Male and female home educators

I have been looking through some old material recently which relates to historic cases of home education. It will probably surprise nobody to hear that all the home educators of whom anybody has ever heard are men. James Mill, father of John Stuart Mill, Harry Lawrence, father of Ruth Lawrence, Laszlo Polgar, father of Judit Polgar. Then of course there is the present writer! Now while the many readers have heard of people like the fifteen year old boy who won a place at Cambridge recently and of course Ruth Lawrence, both educated by their fathers, few seem to be aware that this style of education is very much the exception in this country today. I think it fair to say that for the vast majority of home educated children, the main person concerned with the education is the mother.

I am sure that economic factors are at least partly responsible for the fact that most fathers are not the primary force in their children's home education. I have speculated before though as to why those fathers who are involved often seem to take to the business in a very intense and methodical way. Is it an authority thing? Could such fathers be determined simply to take control and be uneasy about the idea of their child doing more or less as she pleases? Perhaps it is that men prefer to organise things and do not like things to be haphazard and with no clear plan laid out? Whatever the reason, men do seem to prefer a structured type of education with definite goals and outcomes; at least when they are undertaking the task themselves.

I mentioned three well known home educated children above, plus the one who has just got a place at Cambridge. I was wondering if anybody knows anything similar which a mother has been responsible for. I mean a chess champion, maths genius, famous utilitarian philosopher type outcome for a home educated child? There are a few cases where the mother spent time encouraging a child at home; Thomas Edison for instance. I would be interested to hear of anything in that line that anybody knows about.

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The wisdom of children

I regularly read stuff written by home educating parents of young children in which they talk of 'trusting my child's instincts' or 'knowing that she knows best', or similar nonsense. It is pretty plain to me that those saying this sort of thing are working from a fixed religious or ideological perspective, rather than basing their belief system pragmatically upon observation of the real world.

In some cultures, children are held to be the repositories of the collective wisdom of the tribe or nation; they are somehow assumed to have access to the collective unconsciousness or something of that sort. Elders might thus believe that a very young child will be able to guide them in a way that an older person may not. We saw this sort of mentality with the choice of the present Dalai Lama in the 1930s. This notion has not been popular in the industrialised west, at least not generally. The reason why few people today subscribe to such ideas is not hard to find. If my boiler packs up, I would not ask my eight year old daughter what is to be done about it. She would know little about the matter and it would not be fair to thrust responsibility for the business onto her. The same would apply if I were considering re-mortgaging my home; she would be the last person I would ask. The reason for this attitude is that children do not know as much as adults. they are less apt to view the world rationally and have little experience of solving practical, real life problems. For the same reason, an eight year old child would not be in a good position to decide upon the course of either her own or anybody else's education, nor the best course of her own or anybody else's future life. These things are beyond her experience and it would be unfair to pass this responsibility to her. Just as with the case of the new boiler or the re-mortgaging of the house, she would not have enough information or insight to make a sensible and informed decision upon this question.

There are nevertheless, parents to whom this seems a good idea. They claim that their child 'knows best' what she should be learning and they wish to trust their child's 'instincts'. As I said above, this touching faith in the ability of small child to make a rational and far-sighted choice about matters affecting her whole future life cannot possibly be founded upon observation of the thought processes of real children. Nobody in their senses would rely upon a child of six deciding what was wise and good , either for herself or others. These parents are usually following the advice that others have doled out to them. The people handing out this advice are seldom psychologists or researchers in the developmental processes of children. Rather they are parents themselves who have acquired their insight into the nature of childhood not by the patient collecting and collation of masses of data, but by a sudden, blinding insight. This is not science, but mysticism.

I have nothing against mysticism, but it is as well to be aware that this is what we are dealing here. The way that a conventional view about the way that the world works, including how children's minds work and how they are best able to learn, is the result of thousands upon thousands of pieces of observation and research. These individual pieces of data find their way into peer reviewed journals and books and are examined there by others, who then offer their criticism. In this way, a broad consensus is gradually built up. This is not of course an infallible process! Scientists make mistakes as well and sometimes a false theory will flourish for decades before it is demolished. However, when somebody comes along and tells scientists that they are completely wrong about something or other, whether it is Plate Tectonics, the necessity of vitamins or the uselessness of directing a child's education externally; the onus is upon those claiming that science has got it wrong to provide their evidence and let others see what they have.

