Making money from the HE Internet lists

I am sometimes accused of making money from home education. This is quite untrue, but I have noticed lately that a few new people are using the Internet lists to sell their products and services to the home educating community. Personally, I find this a bit much, but I suppose it's none of my business really. Still, as regular readers will be only too aware, that has never stopped me from passing comment in the past!Perhaps the most shameless example of this new breed of entrepreneur hoping to cash in on home education is Kelly Green in Canada....

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Another of my 'straw men'

One of the problem when dealing with home educators is that they tend to argue every point with great tenacity, even about things that everybody else in society accepts as being more or less true. There is of course nothing wrong with that; I am famous myself for disagreeing with those around me. Sometimes though, home educating parents take this a bit far and even establishing the most minor fact becomes so laborious and time consuming a process that all but the most rugged and determined lose heart!The expression 'straw man', like the word 'conflate',...

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My daughter's views on politics

For those of you who cannot get enough of my daughter and me, a fairly general sentiment I believe, here is a chance to hear what she has to say about the political situation in this country. She is at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester today and was asked to help field calls on a phone-in on Radio 5 this morning. The more cynical among you, and indeed almost everybody in the United Kingdom who is not one of her parents, may well be scratching their headsat this point and asking, 'What on earth does a seventeen year old girl know about anything?'...

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A statement of educational intent

Somebody commented here about yesterday's piece. I had mentioned that there had been opposition from some parents to the idea contained in the Badman review about providing a plan of education for the coming year. The person said;'I hope, after providing you with some information about how autonomous education actually works, you now understand why a plan of education is such a difficult thing for AEors to provide.'Well no, I don't understand this at all. In fact to put the case in the vernacular, it seems completely potty to me to oppose such...

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More developments at the Department for Education

There are more signs that something may be afoot at the DfE regarding home education. Members of the European Academy for Christian Homeschooling have been invited to meet civil servants at the Department for Education tomorrow, Wednesday 29th September. These are the people who distribute the Accelerated Christian Education or ACE material in this country. For those who are unfamiliar with this, ACE is a highly structured curriculum which is used by some Christian schools and also by many home educators. Everything is related to scriptural teaching,...

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The hidden curriculum; parents' choices

I didn't really make myself clear in yesterday's piece. It's not the first time and I doubt if it will be the last! Let me try to put the thesis in another way. I believe that a lot of this fancy talk about children being given choices about their education is at best misleading and at worst downright deceptive and dangerous. It is all the more dangerous for all parties because the parents genuinely don't see how they are making the choices for the children years in advance. They honestly don't realise that they are setting out a curriculum for...

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Coercion and choice

Babies and small children have an enormous desire to learn things and find out. Later on in life, this 'learning' will often become a separate thing from their everyday life, an attitude which school encourages. With home education, it is possible to prevent that and ensure that 'learning', 'play' and 'everyday life' do not become separate and distinct things. This longing to learn is rather like a mighty river. We do not create it, let alone make it happen through any external coercion! All that we do is guide it into various directions; harness...

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The dark side of John Holt!

I have always had something of a soft spot for those organisations having a name which is impossible to oppose. The Pro-life movement, for example. Who could possibly be against this? What would that make you; pro-death? I have been reading up recently about another such group, Taking Children Seriously. Well I hope that all of us as parents do this! In fact I actually take children, within their limitations, a good deal more seriously than I do most adults. I find their opinions more interesting, I prefer talking to them and I have far more...

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Three women

Yesterday an adherent of the Taking Children Seriously movement made a few comments here. I have for some while been toying with the idea of making a post about Taking Children Seriously. Disciples of Taking Children Seriously seldom seem to announce themselves as openly as this person did, preferring generally to limit themselves to making coded hints about their ideology. Phrases to watch out for include 'common preference', 'Popperian epistemology' and any reference to the inherent rationality of children. Another characteristic of the followers...

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Taking Children Seriously

Somebody commenting here mentioned the idea of common preference parenting. I thought that this article was quite interesting on the topic of non-coercive parenting.http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fp1XmNKvMo0J:www.odemagazine.com/doc/2/you_re_not_my_boss/+%22common+preference%22+parenting&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl...

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Talking with lions

Wittgenstein famously claimed that even if a lion could talk, we would not be able to understand what it said. By this he meant not that it would speak in a foreign language, but that the experience of being a lion would be so different from that of being a human that the same words would mean completely different things to the lion and the human. I have been reminded of this recently when people have been debating the Child Risk Assessment Matrix, a checklist that the Metropolitan Police use when investigating supposed cases of abuse. A number...

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Debating philosophy

I have been pondering lately the extent to which a certain type of home educator finds it impossible to separate abstract philosophies from those expounding them. I discuss education with many people, practically everybody I meet and know in fact. My views often differ radically from those of the people to whom I talk. Some of my best friends are teachers, for instance, and they do not really approve of the idea of home education. Others are social workers and they have reservations about the practice from a safeguarding viewpoint. I often meet...

