More about parents of children on the autistic spectrum

A few days ago I posted a piece which seemed to me to be pretty sympathetic and uncontroversial. In it, I mentioned that the parents of children on the autistic spectrum had for many decades, at least since 1943, been noticed frequently to be a little strange and somewhat different from other parents. I speculated that this might be due not so much to their also having autistic features or mental illnesses, both popular current ideas, but rather to their experiences as parents of a child who is outwardly ‘normal’ but who behaves bizarrely. As a...

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The 'joy' of late reading

Those readers whom I succeeded in irritating yesterday will be glad to hear that I am going to be away for a few days and that they will not be exposed to my unpleasant views for a while. It beats me why these types carry on reading my blog if it annoys them as much as all that! Before I go, I must mention that I have been looking through some back issues of the home education magazine produced by Mike Fortune-Wood. One article caught my eye in particular. It was by his wife Jan and was called The Joy of Late Reading. I did not think much of it,...

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Parents of children on the autistic spectrum

This post is not restricted to home educating parents, but is about something which a number of people have noticed. Until a few decades ago, disorders such as schizophrenia and autism were thought of as being produced by strange parents. Leo Kanner, the man who first defined autism in the 1940s, came up with the idea of the so-called ‘Refrigerator Mother’, whose emotional coldness produce autism in her child. The fathers too were supposed to be remote and not join in their children’s lives properly. These ideas are now discredited and we know...

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Two people withdraw from the home educating ‘community’

I was a little surprised to see Mike Fortune-Wood announce that Tania Berlow has withdrawn from the home educating community. How does one actually do that? By not home educating any more? By no longer posting on the Badman Review Action Group list? Ali Edgeley, her best friend, clarified matters later by explaining that Tania would no longer be commenting on message boards, lists, forums and so on. She has apparently ’suffered’ from people saying horrible things about her over the Alison Sauer guidelines business. I have to say that this strikes...

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Indigo Children

I have written before of a tendency among British home educators to embrace crackpot beliefs and unconventional ways of thinking. These typically range from homeopathy to the New World Order. Over the last few months, I have been told of another such loopy idea which has apparently become very popular in some quarters. This is the idea of the so-called Indigo Children. Now I have of course heard of the Indigo Children, but was not aware that it was flourishing in this country. Like so many other weird belief systems, it started in the USA. Put...

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How normal are home educators?

About eleven years ago, a school of thought emerged in this family that my home educated daughter should start seeing more children of her own age. Of course there were those at Woodcraft Folk, ballet lessons, church and so on, but it was still felt that she needed to spend more time playing with other kids and less being experimented on by her father like an educational guinea pig. As a result, I joined Education Otherwise and the Home Education Advisory Service. I received lists of names, addresses and telephone numbers of other members of these...

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Home educated children on the autistic spectrum

Anybody pushing a child around in a wheelchair may expect generally to receive favourable treatment from the public. People make allowances, move aside and are tolerant of odd behaviour from the person in the wheelchair. It is clear that a disability is involved and so passers-by wish to appear accepting and compassionate. How very different is the attitude encountered if one is with a child who looks like a little angel but who is prone to snatching things away from other children and pushing them over if they object. The indignant looks which...

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How to attract unfavourable attention from your local authority

Some readers probably feel that they are not yet proper home educators, because they are still on quite amicable terms with their local authority. There is really no need for this, as putting people’s backs up is a fairly straightforward business. It is not hard to draw attention to yourself and make your local authority think that there is something fishy going on. Let’s see the best way to go about this.Some parents welcome visits from their local authority as a chance to talk over concerns and ask questions about their child’s education. They...

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Changing paradigms

Much of science is based upon sets of ideas which are generally accepted and which provide good explanations for how the world works. These theories are not dogma; they change when overwhelming evidence emerges which renders them no long viable. We then move from one paradigm to another, say from a Newtonian view of the universe to one in accordance with Einstein’s ideas. Let us look at a couple of ideas which fit in perfectly with modern paradigms; one in the field of medicine and one in education.In medicine, we believe that smoking cigarettes...

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Funding college places for home educated children

Graham Stuart and Nick Gibb do a double act and reveal that local authorities can allow home educated children to attend college and then claim the cost back from central government:http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2011-07-18a.66262.h&s=home+education#g66262...