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Possible changes in the way that local authorities behave towards home educators

The day after Graham Badman's report was published last year, a time when many home educating parents were very worked up and angry about the recommendations which it contained, somebody wrote the following opinion on the Badman report for Walsall local authority in the West Midlands;

'Having read the Home Education Review written by Graham Badman and published by the DCSF yesterday it appears that the proposed legislative changes adopted by the DCSF and now in consultation until late October will involve changes in primary legislation. There are two basic changes 1. Compulsory registration and 2. Compulsory home visits, including the right of the authority to speak to the child alone.

The first is expected and except for roughly doubling your workload, it will not change the way the system operates. I expect this change will take 12-24 months to enact'

Thank goodness that at least one person was able to keep her head about this while all those around her were losing theirs! Who was this calm and sensible person who looked forward to the implementation of compulsory registration so phlegmatically? Was it a civil servant? A member of the the legal department at Walsall Council? No, it was none of these people. It was in fact a home educator called Alison Sauer. As soon as the Badman report came out, she saw a business opportunity and began touting her services to local authorities with renewed vigour. Increased regulation meant increased training, which in turn meant more business for the company which she and her husband run.

We are currently all waiting to see the new guidelines for local authorities which Alison Sauer and her chums are producing. It is interesting to note that the White Paper due to published soon might well be encouraging local authorities to adopt a more gung-ho approach towards children outside mainstream education. I was not at all opposed to the provisions of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, as readers will no doubt recollect! This is however something else entirely. By giving vague encouragement to local authorities to be 'strong champions' and use their 'wider children's services' with regard to those children outside mainstream education, Michael Gove could actually effect a change in the way that local authorities operate without all the bother of changing primary legislation or allowing a select committee to scrutinise what is proposed. If this were to be combined with new guidelines for local authorities which were vaguer and less clear than the 2007 ones currently in use, there could be a great change in no time at all for home educating families who wish to have no contact with their local authority.

Supporting a public enquiry which was scrutinised by a select committee is one thing. I certainly was part of that process and when it was defeated, I was happy to accept that the democratic system had worked, even if I did not agree with the outcome. I am very dubious about what now seems to be happening, which could prove to be a change in the way things operate being made by the back door.

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Knocking copy

One of the things which one cannot help but notice, both when talking to individual home educators and also while looking at Internet lists and forums, is that many home educating parents are more concerned with how awful schools are, rather than with how great home education is. Often, they will regale one with horror stories of their child's experience at school and also the terrible things that have happened at other schools and nurseries. It is quite possible to talk to a home educator about education for half an hour without the subject of home education per se being mentioned at all. It's all about school. This is what advertisers call 'knocking copy', when rather than extolling the virtues of your own product, you focus instead on the shortcoming of what your competitor has to offer.

There is no doubt that many home educators in this country have not chosen home education as a positive decision, but feel that they have been driven into it by circumstances at their kid's nursery or school. This is, I suppose, bound to give one a jaded view of mainstream education. I think that there is a little more to it though than this. The more one learns about the backgrounds of many home educating parents, the more one discovers that many of them had an unhappy time at school. Joy Baker, for example, one of the early pioneers of elective home education who struggled with Norfolk council during the 1950s, had a bad time at school herself and this was certainly a key factor in her decision not to send her children to school. The same is definitely true of quite a few of the more vociferous types whom one sees on the Internet. I am not going to name any names here, but this also applies to well known researchers in the field of home education, which is why I take their work with a pinch of salt. Many of those who set out apparently to investigate home education are doing so from the perspective of people who hate schools and are seeking to validate their own prejudices.

You can observe this underlying theme when some scandal erupts about schools or education. There is glee among home educating parents and they say, in effect, 'There you go, that's why I wouldn't send my own precious child to such places'. This happens with anything from poor academic results to the discovery of a paedophile gang connected with a nursery.

