Home Educators Letting the Side Down?

Edspresso has a post putting the counter-arguments to the collectivist objection to homeschooling, as expressed by anthropology professor Greg Laden here.

Pete also has a takedown.

The Evolved Homeschooler

Chris appears to have been hard at work, producing a wiki for Evolved Homeschoolers.

"The idea is that rational homeschoolers are welcome to create their own page on the wiki and maintain a set of links or a collection of articles that represent their personal "best of." The criteria for eligibility is simple. You must believe that evolution is the best explanation we have today to explain how life has progressed on planet Earth. If evolution is compatible with your religion (or lack thereof) feel free to create your page here. "

Worth making the point that there are a lot of us about.

School Turned into a Homeschool Resource Centre

I don't think this is all about the date, though it does seem almost too good to believe. Anyway, courtesy of Key Words, we hear that:

"In a stunning decision that has caused an uproar throughout New Hampshire, the township of Beale NH has abolished its lone public school and will convert the building into a homeschool resource center."

The reason? The local school was failing dismally, and

"We had a list of different types of education and their success rates in terms of testing, subsequent college attendence and graduation, employment, entrepreneurship and civic involvement. Homeschooling topped everything and it was less expensive than pretty much anything else out there too! Add to the mixture the fact that so many parents were already pulling their children out of school and it just seemed like a perfect fit."

UPDATE: Yep, it was all about the date!

Midlands Campaign Workshop

Well that was extremely satisfactory. An enormous thank you should go out to Fiona Nicholson and Annette Taberner for providing very convincing arguments and a bucket load of inspiration at the Bromsgrove Campaign Workshop.

Galvanised by it all, home educators from Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Birmingham and Warwickshire have agreed to set up a regional organisation to liaise with Local Authorities on matters to do with home education.

Thanks are also due to Iris and Geoff Harrison for their stories about working on the Education Otherwise Telephone Helpline. The stories of school bullying make for very distressing evidence, the consolation being that many of these children have escaped appalling situations when their parents decided to withdraw their children from school.

Thanks too to the organiser. Save me some cake. I didn't manage to get any.

That Letter (in full)

from Lord Adonis:

"There is no specific duty in statute on LAs to monitor parents' education provision. However, it is our view that case law (Philips vs Brown 1980) places such a duty on LAs.

Only s7 of the Ed Act 1996, not s351, applies to HEks, and legislation does not define "suitability" of education. However, a suitable education has been defined in case law s one which "primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather that the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child's options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so."

The state does not currently prescribe what form of education parents should provide, whilst all maintained and independent school provision is prescribed in legislation and subject to inspection. This anomaly is at odds with Every Child Matters reforms, supported by the Children Act 2004, which set out the Government's aim to improve educational outcomes for all children, regardless of where they are educated, and to narrow the gap between those who are doing well and those who are not.")Whilst s437 of the Ed Act 1996 provides a remedy for LAs which have concerns that there may be no suitable provision, this is unwieldy, time consuming and expensive and in some cases will be nugatory where home educators are making good provision but are resistant to LA enquiries."

Tony Mooney Is At It Again

The response from the home education community to Tony Mooney's latest pronouncements on HE in the TES has been impressive, immediate and compelling.

From the TES's discussion board:

"Myra Robinson's suggestion that "all the rights are in favour of the parent" is a misguided statement. There are adequate laws in place to protect the children of home educated families. It is up to the Local Authorities to implement the laws if they feel there is a cause for concern. If the LA and their employees do not use the law to protect the children then it is their failure."

and from S.Deuchar

"The quoted figure of 150,000 home-educated children is a serious over-estimate, (home-education researchers estimate the number as up to 65,000 with about 35,000 known their LEA). The inspectors estimate that "about a quarter of parents provide nothing". This may mean that 25% of the families they know about (up to 9000 children) are not providing an education suitable to the age, aptitude and ability of the child. If this is true, why are the inspectors not using the mechanisms of s437 of the Education Act to issue a School Attendance Order for these children? If it is not true, they are slandering a large number of parents who are doing the best that they can for children, many of whom have been failed by schools."

And elsewhere:

"The article also contains no evidence or basis for the claim that one in four home educating families is not providing a suitable education, other than the unsubstantiated opinions of two individuals."

And could the Dragon of the Valleys possibly have a point about a conflict of interest? You decide:

"Known facts about Tony Mooney:

1) Ex-science teacher
2) Ex-headmaster
3) EHE inspector for hire who doesn't believe EHE is possible unless
you're a nice middle class family who hires private tutors.
4) Private tutor for hire. Shocking conflict of interest.
5) Rent-a-gob pushing his own prejudices & self interest."

This Was Not about Home Education

From the The Times Educational Supplement, Scotland, we see Alison Preuss of Schoolhouse dealing very effectively with an attempt to smear the home educating community with a false link to child abuse.

