The mental health of home educating parents

Local authority officers visiting home educating families realise full well that an hour or so is not long enough to establish the quality of the education being provided for a child. Traditionally, they really limit themselves to checking three things. Firstly, that the child is not being kept out of school in order to work, secondly that it does not look as though she is being abused in some way and finally that the parents do not seem to be completely mad. When I have talked about this before, several people have pulled me up and asked if I think that a parent with mental health problems should be forbidden to home educate. This is a fair question. After all, we don't usually assume that somebody is unfit to care for her children just because she are bipolar! Still, in the case of home education, things are a little more complicated.

I have been moved to reflect upon this by my observation over the last week or two of the increasingly fragile state of one fairly well known home educating parent. Just as green ink is always a warning sign when used in letters to newspaper editors, so too is a blog whose posts are made in 24 point typeface in alternating Red, green, yellow and magenta. I do have the impression that the home educating community contains rather more than its fair share of people with mental health problems. Mind you, it is a little hard to tell. Few home educators, including the present writer, are completely normal and it is sometimes difficult to know where eccentricity ends and madness begins. In other words, while it is true that many home educators are a bit, or indeed very, odd, it is not easy to gauge the percentage who are actually ill. Anyway, does it matter? There are plenty of parents with varying degrees of mental health problems whose children are at school. Why should home educating families be looked at differently?

I think that the possible consequences of a mentally ill parent educating a child at home are different from one who send the child to school in the usual way. I think that the child of such a parent could be in a sense at risk. I do not mean the sort of risk which we saw in the dreadful case in Edinburgh recently where the three children died in tragic circumstances. One can never guard against such tragedies. I am thinking more of the effect on a child of spending most of their waking hours with a person whose world view might be horribly distorted and irrational. Of course, I recognise straight away that most parents, mentally ill or not, manage to give their children some foolish and wrong headed views about the world, whether they go to school or are taught at home. My own daughter was raised on scripture and some might say that filling a small child's head with a lot of stuff about people being raised from the dead and so on is pretty weird! We also come to the question about the limits of what society may reasonably take an interest in. If I wish to teach my child that somebody was raised from the dead, then what right have I to say that another parent should not teach his child that the Jews are taking over the world or that aliens are eavesdropping on her thoughts via the television? This is not an either/or situation, but rather a spectrum.

There does seem to me though something a little worrying about the idea that somebody displaying the florid symptoms of a bipolar episode could be the only adult influence upon a young child. There has been some concern in the past among local authority officers that the home educated children of such parents are acting in effect as nurse companions. I suspect that these are likely to be isolated cases, but there is the more general fear that children might get caught up in the conspiracy laden atmosphere of certain elements of the home education movement. They might grow up believing that nothing ever happens by chance and that every unfortunate accident is part of a wider and deeply sinister conspiracy against their parents' chosen lifestyle. Link to the 2007 guidelines on home education missing from the DfE website? Oh no, the government are trying to suppress our rights! This sort of low level paranoia is pretty widespread among many home educators. If you throw in a number of dedicated activists with definite psychiatric problems, then you run the risk of creating a feverish backdrop of anxiety and imaginary attacks by government agents which must result in quite a few children being raised in homes which resemble the X Files! This can hardly bode well for the children's own mental health and future prospects of becoming normal, well balanced citizens.

As I say, I would be interested to know if anybody else has the feeling that the proportion of mentally ill parents is higher among home educators than the general population? If so, then this might not only have implications for the children, but also go a long way to explain the extraordinary atmosphere of persecution and government conspiracies which seems to pervade elective home education in this country.

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Update on the proposed new guidelines

It seems that the person who has been writing the new guidelines in collaboration with Graham Stuart is in fact Alison Sauer, who provides training on the subject of home education for local authorities. I cannot help wonder who is paying for all this; if the taxpayer then there does not appear to have been much transparency! I am sure that now we know one of the people involved, everything will become a little clearer.

