Warning! This post contains emails which according to EO will harm home educators..

Like an alcoholic who is able either to abstain completely or when once he touches a drop goes on a mad bender; I seem to be posting here once again. This must stop! One would think that I would by now realise that it is impossible to debate anything in a rational way with some of those on the main home education lists and I am slightly irritated with myself that I have even been trying.



Just to remind readers, my trouble on the EO list began when somebody posted a message complaining about attempts by local authorities to suppress debate of home education. She went on to say that censorship should be challenged in any form; a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly. My response to this was a brief message which I shall share with you all in a minute. Before that, I must say that I am relieved that EO admit now that they have actually been blocking my messages. Some people were talking slyly of conspiracy theories, as though the whole business was my being paranoid! Why have my messages been moderated or censored? One of the moderators explains that it was because,



’ I am not, however, personally happy to allow goading, rudeness or debate which would appear to be designed to harm home educators.’



Rudeness! Harming other home educators! Well of course, this is fair enough. If I have been rude or harming other parents, of course I should be prevented. (I am tempted to ask how I am harming them? By exposing them to opinions which differ slightly from their own? Yes, I suppose that could be pretty harmful, but only if one were a sheep or bigot!) Anyway, here is the message which I sent. Readers may judge for themselves just how rude or harmful it was. It begins with a quotation from the post to which I was replying:

　

'Censorship can come in many forms but it is usually recognisable for what it is and should be challenged accordingly.'



Fascinating idea, as though local authorities and newspapers somehow have a monopoly on this unsavoury practice! Many forums and lists for home educators operate censorship quite shamelessly, blocking posts which do not agree with the views of the moderators. Others simply chuck off those who are too vociferous in what the list owners feel to be the wrong cause. Witness how Tania Berlow was banned from HE Forums last year.



I am opposed to censorship, but let us admit that it takes place among home educators as much as it does anywhere else.



Simon.’



Just how harmful could this have been to other home educators? I emailed the moderators when I was told that this had been blocked. Perhaps this was when I began to be rude. Here is what I said:



‘Dear Shoshanna,

I cannot help making one or two points in response to your email. You say, ‘My personal feeling is that the EO group is the wrong place to have this debate’. I find this curious. Yesterday a message was posted complaining about censorship and the stifling of open debate on the subject of home education. Among other things the poster talked of, ’ the reluctance by many LA's keep an open debate’ and also said, ’ Censorship can come in many forms but it is usually recognisable for what it is and should be challenged accordingly’



Here is somebody who evidently wishes to start a debate about censorship relating to home education. You did not block or remove this message and so I must assume that you feel that this EO group is actually the right place for such a debate. When I point out that censorship around home education does not only happen in local authorities and newspapers, but is also undertaken by some home educators’ groups themselves, you apparently decide that this is no longer a topic which should be discussed on the list.



The result of this is, as I have said, to slant debates and give a false impression. The people coming on here seeking support and advice will be allowed to read that local authorities operate censorship and that is a bad thing, but will not be allowed to learn that home education groups do precisely the same thing. Do you really find nothing bizarre about somebody starting a debate on the EO list about censorship and the first person to respond to this being censored himself? I am sure that if you have any sense of the ridiculous, you will grasp this point!



Simon.’



Nothing rude or harmful here either! That this is actually censorship is clear from the way that while not being allowed to read my actual messages, those on the EO list are being told that they are rude and harmful. This is untrue and suggests strongly that those saying such things are not acting in good faith. Believe me, this is not moderation at all but censorship. Refusing to let others read something and then telling them that this is because it would harm them to do so is one of the oldest justifications for censorship. It has never cut any ice with me.



I have also, by the way, recieved an email headed:



　Message not approved: Moderating question

From: catalonia13 Add to Contacts

To: simon



From this, I take it that the posts which I sent to BRAG containing statistics have actually been rejected, rather than just falling victim to a technical glitch.

Read More

Censorship in the world of British home education

There are probably those who will be horrified to see that I am posting here again. ‘Oh no’ they cry in dismay, ‘We thought we’d seen the back of that idiot!’ Well, not quite. I stopped blogging here regularly because I had too much going on in my life to be able to keep this blog. I hoped instead to keep in touch on various home education lists and forums; posting from time to time there as some subject cropped up which interested me. This is no longer possible.

