Some cult-like aspects of autonomous education

A week ago, when somebody joined the HE-UK list because she wanted some solid information before taking the serious step of deregistering her child from school, Mike Fortune-Wood was quite open about his contempt for facts and figures when it came to home education. He asked bluntly, ' why do you want hard figures, in what way are they likely to help you?'

Now of course most of us would, if considering a new educational setting for our child, want to know a little about it. What are the future prospects if my child follows this course or that? How will colleges and prospective employers view this type of education? Almost all of us would ask questions of this sort, trying to elicit a few 'hard figures'. Such an attitude is not encouraged in circles where autonomous education is rife. There are I think two main reasons for this. First of course, the statistics are simply not available. Secondly, following autonomous education, a major strand of home education in this country, is more than simply choosing one pedagogical technique over another. It is very different from deciding to teach reading by synthetic phonics as against using look and say, for example. I chose to use look and say, but I have never encountered any bitterness and hostility from teachers who prefer phonics! There is something to be said for both methods and which you decide to use is a personal matter. This is very different from autonomous education, which displays many of the characteristics of a cult rather than a means of education.

There is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a cult. I go to church every Sunday and would not class Christianity as a cult, but there are those who would. Most agree that Scientology is a cult, except of course Scientologists themselves. There are however a number of generally agreed characteristics which all cults share and I want to look at autonomous education in the light of these and see how it shapes up.

People drawn to cults are often in distressing circumstances, whether physical or mental; drug addicts, alcoholics, prisoners, the poor, those with borderline personality disorders, the grief stricken and so on. In this context, it is interesting to note the huge proportion of home educating parents who have withdrawn their children from school because of bullying or due to the school not making sufficient provision for their child's special educational needs. Watching one's child suffer must be among the most distressing experiences which any parent can endure and it strikes me that this group would be prime candidates for being attracted to some cult.

The attraction of a cult to those in distress is that it offers one simple explanation which will solve all the problems and remove the suffering. Whether it is accepting that you are a miserable sinner or acknowledging the need to write a letter deregistering your child from school, the answer is to stop asking questions and seeking rational explanations and just join the group. Once you have done this, all will become clear and your problems will be solved. To a suffering parent, this is an attractive proposition. Once they join the group, they receive unconditional love and acceptance. They belong. I am not going to quote any of the posts here from home education lists, but I suggest that readers who belong to HE-UK look at what is said to parents who announce that they are going to make the decision and invite home education into their lives. It is like a camp revival meeting! established members of the group on HE-UK may not actually cry, 'Amen' or 'Yea, Lord' or 'Preach it brother', but this is certainly the general sentiment. Another parent saved! This is precisely why the woman asking for information was viewed with such suspicion. She was not coming to the light through suffering, in the approved way. Instead, she was treating the matter as a rational decision. Big mistake! The true home educator does not weigh up the pros and cons cooly in this way, but makes the decision on faith alone. Unless she has reached this point by travelling through a vale of tears, there are those who would not view her as being a true member of the community. Asking for facts and figures indeed!

Having joined the family, new members are able to take on a new identity; that of home educators, often autonomous ones. They can say to others. 'We're autonomous', just as newly baptised Christians can claim, 'We are saved'. They are now set apart from the world. Often, it is at this point that they begin saying things which in the outside world might sound a little bit mad. This is common in cults, religions and autonomous home education. I have myself attended meetings where people would remark casually that they have been washed in the blood of the most precious lamb; not the sort of thing one would generally say down the pub or in the supermarket! It is the same with home education. Initiates will say things about the teaching of children which would cause most ordinary people to choke in disbelief.

Essentially, these parents find an identity in autonomous home education. They are no longer misfits and cranks, but have instead found a group where they can be themselves and nobody looks askance at them. The benefits to the parents are obvious; the advantages to their children less clear. I have only scratched the surface of this phenomenon today and I hope to explore the topic further over the next few days.

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Ruthless action on the HE-UK list! (again)

Fans of HE-UK, which according to the list owner Mike Fortune-Wood is going from strength to strength, might sometimes notice that everybody there seems in general to be singing from the same sheet. This is a little strange when you have a couple of thousand members. The explanation is fairly simple. We saw a few days ago that somebody asking too many questions is likely to meet with a frosty response and the suggestion that she must be some sort of infiltrator and not somebody with a genuine interest in home education at all. I posted humorously about this yesterday. Readers may have noticed that one of the people who commented light heartedly about my post was Loz, who is herself a member of the HE-UK list under her own name. Incredibly, she has now been thrown off the HE-UK list, presumably for not disagreeing with me strongly enough here!