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Graham Stuart and his helpers

I never quite took to Graham Stuart. He always struck me as a vain opportunist who found in home education an obscure topic about which he could swiftly become Parliament's expert. After the select committee hearing, when the various teenage offspring of members of Education Otherwise approached him, he gave the impression that he saw himself as some matinee idol being mobbed by his fans. One could imagine his saying, 'Oh shucks, you guys! You want to talk to me and ask for my help? Why, I'm just a regular guy, but I'll surely help is I can'. He put me in mind of a Tory version of Robert Kilroy-Silk.

Something which I noticed at the select committee was that although I turned up alone, as did Jane Lowe, Carole Rutherford and Zena Hodges, Education Otherwise arrived mob-handed, accompanied by a contingent of amiable but persistent teenagers. These were the same bunch of youngsters for whom Ann Newstead's husband put together a website which for a while posed as the voice of home educated youth, being allegedly completely separate from Education Otherwise. It will be remembered that during the Badman enquiry the idea of adopting something like the Tasmanian system for home education was briefly floated. I don't know who suggested this to Badman. Paula Rothermel was wandering the world following a series of personal misfortunes and she fetched up in Tasmania for a while. Perhaps she gave him the idea. But at any rate, nobody showed any interest in this except of course for Education Otherwise. For the 'Tasmanian Model' to have been a real proposition, the Department for Children, Schools and Families would have needed a partner from the home educating community. Since for many who are not actually home educators, Education Otherwise is home education in this country, they were seen as the logical candidates. After all, anybody wanting to know about home education always goes to them first, whether it is a newspaper reporter or a government enquiry.

During the select committee hearing itself, one of the members wanted to know if home educators would be in favour of a simple registration scheme, whereby the location and educational setting of every child in the country would be known to their local authority. I was of course in favour; Zena Hodges, Carole Rutherford and Jane Lowe were not. What was Education Otherwise's position on this point? We will never know, which struck me then as very strange. The Chair tried sympathetically to extract an opinion from Fiona Nicholson, who was representing Education otherwise, but to no avail. In the end, he said in exasperation, 'Okay, that's a don't know'. I wonder if anybody else finds it odd that after all the preparation, the moment that we have all been waiting for, for home educators to have a say about Badman's proposals, and Education Otherwise don't even know if they are against one of the key points?

Graham Stuart kept in touch with Education Otherwise after the select committee hearing and formed quite a good relationship with various individual members. Even after the defeat of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, he still seemed to have time for them; there was no question of just shaking hands and a parting of the ways. I was therefore curious to learn of the rumour going the rounds that he has been working with certain home educators to draw up new guidelines for home education in England. Now since Education Otherwise were quite keen on the Tasmanian idea and bearing in mind that they did not know whether or not they were in favour of compulsory registration, some people are convinced that it is they who have been working with Graham Stuart. What is curious is that Graham Stuart has already claimed that things cannot remain as they are with regard to home education. As Chair of the Children, Schools and Families select committee, we should take note of what he says on this subject.

I freely admit that all this is based upon nothing more than rumour and speculation, but nevertheless it seems to me that something is in the wind and that the chances are that Education Otherwise has a hand in it. The problem would be of course that something of this sort which might affect thousands of home educators should not be undertaken in a hole and corner fashion, but out in the open. Graham Stuart has said that he is not in favour of monitoring and inspection, but I note with interest that he has carefully avoided mentioning compulsory registration. Since Education Otherwise also have an ambivalent attitude towards this, one wonders what might be hatched up if they are indeed working with him.

For my own part, I am of course quite agreeable to the idea of registration. It is however a controversial idea for some home educators and I feel that any such moves should always take place in the public eye and not as a result of meetings conducted on the quiet. For this reason, I would like to know a little more about what Graham Stuart is up to. It would be unfortunate if some new scheme were produced and included in the forthcoming White Paper on education. Anything of this sort needs to be thrashed out openly among all interested parties and not given some dubious legitimacy on the grounds that it has Education Otherwise's seal of approval.