Let us start on the Badman Review Action Group list, where a lively debate has been taking place about the merits or otherwise of GCSEs for home educated children. This is a hot topic, because some parents want state funding for these examinations for their children who are not at school. Others think that this would be inviting official interference in home educating. The opinion was expressed there that employers no longer value these qualifications and I responded by posting some statistics about how employers actually viewed GCSEs. As a result, I was described as a ‘pillock’ and ‘pathetic troll’, to say nothing of being told that I was ‘spewing nonsense’. Presumably the moderators were having a doze! They soon woke up on the evening of November 6th when I posted some more figures. This post vanished without a trace. Another was delayed for five hours. The next morning, people were enquiring as to the source of the statistics which I had posted, as well as asking a few other questions. I sent five messages, each going courteously through all the points which had been raised. Four of these vanished; one was posted eleven hours later. It was plain that I was being prevented from introducing facts and figures into the debate.

I drew attention to this on the EO list to which I belong. This provoked a response from one of the moderators on BRAG who put a message up on the EO list. I replied on the list on the morning of the November 12th. My reply has apparently fallen into the same black hole as my messages on BRAG! That this was not a technical glitch was confirmed when I posted a reply to the concerns raised by somebody else on the EO list. This person was worried about the stifling of debate and called for us all to challenge censorship around home education. True, her concerns were that this was happening with local authorities and newspapers, which is quite true, but I thought that I would point out that it also happens with home education groups. I as sent a message saying that the EO moderators had rejected my message because they did not think that the EO list was the right place for such a debate.

There is something deliciously ironic about somebody quite properly raising concerns about censorship, as was done by the poster on November 11th and that the first person to respond to this message is himself censored. If this sort of thing were limited only to the EO list and BRAG or if I were the only person affected, perhaps this would not be so important. These games are going on all over the home education Internet scene in this country though, especially on the larger forums and lists. The HE-UK list if famous for chucking people off who irritate the owner by their heterodox views and Tania Berlow was thrown off the Home Education Forums site for saying the wrong things. This was particularly unfortunate. I don’t agree with Tania about much, but she did a lot of work during the Badman Review, gathering statistics and so on.

There is something a little bizarre about the sight of people who are very keen on proclaiming the rights of the individual and then engaging in censorship.

Read More

An important anniversary

I must crave my readers' indulgence as I reflect that this blog has now been running for just over a year. I have been prompted to muse about this by something which I was reading on the HE-UK list recently. A new forum for home educators has been started, called Other(wise) Inclined and the woman who started it mentioned the fact on the HE-UK list. Mike Fortune-Wood, owner of the list, rather sniffily expressed the view that nobody really needed another HE forum and he couldn't see why anybody would want to start one. Others agreed. This struck me as being a bit strange. Imagine if somebody commented here and said that they were starting a blog on home education and I told them that it wasn't necessary because there were already enough blogs on the subject! A little thought though, made things clearer.

I have noticed lately that very few people are posting on either the HE-UK or the EO list. I have observed the same thing about the Badman review Action Group. In fact, looking at a typical day recently, August 17th, I see that the HE-UK, EO and BRAG lists had a total of only twenty four posts. This blog, by contrast, had forty seven; in other words twice as many as the other three lists put together. The number of visitors who come here without posting is of course much greater than that. I must confess that I was a little surprised to discover that numbers of some HE sites have fallen so dramatically. I see that poor Mike Fortune-Wood has now been reduced to trying to drum up visitors for his website by pimping it on BRAG and other lists.

Why are so many people coming onto this blog? Well of course it might be that they are attracted by my facility for (hem, hem) turning out such brilliant prose. I am inclined to doubt this. The writing is competent, but not really worth reading for its own sake. Initially of course, many people came here to hurl abuse at me and denounce me as a traitor and quisling to the cause of home education. Those types seem to have left though. It certainly can't be my winning personality and engaging charm which draws people because, as is generally known, I am an exceptionally abrasive and unpleasant sort of fellow. Exchanging comments with me is about as agreeable as having root canal treatment! Perhaps I am asking the wrong question. Maybe its not that this is an especially wonderful blog, perhaps it's that the other places where home education is discussed have something about them which people don't like and they come here because it is different.

A couple of years ago, there were some very spirited debates taking place on the HE-UK and EO lists. I say 'spirited'; downright vicious would be more accurate. In fact I have never encountered anything like it in my life. New members would join, express an opinion and be immediately savaged. It really was quite exciting. Many of the people who hung out on those two lists seemed to be permanently angry. One or two of them are still around. Ruth O'Hare from Godalming, AKA firebird2110, for instance. Anybody remember the angry pixie from the Faraway tree? That's what she always reminded me of. Also a bit like some retired colonel in Tunbridge Wells, going purple in the face every five minutes over some imagined slight or other. Of course, these angry home educators provided a certain amount of innocent amusement, but the novelty swiftly wore off. Many parents would join the lists, watch what was happening and then leave. The atmosphere on those places really was poisonous, with people being bullied and driven off a lot. I have remarked before on the irony that some of the worst offenders seemed to be mothers who had taken their children out of school due to bullying.

