Autonomous education in practice

I have been criticised here recently, and not for the first time, for my portrayal of autonomous home education in the two newspaper articles which were published last summer. Among the accusations levelled at me in the past was that I had put forward a grotesque caricature of autonomous education and thus misrepresented the whole thing to the readers of the Times Educational Supplement. I wrote of autonomous education;

' The idea is that the child should be free to follow their own interests at their own pace. They may, for example, look out of the window and see an unusual bird. This may cause them to investigate ornithology and then study biology generally. Of course, this approach just might work with a bright and inquisitive child whose parents are on hand to facilitate their learning. Equally likely is that the child will see the bird, mutter “So what?” and carry on playing Grand Theft Auto IV.'

Before we watch the clip below, which is from a BBC programme about home education, let us look again at what I wrote. Looking out of the window at birds; this leading, perhaps, to a study of biology; the possibility that kids would rather play computer games. I mean, preposterous! Where do I get off trying to foist such a monstrous and distorted idea of autonomous education upon readers? Now watch the clip below, which is about an autonomously educating parent.




The first thing to strike any impartial observer is how spookily accurate my description of autonomous home education proves to be in this particular case. One gets the distinct impression from his body language and general demeanour that young Christopher is indeed muttering 'So what?' and hoping to continue playing Grand Theft Auto IV, or in his case Super Mario. Anybody would think that I had based my article upon this programme! Since it was filmed six months after the publication of the piece in the TES, this is hardly possible. There is of course no mystery about it. The 'Let's look out of the window and study the birds in the garden' line is a pretty popular gag with autonomous educators hoping to get their kids interested in nature. They don't even need to leave the house! The preference of some children for playing computer games as opposed to studying ornithology is also a general theme among many autonomously educated children, as well as those attending school. Let's face it, an awful lot of eight year old boys want to do little more than run round like mad things until they are worn out and then flop down and watch television or play computer games. Why would autonomously educated children be any different? I also have quite a few people, including autonomously educating parents, contacting me privately to discuss this sort of thing.

The real reason that I enrage some parents is not because I am a know-it-all Smart-Alec and irritatingly smug bastard (Although it would be a rash man who discounted this aspect of my personality entirely when seeking an explanation for my spectacular lack of popularity among autonomous educators). The truth is that I often describe how things are rather than how people wish to pretend they are. This can indeed be annoying. I am no ideologue and am hugely interested in how things really work, as opposed to how they are supposed to work. Hazlitt said, 'Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.' This is why I gain such keen enjoyment from the observation of certain types of education; because of the yawning chasm which separates theory from practice.

Incidentally, lest anybody suggest that the clip above is highly artificial because the mother and child might have felt under pressure due to the presence of a camera crew; this was not the case according to everybody involved. The team actually spent a couple of days there and after a while the child more or less took them as part of the background. These people were quite shocked to find that it was possible to keep a child out of school in this way. Their views on this kind of 'education' were well worth hearing and cast light upon how ordinary people see autonomous learning!

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Hothousing children at home

First, a real treat for readers! A chance to see and hear both me and my daughter talking about home education. Check out this bit from a BBC programme about home education which aired in February this year:





A few days ago, somebody commenting here drew attention to the supposed similarity between the present writer and Harry Lawrence, the famous home educating father of Ruth Lawrence. This was a fair point. There are indeed uncanny similarities between the various slightly eccentric fathers who appear on television or in newspapers from time to time to boast of their achievements and those of their offspring in the home educating line. Most of these men are what are known as 'hothousers'; which is to say that they work intensively with their children to stimulate their intellectual development in advance of their chronological age. The expression 'hothousing' is sometimes used pejoratively by autonomously educating parents to describe this kind of very structured home education.

The tradition of hothousing fathers is a very old one. A while ago I mentioned John Stuart Mill, taught at home by his father. Since the end of World War II there have been a number of high profile cases of this sort of thing. Edith Stern was taught at home in New York by her father from her birth in the early 1950s. Her progress was astonishing. By the age of two she could read fluently, she could play chess at four and at fifteen she became the youngest professor of mathematics in American history. On the face of it at least. a home education success story. Ruth Lawrence was taught at home by her father, graduating from Oxford University with a First at the age of thirteen. Judit Polgar, the chess champion is another case and of course there is the more recent example of Sufiah Yusof, who was taught at home by her father and entered Oxford University at the age of thirteen.

The above four are cases which were extensively covered by the media, but there are many more which are less well known. All seem to have points in common though. To begin with, there do not seem to be any female hothousers. All the cases of which I have ever heard have involved fathers rather than mothers. Secondly, it is usually daughters who are being pushed in this way. Thirdly, although these father-daughter combinations seem to have extremely close relationships when the child is young, this often seems to sour once the girl gets a little older. Ruth Lawrence, who moved to America and lived with her father until she was in her late twenties, went on to marry a man almost thirty years older than her, about her father's age in fact! The story is that she is now estranged from her father. Finally of course, there is the mysterious case of the missing mothers. My wife would look at pictures and films of such cases as these and ask, 'What's missing from this picture, children?' The answer is of course, the child's mother.

Now men can be pretty weird about their interests in a way that most women are not. I know quite a few men with obsessive interests in the American Civil War, steam trains and various other strange things. They have hundreds of books on their chosen subject and go on holidays to the USA or North of England so that they can visit battlefields of ride in steam trains. One seldom sees this in women. This I think explains part of the hothousing phenomenon; the fact that men become absolutely preoccupied with some project and pursue it singlemindedly to the exclusion of all else. There is of course a theory which holds that autism is simply an extreme and pathological form of maleness and I can easily believe it. Watch a man with an obsessive hobby and you can see traces of the type of single minded interest that one sees in some autistic people. I suspect that having once begun the task of educating their daughter, for some men it becomes an end in itself, just like the man who wishes to know everything about the history of railway signal boxes or the names of every soldier at the Battle of Gettysburg. It is just how certain men are.

Looked at from this perspective, it is fairly plain where the women in the case are. They are getting on with life like every wife of a man with an all-consuming hobby. They can probably see the benefits to their child, but do not particularly get caught up in the wild enthusiasm of the scheme. They certainly do not wish to appear on television or in the newspapers as mad home educators! Readers might at this point be asking themselves where my own wife was during the filming of the television clip which I posted above. The answer is that she retreated to the bedroom with a novel and told me that if I attempted to get her in front of the cameras she would behave so oddly that I would regret it for the rest of my life. Enough said, especially if one knows my wife, who always carries through with her threats. I dare say that it was a similar situation with all the other invisible mothers.

It has to be said that the long term outcome for these hothoused children is a bit variable. Ruth Lawrence seems happy enough living in Israel, although as I said there is a coolness between her and her father. Sufiah Yusof of course ended up not only estranged from her father, but also working as a prostitute. Edith Stern too fell out with her father when she became an adult. I think that it is worth looking at these individuals because, as I pointed out recently, it is these children whom the public sees as typical examples of home education. Since their fathers often present as being more than a little a little strange, this might well have the effect of teaching non-home educators subconsciously that home educators tend to be peculiar. It might also explain why I was invited to give evidence to the select committee, rather than a woman. Perhaps the effect of these high profile home educating families has been subliminally to persuade non-home educators that the typical, dedicated home educating parent is a father rather than a mother?

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