Resentment at being forced to do something

One of the things which I have noticed during the recent debates about the behaviour of the local authorities in both Birmingham and Suffolk is that the people commenting on the Internet lists are very angry. Actually, they are not just angry about the doorstepping by local authority officers; some of them seem to be in a permanent state of fury! This is curious, because I thoroughly enjoyed being a home educator and I was happy for most of the time. Educating my child was a source of great joy to me and this joy permeated my entire life. It was great; like a constant high!

Now I am quite prepared to believe that some of these angry parents have had problems with their local authority. A lot of us have problems with our local authority, although not always about home education. Rowing with the council is one of those things that have become a leitmotif of the age; rubbish collections, streetlights, education, petty rules, parking regulations, the list is endless. Home educators are certainly not alone in getting pissed off with their local authority. Most of us manage to keep these disagreements in perspective. However irritable I get on the telephone with the council, I can usually chuckle about it in the evening with my wife. One feels that this is probably not the case with the angry people one encounters on HE-UK and BRAG!

I could not help but notice that when I posted about Suffolk, one of those commenting had a laid back and rational view of the matter. By an odd coincidence, this person was somebody, like me, who has chosen to be a home educator. The great majority of those who are becoming angry on a regular basis have not chosen to home educate; they say that they have been forced to do it. This cannot help but give them a rather different perspective from somebody who embraced the idea enthusiastically from the day of the child's birth and always intended to do it. We all of us get a little tetchy when we are made to do something. It stops being fun if we have been compelled to undertake an activity or task. iIwonder if this could be at the root of the terrible anger which I come across, not only on the lists, but here on my own blog.

All parents get upset and angry if something is harming their child; whether it is a bully at school, failure to provide sufficient support for a special educational need or simply something which causes the child unhappiness. Many home educators have felt compelled to undertake the education of their children, not because they are keen on home education, but because they feel that this is the only way to rescue the child from misery. This decision to de-register the child from school is often the culmination of increasingly fraught and bitter arguments with the school and the local authority. This does not, from the beginning, tend to create a foundation for cordial relations with the local authority, whom many such parents blame for their child's unhappiness. Parents like this are already angry with their local authority before they start to home educate. This does not bode well for the future. On top of this is the fact that although they may not begrudge the child the home education, they are at the same time keenly aware that this is not something which they have really chosen freely. They sent the child to school at four or five like everybody else and now they have had to adopt a new and strange lifestyle. Their family and neighbours might disapprove, they have less money and freedom than they had when the kid was in school; it would be surprising if some of them did not get a little angry about this new situation.

I have noticed that those who chose to educate their own child seem to be more relaxed and good natured about it than many of those who felt that they have been forced into it. This is not to be wondered at. I have also noticed that those growing angriest about the local authorities are often those who have had fights with their own local authorities before having to take their children out of school. It is not hard to see that they are projecting a lot of their anger onto the local authority in Suffolk or Birmingham. I would be curious to hear of parents whose children have never attended school who are able to generate the same levels of anger as those who already have a history of fighting with their own council.