For Another Hot Potato

...go see the BBC's article on EO's campaign to expose the dubious local authority practice of encouraging parents of persistent truants to home educate.

Micro-Mismanagement

If you don't believe me about this government being ineptly meddlesome, try this post from Bishop Hill by way of support for this argument. He writes:

"Every child at my elder son's nursery has received a leaflet from the Scottish Children's Commissioner or some such. This masterpiece of state-sponsored tosh is to be passed on to their parents. It's a remarkable document. Try this for example:

Love your children
Be affectionate, hug and kiss them
Tell them good things about themselves and others
They will feel more secure and learn how to treat others in a positive way."

OK, so in order to be affectionate to your child, you must hug and kiss them. Am off to try this one out on Ds.

Well, yes, I admit my data pool for my own bit of personal research may be bit skewed. I did suspect that this would happen. His response?

"Euwgh, go away, mother."

Right, so let's just try the next one. I am going to tell him something good about himself and his sister. No, that didn't seem to work.

"What ARE you talking about, mother?"

Oh dear. This doesn't seem to be making him feel more secure. I am beginning to wonder if it might be having the opposite effect as he is looking at me funny and appears to be weighing up the probabilities of me having lost my marbles. I suppose you could regard the last bit of the recommendations as being about right if you happen to think of a trip to the funny farm, courtesy of your children, as being a positive experience.

Not only should one object to the fact that the government appears to be meddling in areas where they are simply not welcome, but they make such an abject mess of it, that it becomes completely unforgiveable.

For a better set of principles, how about trying to respect and facilitate the autonomy of the child, whilst at the same time, not compromising your own. Seek win-win situations. Provide seemingly good and rational explanations for choices and actions. Admit you don't know that you hold the best theory. Hold your own theories tentatively. Seek criticism of your ideas. Seek creative solutions to problems.

ie, for example: accept that some children don't like being hugged and kissed and yet still know they are loved deeply.

Leave Us Alone

With regard to the raising of the school leaving age to 18, Edward Pearce puts up an almost nostalgic plea for even very moderate libertarian instincts in politicians in Comment is Free. He notes how the education secretary Alan Johnson has been seduced by the tenor of our current government which he describes as being

"insanely disposed to boss, meddle, interfere, punish and have its will in matters which require no such engagement."

Yup, that's it. So leave home educators alone too, please.

US Study Implies that Home Schooling Promotes Social Mobility

From Homeschooling in Perspective, we hear that the National Home Education Research Institute found that in test scores

"homeschool students outperformed public school students by an average of 30 to 37 percentile points in math and reading. The same survey also stated that the income and education level of homeschool parents did not have an effect to (sic) the success of their children."


HT: Home Education and Other Stuff

Miserable Work Force

Further on the reasons for thinking that it is worth trying to improve the work situation rather than acquiescing in unhappiness, we gather from the BBC that, completely unsurprisingly, being miserable at work can make you physically ill as well as contributing to emotional burnout, anxiety and depression. We also hear, perhaps slightly more surprisingly, from the BBC TV news (can't find on-line link) that over 70% of workers report feeling unhappy at work.

What is very surprising is that we let this situation persist. Could this be because the majority of the work force (being schooled in the belief that things must always be thus) cannot imagine solving this problem?

It must be worth believing that something can be done, surely?

The New Diplomas Set for 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6502819.stm

Schools Not Fit for Purpose

From BBC News, we hear that

"Most current school buildings pre-date the computer age and are "obsolete" as learning environments, the study said. "

The Autonomous Child in the Workplace?

From the discussion in comments here, it seems that there is some anxiety as to how autonomously educated children will ever fit into hierarchical structures such as a workplace where they may have to deal with issues such as producing work to a deadline, to meet the expectations of others, and to deal with bullying.

I have to admit to little experience of this myself, since most of the AEd children I know personally are yet to make it to this stage in their lives, so I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has more experience of this, but from the little I have seen, and from the books (such as Julie Webb's Those Unschooled Minds) that I have read, I would say that the most important factor in regard to the problem of whether the autonomously educated child copes with adult life, is whether or not the parent has helped the child to be well prepared for the environment of his choice.

Therefore, many AEing parents will be talking to their children about issues to do with earning a living, how best this can be done, the likely nature of the workplace, and if necessary, about topics such as working competively as opposed to co-operatively, about meeting deadlines, about presentation of work and person, about ways of dealing with stress and bullying.

The advantages that the AEd child may have is that he is familiar with being in charge of his life and learning. If he is well advised about the likely nature of the workplace, he can then make the choice as to whether or not to go for it. Having made that free choice, he knows that he can walk away, which in itself immediately makes the stressful environment seem less so. He also knows, having been encouraged to solve problems with creativity and ingenuity, that he needn't acquiesce in terrible situations, that he can seek to solve these problems. He may be very familiar with the benefits of working co-operatively with others, that competition within the workplace as often as not actually stymies productivity, rather than enhances it. He may also be familiar with taking criticism, (since there is often less terror in receiving it when the stakes are lower, as they can be at home), that he may be able to stand the criticism far better than a schooled child can. He may be gentler in giving it too. He may also be a truth seeker, since again there is often no reason not to be in a healthy family, whereas lying (eg: to protect friends from a bullying teacher) frequently seems a proportionate response to some of the strains of schooling.