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On the idea of home educators inspecting the educational provision of other home educators

I have written before about the so-called ‘Tasmanian Model’. In that Australian state, home educators work with the government to inspect and monitor home education. It seems to work well enough and I think that it would be a good scheme in this country. There are problems though and the appointment of two home educators in Wigan has underlined that a good deal would need to change before this notion would be universally applauded by other home educators here. For one thing, there is the fact that these people will inherit a framework which is...

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More about Wigan and their new approach to home education

Here is the job description for the new post of inspecting home education in Wigan. The new people will be starting work in September.http://www.wigan.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/BD63268F-9E26-44A3-8D59-3EC2EE6FFF4E/0/SLA2April2011.pdfA certain amount of anger is building over the fact that any home educator should feel able to follow this specification. Some of the points mentioned in passing, about the supposed duties of the local authority, are controversial. Many home educators believe that councils do not possess the duties outlined here. As a result,...

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Wigan appoints home educating parents to monitor home education

It looks as though Wigan has decided to adopt the so-called 'Tasmanian Model' of monitoring home education. They have appointed two parents who are themselves home educators and who will be inspecting the provision of other parents. This is in sharp contrast to the usual sort of person doing this job, who is typically a former teacher. The fun and recriminations have already begun and we shall have to see how this new scheme actually works in practice.Here is how Wigan, a town in Greater Manchester, went about finding somebody to do the job for...

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Associating with other home educators

Something which has been said of me in the past, and the same idea cropped up yesterday, was that I have not had much to do with other home educators and base my opinions mainly on what I read on Internet lists and forums. This notion says little about me and my life, but a great deal about the attitudes of those making the suggestion. I think that what people who make such assertions are really saying is that there is an Education Otherwise group which meets in North London and a strong home educating scene in Colchester. Because I have not been...

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The exclusivity of some home educators

I am, as is generally known, a great enthusiasm for home education. Properly conducted, it can deliver at least as good education that offered by any school, independent or maintained. That for me is all that there is to the matter. I do not think that home educated children are special in any way, nor that they should stick to ‘their own kind’ in any way. For some parents though, there is a pleasing sense of exclusivity about being home educators. There are those who do not even like their kids to play with children who attend school, lest they...

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The ‘private worlds of independent reading’

Allie, who comments here fairly regularly, used the above phrase during a recent discussion on the desirability or not of getting children to read earlier rather than later. I found this very interesting. Much of the debate among home educators when it comes to reading, seems to centre around the academic advantages or not of reading at the same age as children generally do at school. I remember the owner of one of the major home educating lists remarking that he could not think why a child of seven would ‘need’ to be able to read. Alan Thomas...

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Modern schools

I don’t know whether anybody else watched the recent BBC programme which installed cameras in a primary school classroom and filmed what went on for a week or so. It may be seen here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012ltz9/Classroom_Secrets/Obviously, some of the children were more badly behaved than others, but it was the overall, chaotic nature of the lessons which was the really shocking revelation; at least for those unfamiliar with modern classrooms. One can well understand why children on the autistic spectrum might have difficulties...

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Evading visits from the local authority

On several home education lists, parents still seem to be working hard to prevent local authority officers from visiting their homes to talk about home education. You might think that most parents would relish the opportunity to capture such a person for an hour or so and tell her about home education, but apparently some people are not eager to do this. I know that I have covered this before, but I am still wholly at a loss to see what all the fuss is about here.Just to remind readers, I never made any effort to notify our local authority of the...

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Why do you think it's important to have 'properly conducted research'?

Every so often, somebody commenting on here will say something so fat-headed as to make me reel back in disbelief. Such a comment was made yesterday; I quote it above. Two contentions are regularly made about the informal learning of reading. One is that it does not handicap a child educationally if he or she learns to read much later than is usual in school. The other is that having once learnt to read, the child soon catches up with contemporaries who have been reading for seven or eight years. Both these assertions are counter-intuitive.A child...