This is how things often work in the home education world and it is the way in which the appearance of a united front is maintained, promoting a certain orthodox view to which all home educating parents are expected to subscribe. Those who are happy to cooperate with their local authorities are routinely made to feel like Quislings and collaborators; anybody not bitterly opposed to the regulation of home education is not welcome on most lists and forums. Because any dissenting voices are thrown off the lists, as Loz was this morning, it enables some home educating groups to claim that all home educating parents agree with them about everything. How could it be otherwise, when those who even ask too many questions are treated like lepers? That somebody would be thrown out of a major home education support list in this way purely for engaging in a little banter with me here is really quite disturbing. It is not the first time that it has happened though and I don't suppose that it will be the last. The next time that we see a home education group claiming that all their members support this or that point of view, it is worth remembering that maintaining this unanimity has been achieved by chucking out anybody who disagrees!

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Twisting my tail

Every time I decide to ignore the HE-UK list and leave them to their own devices, some fool on there twists my tail by recounting a silly and untruthful story about me. Sooner or later it will dawn on these people that such behaviour is counter-productive. The latest example of this occurred yesterday. I have described the reaction to somebody asking for information on HE-UK in a post earlier today. Somebody commenting here on that post reproached me for not mentioning that an explanation for the bizarre response to a few questions had later been made. I must of course put this right. What was the true explanation for the barking mad accusation, that she was asking too many questions, which was made against the mother who wished to find out a little more about home education before she knew if it was the right decision for her and her children? Could it be that some members of that list are paranoid schizophrenics who have been a little remiss in taking their medication? Might it be that some home educators are always looking for a row and are glad of an excuse to have a go at anybody? Or could the churlish and ill mannered reaction be caused by a massive social skills deficit? It was apparently none of these very plausible reasons. It was my fault!

Some readers are perhaps scratching their heads at this point and asking themselves how this could be. I left the list in July 2009, whereas the woman who posted that the request for information had 'set alarm bells ringing' for her, did not even join the list until earlier this year. How could there possibly be a connection between me and the response of this person? Fortunately, Roxanne Featherstone was on hand to explain everything. She told the original poster that, 'There has been at least one example on this list alone of someone pretending to be someone they weren't' Since she follows this up with mention of newspaper articles and select committees, it is not hard to decode this reference to myself. What a mercy that this helpful woman has cleared the matter up so neatly. But hang on a minute, something isn't right here! When I joined the HE-UK list in 2007, I represented myself to be a middle aged home educator called Simon Webb who worked part-time with children with special needs and wrote occasional articles for magazines and newspapers. I have just checked and that is still who I am! The question is, who was I pretending to be, if not this person? I emailed Roxanne to clear this up, but she is evidently too busy to reply.( She is probably writing scripts for Jackanory). I am forced therefore to throw the question out to a wider audience. I claim now and have always claimed to be Simon Webb, a parent who home educated his daughter until she was sixteen. If this is not, as Roxanne claims, who I am then perhaps somebody could help by telling me who I am pretending to be. It is all very perplexing and as an explanation for the awful rudeness displayed to the new member on the HE-UK list seems to be wholly inadequate. If anybody knows who I am pretending to be, or whether or not I am actually pretending to be Simon Webb and am really somebody quite different, perhaps they could share the information with us. I for one am very eager to find out!

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Asking too many questions

Anybody considering an enterprise such as buying a car, moving house, applying for a job or changing the whole style of their children's education would be well advised to look into the matter carefully before making a final decision. This is only common sense. A first step would be to gather as many facts about the projected course of action as possible and then examine them carefully before deciding whether or not to proceed. This is particularly so when what you are planning will have a dramatic effect upon the lifestyle and future prospects of your children. It was heartening therefore to see somebody posting on the HE-UK list, not to announce, as is all too common, that she had withdrawn her children from school and did not know what to do next, but in order to request as much information as possible about home education so that she could make an informed decision about whether she wished to undertake it. She headed this thread, 'Considering home education'