I did not have a brilliant time at school myself, but I have always thought that this was more to do with flaws in my own character, rather than anything wrong with the educational system as such! Readers may not be over-surprised to hear that I was just as much an irritating know-it-all as a child and adolescent as is the case today. This might have influenced my own decision not to send my child to school, but I have an idea that it was more the obvious educational advantages of unlimited one to one tuition in a relaxed domestic setting which recommended the scheme to me.

This idea, that many home educating parents are very anti-school and had a bad time were unhappy themselves at school, could shed light on home education in this country. It is particularly noticeable that often the reasons given by parents in Britain for home educating have more to do with things other than education; family life, relaxed and stress-free life for their children and so on.

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Home education on the increase in Australia

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/more-parents-choose-home-schooling/story-fn6bqpju-1225983862319

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Michael Gove writes to the local authorities

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, has written to all local authorities, tipping them the wink about the new White Paper on education. He expects local authorities to act as 'strong champions', looking in particular at the needs of 'vulnerable children' in their area. Gove says that they will have a strengthened role;

'Supporting vulnerable children – acting on behalf of groups of children who need extra support, including children with special educational needs, looked after children and those outside mainstream education. Local authorities will use wider children’s services responsibilities to ensure that children are able to get the most from their schooling.'

Using 'wider children's services' to support children 'outside mainstream education'. There may not be much appetite at the Department for Education for another crack at primary legislation after the fiasco of Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill, but encouraging local authorities to use 'wider children's services' in this way could very well have much the same effect. Without entering into a long debate about this, many local authorities already feel that they have a duty to ensure that home educated children have access to the five ECM outcomes. This could prove very interesting.

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Researching into the acquisition of literacy

In my local newspaper this week is the story of a woman who has just celebrated her hundredth birthday. She is a lifelong smoker and attributes her longevity in part to this habit. This reminds me somewhat of those home educating parents who claim that their children did not start reading until they were fifteen and yet still went to university. The point being of course that the hundred year old woman did not live that long because of, but in spite of her smoking. There is no doubt that some home educated children do not learn to read until quite late by school standards, but whether this is a desirable state of affairs or helped contribute to their later success is debatable.

Part of the problem when discussing home educated children in this country and how and when they learned to read is that almost no research has been done on the subject. That which has been done is based upon grotesquely small, self-selected samples and the results of each such piece of research often contradict all that which has gone before. I mentioned yesterday Paula Rothermel's testing of five children using the NLS tests and this irritated somebody who commented here. Let us look at two pieces of work carried out in this country about the reading abilities of home educated children.

Writing in his book How Children learn at Home (Continuum, 2007), Alan Thomas had this to say;

'Some children did learn to read early by school standards, but many were spread out in the seven to twelve age range and a few were even older than this'

This is, I will not say the standard view in British home education, nothing is that, but it is certainly a commonly held view. The idea being that if children are not made to learn formally at the age of five or six, they might acquire literacy a little later, but are not at all disadvantaged by this. We see this opinion expressed pretty regularly. We turn now to another piece of work which indicated precisely the opposite of this. In February 1997 Paula Rothermel, a student at Durham University, sent out 2500 questionnaires to home educators belonging to Education Otherwise. The following year she sent out the same number again and a small number to Local Education Authorities and a few other places. She received over a thousand responses. This work was carried out as part of her studies and subsequently formed the subject of her PhD thesis. One claim which emerged from this work was that home educated children scored far higher on standard tests of literacy than children of similar age at school. 'Far higher' is understating the case. Using the assessments for literacy which Rothermel did, one would expect to find 16% of children in the top band. According to Rothermel, no fewer than 94% of home educated six year olds were in this band.

In other words, according to Thomas and many home educating parents, it is common for children educated at home to be a little later than school children in learning to read. Rothermel claimed however that over 90% of the children she tested were doing brilliantly at reading at a very early age. It has not been possible to replicate these results; a fatal flaw in any sort of research.

Interestingly, a lot of the research in this field is carried out by students. The Otago work from New Zealand was by a student, as was the work on the sixteen pupils at Sudbury Valley which I discussed yesterday. Paula Rothermel's work too was that of a student. It would be very good to see a properly designed survey carried out of a large group of home educated children in this country, looking at the methods used and the long term results; ie, after the age of sixteen. Until this is done, we must really keep an open mind on the matter; the evidence so far being scrappy and unreliable.

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