Of course, Michael Gove might feel a bit silly about introducing an actual new law about home education so soon after the CSF Bill debacle. It is more likely that what is happening is that statutory guidelines are being drafted which would tell local authorities how to interpret the current law. According to one cagy source, somebody who does not even live in this country is involved in all this. Could this be a coded reference to Paula Rothermel in Switzerland?

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Deschooling

It is more or less an article of faith among some home educating parents that children and teenagers are natural learners who are inquisitive and enthusiastic about pursuing their chosen interests. All this is perfectly true. Sometimes. Some, on the other hand, are lazy and incurious, wanting nothing more than to stay in bed until lunchtime before slumping in front of the television for the rest of the day. We know that this is the case because we see various cries for help and advice on the Internet lists from parents who are at their wits end over this sort of behaviour on the part of their teenage sons and daughters. The standard advice given to the parents of such children is to relax and stop worrying. if they wish to get up at two or three in the afternoon, that is simply their biology at work. if they wish to watch television all day, that to is fine. They will probably get fed up with doing this after a while. Try a period of deschooling, just let them slob around for a while. The recommendation is one month of 'deschooling' for every year spent in school. The idea is that the toxicity of school needs time to leach out of the teenagers system! So a fourteen year old who has just been de-registered should spend the next nine months or so doing nothing at all. That will help in the run-up to his GCSEs!

Those of us who work in certain areas will be aware that for many people, getting up at lunchtime and spending the day watching television is quite a popular lifestyle for those wholly reliant upon state benefits. They do not seem to get fed up with it, no matter what the well meaning advice given to home educating parents might suggest. The problem is that the sort of people who dish out this advice are often intelligent people who read a lot and are not very keen on television. They just cannot conceive of anybody choosing this lifestyle and so reassure anxious parents that it is just a phase their kid is going through. By the time that the kid is sixteen or seventeen and it has become clear that this is how he is planning to spend his life, it is often too late to do anything about it. All you can then do is say, 'Well, he can take GCSEs at any age and if he wants to he can always study with the Open University'.

Local authorities have noticed a third spike in de-registration from schools. Traditionally, de-registration took place in the first year or two after the age of five and also at the changeover from primary to secondary school. They are seeing a lot of thirteen and fourteen year olds these days being taken out of school. The worry is that many of these children might end up doing little apart from watching television or surfing the Internet. For some, this is not a problem. They can learn a lot on the Internet! It is these children about whom many are concerned. because if once they get into the habit of staying in bed half the day and doing nothing except staring at a screen, this can easily become their chosen lifestyle. They are liable to become unemployed, indeed unemployable in later life. We have no idea how common this is, because of course official interest ends on the child's sixteenth birthday. This was one of the concerns which prompted local authorities to try and acquire additional powes for the regualtion of home education.

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Tackling the problem of extrinsic motivation in childhood learning

In schools children are provided with external motivation for learning what they are supposed to be learning. This extrinsic motivation can take two forms; reward for doing what is expected and punishment for failing to abide by what the teacher requires. In recent years, punishment has fallen out of favour as a means of motivating children. They are no longer beaten for forgetting their games kit or not remembering their Latin verbs; the worst a child can expect these days is a frown or a detention. Rewards though are still going strong, indeed stronger than ever. Schoolchildren receive certificates for getting to school on time, doing their homework and even not disrupting lessons. In addition to these regular rewards, teachers are always on the lookout for anything else for which they can praise a child, even saying 'Good sitting, Mary' to a child who hasn't jumped up out of her seat for five minutes. There are also vouchers, DVDs to watch and end of term treats.

There can be a problem with the constant use of positive reinforcements of this kind. Some home educating parents disapprove of this approach as a matter of principle, feeling that the child should learn for the intrinsic pleasure of learning, rather than because he wishes to be praised or receive a smile or certificate. Some research suggests that they are right to be cautious about using rewards for learning in this way. The problem is that a child can become dependent upon praise and encouragement and if it stops, then so does his motivation to learn. This could obviously be a bad thing in higher education. Imagine a seventeen year-old college student who became disaffected because he was not constantly being told what a good boy he was being by settling down quietly and getting on with his work! This actually happens and some of the dropouts from FE colleges are children find it hard making the transition from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation for academic work.