Incredibly, this attempt to find out a few basic facts about home education was treated with the gravest suspicion by others on the list. A parent who wished to think carefully before deregistering her child from school? Somebody who wanted to look at the facts first? Must be a dangerous troublemaker! Why on earth should she ask about the efficacy of home education or want to know about any research on the subject? Why was she wanting to know about the long term prospects if she chose to home educate; GCSEs, further education and the attitudes of potential employers? The list owner, Mike Fortune-Wood, urged others on the list to refuse to answer these questions. Addressing her directly, he challenged her motives and asked what use facts and figures would be in making a decision such as this. Others swiftly joined in, starting a new thread called, almost unbelievably, 'Too many questions'! This simple request for information had, according to one parent, 'started alarm bells ringing' for her. The idea that it would be possible to ask too many questions before making a decision of this sort about one's child's education is so absolutely mad that it leaves one clutching one's head and reeling with disbelief! Presumably, those who feel this way withdrew their own children from school without asking too many questions or giving the matter too much thought.

This incident says a great deal about home education in Britain today; none of it good. Part of the animosity which was displayed towards the person making this post was motivated by the fact that her concerns were entirely educational and not related to problems at school or a desire for a different lifestyle. This in itself raised hackles; it is a rare parent in this country who chooses to home educate for educational reasons! Another thing which put people's backs up was that here was a person wishing to make a rational decision by examining all the available evidence before making up her mind. Again, this is at odds with the way such decisions are often made by home educating parents in Britain, that is to say either when they have reached such a point that there seems to be no choice in the matter or as an instinctive desire for a particular mode of upbringing for their child.

Withdrawing a child from school is a very serious decision indeed. It is common enough to hear of parents who have taken this step and are then at a loss to know what to do next; one sees them all the time on the forums and lists. Joining a list like this and asking for information first, before taking the kid out of school, that is an unusual person indeed!

This business also touches upon another aspect of British home education; the almost visceral distrust of research on the subject. Whoever the person asking for information was, whether she was even a parent at all, there could hardly have been any harm in pointing her towards Alan Thomas and Paula Rothermel's work on home education. The fear expressed though was that she might have been a 'researcher', one of the most feared and alarming characters whom a home educating parent might encounter! It is because of this ridiculous attitude towards researchers that so little is known about home education in this country. Even a sympathetic researcher like Paula Rothermel found that 80% of those whom she asked wished to answer no questions about what they were doing. Education Otherwise found the same proportion a few years later when they tried to conduct a survey among their members. I won't even mention the campaign to boycott the Ofsted research at the end of 2009.

Fortunately, some members of the HE-UK list have realised what a completely bonkers view the 'Too many questions' approach was giving of home educators. More information has been forthcoming, although the list owner is still deeply suspicious of somebody who could even think of asking all those questions! This little incident casts a revealing light upon home education in this country and I shall be exploring some further implications over the next day or two.

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A final word about HE-UK

I write a personal blog. In this blog, I express my own purely personal opinions in a humorous and seldom entirely serious way; although I do try to take note of and include the opinions of others. That's why I don't operate any moderation, so that others can come here and express their own views if they wish. I also read other blogs and websites in order to keep in touch with things in the field of home education. From time to time, I refer to things which I have read elsewhere. I usually do this in the vaguest way possible; perhaps by saying that 'a mother on one of the home education lists' thinks such and such. A few days ago, I said here;

'On one of the lists lately, a mother has received a questionnaire through the post from her local authority and is determined not to answer any of the questions, even though she tells us that the local authority already know the answers. This surely is sheer bloody-mindedness! Other parents commenting on the list are in agreement with this approach. Indeed, the mother whose child features in the newspaper cited above suggests that not only should the questions not be answered, but that the questionnaire itself should be covered with animal excrement before being returned to the local authority.'

The list is not named and most readers would not have been interested anyway in which particular list I was referring to. I wanted to discuss a particular attitude prevalent among some home educators and this was simply the lead-in to that discussion. As a result of this, people on that list have been describing me as 'an ignorant, lying arsehole' and in other, even less flattering ways. The list owner has said that;

'his intention on targeting this list is to destroy it. he aims to achieve this by ensuring that the normal functioning of the list is disrupted'