In other words, I suspect that AEd children could have an advantage over coercively schooled children because the former are aware that they are freely choosing these environments, that these environments are not necessarily optimal, but that they can use their ingenuity and creativity to try to solve the problems that hierarchical structures create.

As regards solving problems creatively, it is the case that some inspirational company directors, such as Bravilian CEO Ricardo Semler, who managed a six-fold increased his company profits by dissipating the hierarchical structure of his company, have shown that it is possible to manage big organisations by creating a situation where autonomous individuals can work collectively. In Semco, workers set their own salaries, share company profits and hire and fire their own managers. They say: "Our philosophy is built on participation and involvement. Don't settle down. Give opinions, seek opportunities and advancement, always say what you think. Don't be just one more person in the company." An autonomously educated child could fit in very easily in such an environment.

Because AEd kids understand that they have freely chosen to be at their place of work, and can see a good reason for being so, and because they can envisage a better way of doing things and since they still do feel empowered to solve their problems, it may the case that they can actually cope with it better than the schooled child who has lost all hope of a better life, who feels compelled to continue in a miserable existence, who cannot imagine a better future and who does not try to solve the problems he faces in the workplace because he is not familiar with acting autonomously.

What Can be Done to Reclaim Childhood?

Any Home Educators out there brave enough to face a Telegraph comment section?

Autonomous Learning

Gill explains what autonomous learning looks like.

Special Needs Children Bullied in Schools

No wonder there is such a high number of children with Asperger syndrome amongst the Home Education community, though actually bullying in schools is but one small reason why so many of these children are HEd.

An Autonomous Educator's Answer to LEA Inspector

From Sometimes It's Peaceful:

"So have home educating families with autonomous learning children got anything to fear from their LEAs, really?

One LEA visitor to our house, early in our autonomous provision, asked to see samples of the children's work. "I've stopped insisting on them producing work," I said, "Because their interest in learning shut down whenever I did. Is the LEA interested in my children's learning, or in their work? Because the two things are mutually exclusive, so it can't have both."

"Erm... well I suppose learning is the important thing," said the visitor and the LEA has been happy to take my word for it that the children are learning, ever since - though I accept that some LEAs might just never be so amenable. "

Whilst trying not to reveal too much about our family, I should say that not having to produce work for the inspection of anybody else, to meet anyone's externally imposed criteria, to meet anyone's else's expectations, has been enormously beneficial for our family in so many ways:

It has meant that we can tackle the problems we are genuinely interested in.

We can do this when our bodies and minds feel ready.

It has meant that we can give our whole minds to solving the problem.

Having time and no pressure to present work has meant that we can mull over problems, thinking around them, paying attention to issues such as when we think best, eg: not just when we are obviously dealing with the problem directly, but when we are doing the gardening, jumping on a trampoline, lying on a sofa, ie: learning about the value of walking away from a problem, taking time out to think, playing with ideas, coming back when you are ready with new and valuable connections, creative solutions, and we can do this all because we don't have to foreclose upon a problem to present our work at a prescribed time and to meet another person's set of expectations.

Having said all of which, I do make a deadline for myself, usually to write at least one blog post a day, and yet probably because this is freely chosen, I have no problem at all with this.

In the course of studying the problems that interest us, we absorb information deeply. It isn't held superficially to be used in a test for the next day. The sort of information that is eagerly sought is likely to become embedded in long-term memory.

Also in the course of studying problems which interest us, we come across all sorts of other information which we absorb often without consciously so-doing. For example, a child may learn to do long division or to multiply large numbers when playing an on-line game. He finds out about from global warming watching the Simpsons, say.

Children can deal with the problem of presentation as a last and trivial problem in the course of solving the other more pertinent problems, but this will be the last and often most trivial consideration.

We don't waste time struggling with problems that don't interest us.

We don't become completely unnecessarily disheartened because the situation of meeting other people's extenally imposed agendas happens so rarely. It is our conviction that numerous children are labelled with problems which simply would not exist if these absurd and unproven benchmarks were not imposed upon them. For example, many HE children don't learn to read until they are 7 or 8, yet within a few weeks of starting and with minimal effort, they can be reading at the same level as schooled children who have spent hours and hours slaving laboriously over their literacy skills.

Yep, this is where true learning really is at. It works for me and it seems to work for my children. Perhaps we suffer from some kind of genetic learning anomaly, but I suspect this is not the case, and that many other people would benefit from this kind of genuine learning.

Examining Entrenched Memes

...at the E.G.West Centre which has a hefty number of links on the subject of compulsory education.

HT: Tibetan Star