Quite a bit of work has been done in the USA on this subject. In one experiment, children were given access to drawing materials and left to their own devices. At the end of the session, one group received certificates saying what good artists they were. Another group did not. At follow up sessions of free drawing, when other activities were also on offer, it was found that those who had been rewarded in this way for drawing were less inclined to choose to draw for the fun of it than were the children whose drawing had not been rewarded. It seemed that rewarding the activity had somehow taken the fun out of it. There have been many similar experiments. The general finding is that children soon become almost addicted to little rewards of this sort and that when they are withdrawn, the children will not undertake the activities purely for the sake of it. They have been robbed of their intrinsic motivation to undertake drawing or whatever other activity is involved.

There is no need to abandon this method of encouraging children entirely though. It just needs a little planning and a bit of extra thought. Part of the problem is that many teachers and parents are over lavish with their use of praise and encouragement. Children receive it for the slightest thing; every piece of work is 'great', 'well done', 'very good' and so on. Children become uneasy and anxious if something they do is not praised! The answer lies in the mechanism of intermittent reinforcement. If I might be permitted another anecdote about a piece of American research, then we can see how this works. Some work done with gamblers is interesting. A large group was divided into three. One lot played fruit machines which were rigged to pay out every time, another group had machines which never paid out, while a third had machines that paid out randomly some of the time. Here is what happened. Those playing the machines which never paid out, soon cottoned on and stopped playing. Those on the fruit machines which always paid out carried on playing until the things were secretly disabled and stopped paying out. Soon after this happened, those playing them lost interest and gave up. When the machines which only paid out some of the time were similarly disabled, it made no difference at all. Those playing them carried on. They knew that there had been runs like this before and they stuck at it in the hope that they would win again.

We can use this to plan a strategy for the reinforcement of our children's desire to learn and achieve. if the rewards are constant, then just as with the fruit machines which always pay out, ending them will be very noticeable and can discourage a child from continuing with an activity. If the reinforcements are irregular and used sparingly though, the child will work harder and longer in order to obtain them. As they grow older, the rewards can be gradually faded out until only the occasional smile or word of praise is necessary to motivate. This has proved very effective with teenagers and even college students. In other words, where rewards for academic achievement are concerned, less is definitely more.

The constant drip of rewards and praise becomes simply a background after a while and is thus devalued. It becomes counter-productive. TS Eliot is his later years revealed that he had never forgiven his mother for over praising a poem he wrote when he was a child. Children may become addicted to praise and rewards, but they also recognise when they are handed out routinely and are insincere.

Of course this does not touch upon the ethical considerations of manipulating children and young people in this way. Quite a few home educating parents object on principle to this kind of thing and feel that the child's motivation to learn and study should come from within. For the rest of us though, it is helpful to know the most effective way of delivering the encouragement which will guide a child in the direction of educational success. For us, praise and rewards used sparingly and at increasingly irregular intervals as the child grows older are the key to success in this strategy.

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Teach and forget; a common strategy for parents

I want to look today at what motives parents might have for teaching their children systematically and then forgetting that they have done such a thing; in effect, airbrushing this from their family history. This is by no means uncommon among both home educating parents and also those who send their children to school. Some motives for this are restricted to home educators and so I shall deal with these first.

Quite a few home educating parents seem to feel almost ashamed to be seen to be pushing their children academically and those who do ensure that the children study literacy and mathematics in a structured and traditional way often conceal this from other parents. I want to think about this first and see if we can discover what could be responsible for this extraordinary state of affairs; educators who seem to be embarrassed about educating! There are several reasons why home educating parents might behave in this way. Before we go any further, I want to make it quite clear that I do not want to become bogged down in terminology here. I am talking about parents who teach their children and then keep quiet about it afterwards or try to erase it from their minds. I do not mind whether we call this coercive education and contrast it with autonomous, or whether we talk of imposed teaching and compare it with unschooling or informal education. The fact is, that parents do it.

