard only addresses the issue of children being regarded as products *of their parents*. He does not touch upon the possibility of children being products of a school system. There is no explanation provided as to why this automatic exemption should take place. By this fallacious argument by omission, schools are automatically apparently exempted from the possible fault of treating children as products.

Without getting stuck on the matter of definitions, we need to know what the Prof. thinks he is implying by the idea of a child being a product. It seems by product that he means that someone asserts their right (whatever this may be) to control and mould someone else in order put the object of these attentions out there as some sort of representation of the maker. There is an implied epistemological point here, which is that that someone who is a product is not the master of himself; his qualities, thoughts, actions/ theories are not his, he is not able to apply critical thought to these things, nor to act freely. This because being a product implies conveying only those ideas that are imparted by the producer.

Given this definition, it seems that there is very good argument behind asserting that parents should not treat children as products. We would agree (for epistemological reasons since it is better that children apply their critical faculties to theories) that it is a very good thing that children be not products of their parents. But the thing is, this definition of what constitutes a product actually also fits precisely with the very thing that Prof Archard seems to be suggesting should be created by the school system, since he asserts that schools should seek to impart "secure values and beliefs" and this in preference to teaching the skills of critical thinking. In other words, he wants children to adopt ideas that are promoted by the school, which is the very definition of wanting to achieve a product.

It's pretty hard to see how Prof Archard is not saying that it is perfectly OK for schools to treat children as products when it is completely illegitimate for parents to do this. So how is that Prof? How do you justify your argument that children should be products of schools and not of parents? Well, he suggests that parents are much more likely to teach rubbish to their kids than schools are. JUST HANG ON a second here. How is this so transparently true? It certainly by no means follows so immediately from the assertion that schools should be teaching secure values and beliefs rather than critical thinking skills. In implying that parents are more likely to be teaching things like flat-earth theories, he implies that parents are the ones who are the sole owners of batty beliefs that do not have truth seeking qualities. But, but, but he the asserts that it is schools who should be teaching SECURE beliefs, and NOT critical thinking, the very things that are more likely to lead to the fault of which he accuses parents, ie: clearly irrational positions.

Hmmm, the thing is, it does seem to us that children be not regarded as products, (for epistemological reasons, ie: that it is better to be a free thinker since that way you can apply creative, rational criticism to theories, and generally pay attention to what you are doing in a much more constructive way), so if Prof Archard is promoting the force feeding of secure values and beliefs onto our kids, it is far better to keep children out of such an environment. Parents will only have the chance of offering critical thinking outside a liberal fundamentalist school (how it is not this, is another thing that never explained by the good Prof...despite the fact that he simply asserts it!)

Aha...someone may say, surely critical thinking is as much a secure belief and value as anything else? Well, not necessarily so. In fact, almost implicit in the notion of critical thinking is the idea that one can never be secure in one's theories, so that teaching fallabilism in the cause of truth seeking as a set of seemingly good ideas, and some that is worth sticking to for the time being, is a vastly different activity to "teaching secure beliefs."

It is arguable that secure beliefs would best serve the interests of society. I personally will stick with the idea that truth seeking, critical rational fallibilism is an apparently better way to go, and it certainly doesn't reduce anyone to a product, anywhere in any environment.

Carnival of Unschooling Voices No 2.

The August Carnival of Unschooling is up at Joanne's. Am off to enjoy. It will be a quick dash to work then.