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The lack of properly conducted research on home education

Regular readers of this Blog will be aware that I frequently bemoan the fact that there is no properly conducted research on home education in this country. That which has been undertaken is either lamentably poor in construction, like that of Paula Rothermel or centres around grotesquely small, self-selected samples, as in the case of Alan Thomas. While re-reading Thomas’ books recently, it occurred to me that what I would describe as ’proper’ research never will be carried out on home educating families. It might be literally impossible.When...

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Request for large home educating family

I have had a request from a television producer who is looking for a home edcuating family with a lot of children. She wants one with at least seven or eight kids and may be contacted here:I’m working on a Channel 4 documentary about big families. We have a couple of families that are home educators and we would like to find other families who might do the same. We are looking for families with 10 or more children.Do you know of any? Your help would be most appreciated.Best WishesJane HoskingSenior Development ProducerLion Television0208 846 2...

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Alan Thomas and How Children Learn at Home

Many home educators are very sensitive about any criticism of the ideologues whose writings underpin their chosen lifestyle and educational methods. I mentioned a few days ago that AS Neill was brought up in Scotland and believed that children should be free to have a sex life; I was promptly accused by one person commenting here of ‘slandering’ him! Many of the more outlandish beliefs and practices of British home educators are justified by them on the grounds of supposed research. Often, claims are made about the academic attainments of home...

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Reactions to my home educating

When first it became apparent to my friends and professional acquaintances that I had no intention of sending my daughter to school when she was four or five, there was a general feeling that the experiment would soon fail. As she grew older and started becoming obnoxious, as schoolchildren so often do, I would surely find that spending so much time with the child would drive me mad. Or just wait until she hit puberty! Then I would find the whole thing intolerable, with my daughter screaming abuse at me and refusing point-blank to do as I asked....

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The new biological determinism

I tentatively suggested yesterday that some developmental problems in childhood might not be entirely biological in origin. It says something about the modern world that the very idea was greeted by some with anger and disbelief! Why should this be? The answer is historical.Fifty years ago, practically any mental or development problem was thought to be a consequence of the environment. Autistic children became that way because of remote and unaffectionate parents. Schizophrenia was produced by bad family dynamics. Reading problems were caused...

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Early childhood experiences and their possible role in the creation of childhood disorders such as ADHD and so on

I wrote briefly yesterday about the hugely dysfunctional families with which I worked some years ago. The children of these families all had various problems and these were caused, or at the very least greatly exacerbated, by the way that they were raised. It was not until I had been thinking about the common factors in these families that I noticed an eerie similarity to the way that some home educators recommend that children be treated in childhood.A lot of the things which afflict children, ranging from dyslexia to ADHD, are not random bolts...

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Testing children at two

It is an unfortunate fact of life that one can always rely upon some of the more vociferous home educating types to oppose anything sensible and support any crackpot idea going the rounds. Some of them seem to have a positively uncanny knack for attacking any initiative likely to benefit children. This is particularly so with things concerning very young children. The so-called ’nappy curriculum’ and the recent announcement that children will be ‘tested’ at two to see how they are doing, being good examples of this tendency.So why is a it a good...

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Respecting childhood autonomy

I explained yesterday that one of the most beloved figures in British home education was a raving lunatic who publicly advocated small children being able to work down coal mines, drive cars on public roads and have sex with any adult they cared to. I pointed out that these views made him very popular with the more thoughtful type of paedophile; the kind of man who seeks justification for his depravity. As a result of this, I was told by one person commenting that I had sunk to a new low! The most curious comment was by Elizabeth, who felt that...

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The ultimate autonomy

No suggestion made during Graham Badman’s review of elective home education caused more anger than the idea that home educated children might be at increased risk of sexual abuse than those at school. Why do professionals suspect this? There are probably two main reasons. First, home educated children often seem closer to their parents than those at school. Antagonism between parents and children, common with school children and which typically reaches a climax during adolescence, is thought to be normal. When people see a teenager getting on amicably...

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The need for more doctrinal diversity

I cannot help but notice that a number of people commenting here lately subscribe to the doctrine of predestination. Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are Calvinists, but there do seem to be more than an average number here. Mind, there are Calvinists and Calvinists. I have noticed that the further north they come from, the stricter they tend to be about condemning others to perdition. It is to be hoped that those commenting on here have been living in the south long enough to soften their views on matters such as unconditional election...

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