This is surely a ludicrous over reaction! At worst, I have been guilty of a breach of etiquette in mentioning the list without seeking permission of those posting there. How this is likely to destroy the list concerned is something of a mystery. I often mention things which I have seen on other lists and sites which I read. Nobody else ever reacts like this; it is only the members of this one particular list. A lot of them seem permanently angry anyway, so I suppose that anything will set them off! It is hardly my fault that they are so easily angered and if they prefer to spend their time writing insulting things about me instead of educating their children, I cannot see that this is my responsibility. I really have not the heart to counter once again point by point all the nonsense that has been appearing on that list about me for the last year and a half, some of which has been rehashed there over the last day or two. I will limit myself to one observation. Julie Garret said yesterday;

' Thats all fine and dandy, until he picks on you and names your child
PERSONNALLY in his blog, without your permission'

I cannot let this pass unremarked. I work with children with special needs and this is a pretty damaging allegation. It is, by the way, always a bad sign when people start using capital letters in this way; it is only a step away from using green ink! I feel that I should point out that I have never named Julie Garett's son either here or anywhere else. I only learned what her son's name was from the newspapers. I regularly look for mention of home education in the press and on the internet. So we find;

http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/education/4848207.Education_at_home_a_growing_trend_in_Herefordshire/


If Julie wishes to prevent others from knowing her son's name, seeing his photograph, finding out the name of the small village where he lives, learning why he was de-registered from school and about his developmental problems, then she would be well advised not to ring up newspapers and publicise his personal information like this. I did not mention her son's name here, let alone pick on either him or his mother, but once you put this sort of thing on the internet yourself, you can hardly then start to claim that your privacy has been infringed.(It was, incidentally, Julie Garrett who suggested that the quesionnaire should be returned to the local authority covered with animal excrement. Pity the local authority officer who has dealings with her and her family; do you suppose that they put correspendence from her through a special decontamination unit?)

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Mike Fortune-Wood explains about 'honour and personal integrity'

Now I think that some of the old hands on the HE-UK list, should not be saying too much about people who take posts from that list and disseminate them to third parties. We saw Wendy Crickard make a fool of herself doing this a few days ago and now it is the turn of the list owner, Mike Fortune-Wood. He says, referring to me;

'I rely largely upon the sense of honour and personal integrity
of those who apply for membership. Unfortunately these values are not
universally held notions'

This is shamelessness upon an heroic scale! Just to remind readers, I belonged to this list for a couple of years before being chucked off at the end of July 2009 because I had written newspaper articles supporting the recommendations of the Badman review. Immediately, the HE-UK list became a clearing house for all sorts of rumours and downright lies about me. Cheerleader for this campaign was Mike Fortune-Wood who, posting as Maesk123 on the website of a national newspaper, published the details of a post which I had made to his list, a post which I had assumed was being made to a private list. He also used the same place to try and spread the story that I was a colleague of Graham Badman's. So let's get this straight, it is compatible with 'honour and personal integrity' to use a false identity to spread untruthful rumours about people in the press and publish private posts from this list to a newspaper? As my daughter would say, please!

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A breathtaking piece of effrontery

A couple of days ago I mentioned here that a mother was reluctant to send back to her local authority a questionnaire which they had asked her to complete. I gave no details of the list which this was on, let alone the woman's name. However, it appears that she feels upset by my use of her case here. Other members of the list are now expressing annoyance that I have taken a private message and spread the contents around. Wendy Crickard, a former teacher, had this to say;

' What a pathetic creep it is - perhaps 'Get a life' is the appropriate advice
to him or is it that he can't get a friend anywhere? WendyC'

Strong words indeed! But wait a minute. Wendy Crickard, where have we heard this name before? Oh yes, that's right. Back in October 2009, after I have been chucked off the HE-UK list and almost forgotten about it, she posted there explaining that she was meeting an MP and wished to show her details of a private message which I had sent to the list. Up until this point, I rather assumed that messages which people posted on HE-UK were private and should not be quoted or shown to others. I had certainly not done so myself. Here is what Wendy Crickard said on October 7th 2009;

'Does anyone have copy of the email to this site in which S.W. boasted of
misrepresenting himself in order to further his journalistic career? I’ll
happily wave it at Linda Waltho on Friday. WendyC'

A number of those on the list helped by producing other messages of mine for her to take to Linda Waltho MP and show her. Not one person said anything at all about these messages being private. The impression one gained was that this behaviour by Wendy Crickard was absolutely fine and acceptable. From that time, I have not been at all fussed about the privacy of messages on that particular list. It was Wendy Crickard's actions and the enthusiastic response of others on the list which rid me of any inhibitions which I might otherwise have felt about this. For her now to start complaining about anybody passing on details of a post from the HE-UK list is really a bit rich!