Many, but not of course all, home educating groups are ambivalent about teaching and imposing discipline upon children. I have heard from parents who say that when they have said 'No' to their child at a group, they are stared at as though they are child abusers. One mother mentioned that her eight year-old son would be studying for GCSEs when he was older and the reaction was very hostile. How could she possibly know that he would do this? Wasn't she being presumptuous? Did she not want to give the boy a choice when he was older? I think that quite a few readers will know what I am talking about here. Under these circumstances, there is a tendency to adapt to the mores of the group and keep quiet about anything that might smack of 'school at home'. There is also, incidentally, a tendency to pretend that one does not permit visits from the local authority, this being another of those things that many parents are expected to give lip service to. People who accept visits are sometimes made to feel as though they are letting the side down. One sees this attitude a lot on Internet lists. The family who I mentioned yesterday, for example, claimed in the newspaper to be unknown to the council and said that if registration became compulsory they would leave the country. In fact, just as with many other autonomous educators, they enjoy a perfectly amicable relationship with their local HE advisor from the council. This is also common; quite a few parents have visits from their local authority and then keep quiet about it for fear of being thought Quislings!

Conforming to the expectations of a group in order not to be rejected is one reason for maintaining these pretences, but there are other motives at work. Saying, 'We're autonomous' is a bit of a catchphrase in some circles. It makes one sound 'with it'. It's a bit like saying 'We're organic'. It is a shorthand code for a lifestyle rather than merely an educational philosophy. There was of course also the enjoyment during the campaign against the Badman review and Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill of pretending to be part of a persecuted minority. For a while, some of these parents could make out that they would be forced to flee the country or go on the run like desperate criminals! This was the only chance some of these families would ever have to feel like members of a despised minority and it would have been foolish to pass it up. Of course one had to be an autonomous educator to be part of this. Structured educators who were registered with their local authority could not make out that they were threatened by the proposed new law and so many parents denied that they had visits and let everybody think that they too felt that the new law would stop them home educating. This particular game encouraged many home educating parents to pose as being autonomous.


Perhaps the strongest motive for teaching one's child and then forgetting that one has done so is this. People tend to sneer a little at pushy parents and those who appear over anxious for their child to succeed. Let's face it; it looks a bit sad to be so desperate for your child to do better than everybody else's! It is much cooler to pretend that your kid does not have to work hard and that you certainly don't have to put the hours in on their education. When GCSEs were are taking place, every single one of our friends would claim that their children were doing no revision and that it was confidently expected that they would do badly at their exams. This was despite the fact that many of these kids had had private tutors for years and the parents were insisting that they stay in and study practically every night. (To say nothing of completing their coursework for them!) When their children achieved a string of As and A*s, it made it look as though the kids were little geniuses who had managed this without trying. The same thing happens when people teach their children things like reading and mathematics. If they then forget about this, then it looks as though their child must be super bright for being able to learn the thing later without any formal instruction. I must admit that I was tempted to do this myself. Had I kept quiet about all the teaching which I did, then I could have made out that my daughter had 'just picked up' literacy, the four basic arithmetical operations and everything else up to and including calculus. This would have had the double pay-off both of making me appear a laid back and right-on parent and also presenting my child as a real brain-box!

I have to say that there is often no conscious deception involved in this process by the parents. Some of our friends seemed genuinely to have forgotten the years of tutoring, the extra-curricular activities and so on. They honestly seemed to believe that their children's GCSE results were entirely their kid's doing. I am sure that the same thing happens with home educators who spend time teaching their children. If I had my time over again, I might well be inclined to erase all the intensive work with flashcards from my memory and allow my daughter the credit for simply picking up reading of her own accord.