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Finding things out

Readers with good memories will recollect that back in March and April last year there was a lot of speculation about the possibility that Graham Badman might recommend that home educators should adhere to the National Curriculum. Messages about this went whizzing back and forth on the Internet lists such as HE-UK and EO. I too was curious about this and so I got in touch with Elizabeth Greene at the DCSF and asked if I could meet with Graham Badman. On April 28th, I duly had a conversation with him. Almost the first question I asked was, 'Is it...

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Home education as a risk factor in the Child Risk Assessment Matrix (CRAM)

I note that a number of people are now getting worked up about this, including Mike Fortune-Wood of Home Education UK. He tried to make a Freedom of Information request to Community Care magazine, but not surprisingly, they sent him off with a flea in his ear. They were still laughing about that in the office an hour later. His latest communication trying to find out about the CRAM document contains the extraordinary phrase, 'it behoves of yourself to explain your thinking'! I wonder if this is how he talks in real life? I imagine him at the breakfast...

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Home education and co-sleeping as risk factors in child abuse

The latest piece of paranoia to start a panic among home educators is the Metropolitan Police Child Abuse Investigation Command's tool for detecting the abuse of children and instigating action before a greater tragedy befalls the child, i.e. she is murdered. This document is called the Child Risk Assessment matrix or CRAM for short and it may be seen here:http://www.scribd.com/doc/33823946/Real-Risk-Management-the-MPS-CRAMNow there are two objections to CRAM from the point of view of some home educating parents. Firstly, it gives 'home education'...

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A final word about Kelly Green and Gold

I simply had to draw attention to this. As I remarked yesterday, Kelly Green has banned my comments from her blog. Well fair enough, it is after all her blog and she has a perfect right not to want a smart alec like me hanging round there! However children, have a look at this and see if you can see what's wrong with this picture. Both quotes are from Kelly Green in the last twenty four hours. The second reference is to me.'It’s my blog, and expresses my own personal point of view, and the truth, as close as I can get to it.''He was an advisor...

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Nailing an old canard (again!)

Every time I think that I have dealt finally with the story of how I lied to get onto various home education Internet lists and then abused their trust by publishing newspaper articles containing information taken from these lists, I find that after a month or two somebody tries to start it up again. Yesterday, somebody who comments here regularly said;'if my memory serves me correctly, you were barred from HE-UK because you put material from the site in the public domain without the permission of the poster or the list owner.'This is of course...

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Kelly Green and Gold

I have remarked before upon the way that anybody disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy among home educators tends to be shouted down and where possible suppressed. The only reason of course that I began this blog in the first place was because I had been barred from all the Internet lists on home education! One gets the feeling that only those who follow a certain ideology and have a particular attitude towards matters such as the Badman Review and so on are welcome on those lists. I have also found the same thing happening with some blogs;...

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Amusing piece about unschooling

I found this piece from Canada irresistably amusing;http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Lakritz+boss+think+going+unwork+today/3467499/story.h...

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More about maternal deprivation

Yesterday's post led to an alarming degree of harmony and agreement with the views which I expressed. This is disturbing and I hope it will not become a regular event. I am still looking at the idea of maternal deprivation and disrupted contact with the small child's attachment figure, which is as I said yesterday almost invariably the mother. I know that most home educating parents would sooner sell their children to a vivisectionist than allow anybody to conduct psychological tests or assessments upon them, but even without formal testing I think...

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Separation anxiety and the psychological health of schooled children

I always find something a little sad about September, not least because of the sight of all those children returning to school. I cannot help noticing that the little ones attending primary school seem really little these days. This is not just one of those things that happen as one grows older, like policemen looking younger; the age at which children start formal education genuinely has dropped over the years.The legal situation in the United Kingdom is that children have to begin full-time education in the term after their fifth birthdays. Hardly...

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Letting children choose...

A few days ago I wrote about the idea of giving children and teenagers the facts about things and then letting them make their own choices. I expressed the view that this is the last thing that most parents do and that in general our idea of 'giving them the facts' means launching a ruthless and sophisticated PsyOps campaign in order to bring them into the fold and compel them to adopt our own prejudices about the world. I want today to consider the wisdom of allowing them to make choices about their long term future in the first place, whether...

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Eton is better than home education

I have been thinking about what somebody said here yesterday, which was to the effect that home education is inferior to an education at a private school. The writer expressed the opinion that if he had the money he would gladly send his son to an independent school in preference to educating him at home and specified Eton as his first choice.Now I have to say at once that I do not agree with the proposition that home education is somehow a poor cousin in the wider world of education. I cannot imagine that my daughter would have done any better...

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Giving children the 'facts'

A few days ago I was writing here of the folly of allowing children to make important decisions about their long term future, arguing that it is far better if adults make decisions on their children's behalf. Several people commented, telling me that they felt that children should be 'given the facts' and allowed to make their own choices. This is such a grotesque idea that I couldn't help chuckling out loud. Giving children the facts! As if any parent ever does such a thing.The topic under discussion was of course education and the taking of examinations,...

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