Now I fancy things are a little different here. True, I piss people off with my smug arrogance, but then again some of the people who comment here piss me off, so honours are pretty well even on that score. What I do notice is that there do not seem to be any really unpleasant arguments; people give the impression of trying to find common ground. Also, there is a good deal of humour, which has always been lacking from some other blogs and Internet lists on home education. All in all, if one forgets about the odd mad chess playing father, I think that this is a rather good natured and easy going place to visit, compared as I say with some home education sites.

Well, that's it folks. I'm not much given to nostalgia, but nor did I feel able to leave such a significant anniversary unremarked. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Read More

A sad but not unusual story

Over on the EO list a few days ago there was a rather sad message which cast light upon two different aspects of home education in this country. Some guy has a sixteen year-old daughter who wishes to go to college. She needs four GCSEs to do the course which she wants and now her father is asking how to go about this. This is the first aspect of home education in the UK which is illuminated. Not just on the Internet lists but among ordinary home educating parents is a vague belief that one can get into college or university without any formal qualifications. Often, parents talk hopefully about portfolios and interviews and the claim is made that colleges and universities actually prefer home educated children without qualifications because they are so original/mature/bright/individual. Parents such as the one I mention above, absorb this nonsense and it is only when their children hit fifteen or sixteen and start asking around about colleges that the awful truth hits them; they cannot get on an academic course like A levels or the equivalent without having GCSEs. There then typically follows a period of panic before the child is persuaded to settle for a less demanding and academic course.

The story above is in many ways a tragedy and this tragedy is largely the responsibility of those who continue to spread the myths about access to higher education. Getting coursework authenticated is all but impossible outside a school or expensive distance learning provider. This makes GCSEs very tricky for home educators. With the introduction of the controlled assessments in a year or two, they will be completely impossible. This leaves IGCSEs. It is hard to find a school or college which allows private candidates to take these and the typical cost will be about £150 per subject. Studying for IGCSEs is far more rigorous than GCSEs and for a sixteen year old starting the syllabus from scratch will take at least a year or two of hard work. Almost certainly, the child mentioned in the post on EO will not now be doing the college course she wishes to do. This is because the father did not make any enquiries earlier and was lulled into complacency by the prevailing myth system perpetuated by many home education activists.

The other interesting part of this business is the response to this question. Three people gave advice to this father. This is about average for educational questions of this sort. Compare this with the responses to a question on another popular home education list, that of HE-UK. A woman posted a question there a few days ago and the gist of it is this. She has de-registered her child from school, in her own words;


'After I followed the correct procedure to withdraw my daughter from school to resume her home education, there was some miscommunication within the LA.'

By the way, one senses that there is a little more to the subsequent story than meets the eye. 'To resume her home education' makes me suspect that this child has probably been taken out of school before and then sent back again. Be that as it may, the local authority served her with a notice giving her fifteen days to show that she was providing a suitable education for her daughter. This might be a little hasty on their part, but I would guess offhand that the last time she was being home educated they had trouble getting evidence of the education. At any rate, there is no difficulty here, all the mother needed to do was contact them and explain the situation. She did so and the matter was cleared up. She is now determined to pursue a complaint against her local authority.

The response to this post has so far generated twelve posts and I have no doubt that there will be at least as many today. This sort of grudge is very dear to the hearts of some home educators and indignation and anger are running high. Two things strike one here. Firstly is that three people answer a question about education on one list, but a dozen respond to a complaint about a local authority on another. Most of those are on both lists and it suggests to me that quite a few people are more interested in grudges against local authorities than they are about education. The other thing which is odd is that if I had just embarked upon the education of my daughter, my energies would be fully occupied with planning and arranging this education. The fact that the local authority sent me an irritating letter would be a minor matter which I could deal with briefly. It seems to be a very big thing for this mother though. I can't help wondering if all the fuss she is generating is designed to distract her local authority and discourage them from asking further questions about the education which she is providing. It would be interesting to know what sort of relations she had with them on the last occasion that she home educated.

There are Internet lists which deal specifically with education and examinations, but many parents get no further than joining Education Otherwise and Home Education UK and then being on their lists. The focus is often upon conflict with local authorities and central government rather than educating one's child. When education is mentioned, it is often only to reassure parents that children are the best judges of what to learn. The father who posted on the EO list has discovered too late that this is not really so. If he had planned a little bit more in advance, his daughter would probably not be in the pickle which she is. Local authorities often try and warn parents about this and this too makes some people angry. Several posts have been made about local authority officers who asked whether children would be taking examinations. The fools! Have they not heard about autonomous education? Perhaps a little more planning for educational outcomes and a little less time spent pursuing grudges and complaints might not be a bad thing on the Internet lists. Otherwise, their influence upon parents is likely to be negative and their ultimate effect upon children harmful.

Read More