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Autonomous education; a case study

Those who are sceptical about the benefits of autonomous education often read with raised eyebrows the accounts of children learning to read spontaneously and acquiring other skills without being taught. Still, it is usually impossible to prove or disprove such claims. Once in a while though, a case crops up where the evidence and records are so extensive that one can see exactly what has been going on and how a child has actually been learning. Usually, when one is able to examine the evidence in this way, a very different picture emerges from that which is first presented. We looked yesterday at an eight year-old boy called Christopher. The suggestion was made that he had been autonomously educated and I want to look at one particular aspect of his education, to see if we can gain some insight into what really happens when children pick up skills like reading and mathematics, supposedly without being taught them by an adult.

Let us consider reading. Some home educating parents, as well as one or two academics like Alan Thomas, believe that it is possible to learn to read simply from the experience of being surrounded by print in society. In other words, a child might acquire this skill without any explicit teaching from anybody. He might just 'pick it up', particularly when he found that it was necessary for some interest or other. This claim, that a child has learned to read without being taught, is not an uncommon one in the world of autonomous education. The child featured in the clip from a BBC programme yesterday apparently learned in this way. At the same time that this programme was broadcast, the family were featured in a local newspaper. Here is the article;

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Are-home-educated-children-better-off.htm


This contains the standard legend of the autonomous learning of reading. We read that;

'he didn't want to start learning to read until he was six, and has rejected the system of phonics which is used in many schools.'

'Kit was not forced to read, but instead started to pick it up when he realised it would be useful for him to learn about other things.'

I have asked a large number of people what they understood this to mean and without exception they said that they took it to mean that the child was not taught, but picked up reading at the age of six because he found he needed it for things which interested him. It is hard to see what other construction could be put upon the words used. So far, so good. A fairly typical sort of claim from an autonomously educating family. Sounds a bit fishy, but I suppose we'll just have to take their word for it! After all, we can't really know whether they taught him or not or if he just 'picked it up'.

Actually, this is where things get really intriguing. In this case, we are able to check up on how this child began to read. We can even listen to him learning to read! Let us begin when he is two years and four months old. Listen to this;

http://www.evilsusan.com/susan/Recording3.mp3


This recording was made on January 29th, 2004. We can hear Christopher's mother showing him a series of flashcards, some of which are pictures and others numbers. Five days later, on February 3rd, she is teaching him to read individual letters;

http://www.evilsusan.com/susan/kitalphabet.mp3


The mystery of the child who at the age of six seemingly 'started to pick it up when he realised it would be useful for him to learn about other things.' is now solved. Far from 'picking it up' at the age of six, he was taught to read by an adult at the age of two. In addition to this, he attended a playgroup where the children were taught to read in preparation for school. This is precisely as I suspected. In every single case of early reading like this which I have been able to investigate, the child concerned has been taught. This is exactly the sort of work with flashcards which I undertook with my own daughter. It is what some people call 'hothousing'.

The real mystery here is why some parents wish to teach their children systematically and then claim that their children have learned the skills without assistance. This is a matter of psychology and tomorrow I shall be looking at what prompts people to perpetuate these myths. If the type of thing which I have described above were rare, then it would hardly be worth drawing attention to, but it is not at all rare. Far from being an isolated case, the home educating parent who works hard to teach her child to read and then denies having done any such thing is actually a stock figure in the world of British home education; one encounters them frequently. These ideas can cause great harm to gullible parents who do not understand what is really involved in learning to read. We shall end by reading a very sad account by a mother who has swallowed such stories unhesitatingly and is waiting patiently for her children to teach themselves to read;

http://www.education-otherwise.org/HE/LS5.htm


Some parents like this have a very long wait, because they have been misled into thinking it likely that their children will somehow 'pick up' reading of their own accord.

It may seem to some unfair to focus on one family in this way, but I do not think so. The number of parents not sending their children to school is increasing and newspaper articles and television programmes like this are encouraging such parents to believe that their children can just 'pick up' reading without being taught. This is a dangerous idea and one which needs, for the children's sake, to be challenged.

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