It is odd, incidentally, that converts to a cause are always more extreme in their support than those who have been supporters of that cause all their lives. One notices this with Catholic converts and others who join religions or political parties in later life. I suppose that Wendy, having spent all those years as a teacher, now feels that she must be more gung ho than other home educators in order to demonstrate her changed allegiance. It is an interesting psychological point.

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A new home education initiative

Once in a while one encounters something in the world of British home education which makes one feel like shouting; 'For fuck's sake! What is wrong with these people?' Readers will be relieved to hear that, as usual, they will be spared such vulgarity here. Instead I intend to discuss this matter in the calm and rational manner which has ever been my trademark; merely limiting myself to offering a few words of wise and good advice.

Staffordshire County Council, whose approach to home education has left somewhat to be desired in the past, has announced that they intend to start a support service for home educating parents. It is described like this in a local newspaper;

'Home-Educated children in Staffordshire will soon be able to get resources, tips and other support with their studies from a new online learning service.

Staffordshire County Council is planning to launch the 'Learning Platform' in the summer, initially through a pilot scheme.

It will also include a forum so young people and parents can chat online to other families who educate youngsters at home instead of school.'

I might remark that I advocate something of this sort in my book, Elective Home Education in the UK (Trentham Books, 2010). I said;

'A good many home educating parents would welcome practical help and advice from experts such as teachers and psychologists. Teaching one's child can be a lonely and on occasion unnerving process. Most parents, even the most confident, need reassurance and support from time to time....

Parents with questions about anything from the legal position surrounding home education to the age at which a child should be reading independently could be sure of hearing views from teachers and from other home educators. However, Several of the most popular existing support groups on the Internet bar professionals from membership. So myths, half truths and outright falsehoods proliferate.'

There now, I couldn't have put it better myself!

The news of Staffordshire's new scheme is being described on the HE-UK list as 'registration through the backdoor'. It is worth pointing out that when people are trying to do something 'through the backdoor', they seldom advertise the fact by sending a press release to the local paper. The person who first posted about this, says that it is a 'carrot and stick'. I am baffled as to what the stick might be. We don't even know that those joining this scheme will have to identify themselves to their local authority. In some areas, Hampshire and North Yorkshire for example, it is possible to join in activities and obtain information from the local authority like this without being officially 'known'. Others commenting on HE-UK express the hope that this will be boycotted.

Try as I might, I am unable to grasp the objection to this, although judging by the response it is certainly regarded as a bad thing by some people, including Mike Fortune-Wood. Here is an opportunity for parents who might be isolated, to ask questions of professionals. Perhaps they might want to know what children the same age as theirs who are at school are studying. They might have questions about GCSEs. Maybe some readers here could help me to get a handle on this and explain why anybody in their senses should oppose this enterprise?

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Nailing an old canard (again!)

Every time I think that I have dealt finally with the story of how I lied to get onto various home education Internet lists and then abused their trust by publishing newspaper articles containing information taken from these lists, I find that after a month or two somebody tries to start it up again. Yesterday, somebody who comments here regularly said;

'if my memory serves me correctly, you were barred from HE-UK because you put material from the site in the public domain without the permission of the poster or the list owner.'

This is of course absolute nonsense. I joined the HE-UK list in 2007. I joined using my real name and personal email address, although it would have saved me a lot of trouble had I done what everybody else there seems to do and used a false name. At the end of July 2009 I had a couple of articles published in the Independent and the Times Educational Supplement about home education. here is the one from the Independent;

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/simon-webb-we-must-get-tough-on-home-schooling-1764348.html


There is nothing at all in this article apart from what is freely available to any member of the public on open websites. I was keenly aware that I should not use anything which I had learned from the lists and so restricted what I wrote to information from the public domain. I quoted from an account of autonomous education found on the Education Otherwise site. It is here;


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



Soon after this was published Mike Fortune-Wood, the owner of the HE-UK site, posted a comment on the online version of the article in which he claimed that I had lied to gain admission to his list. This was not true of course and he was too ashamed to sign his own name to this comment, preferring to use the pseudonym Maesk123. He also included a post which I had made on the list. Up until that point, I had assumed that all comments which people posted on this list were private and meant only to be read by those on the list. Other members of this list then began to publish my comments from the list in various places, including writing to the editors of national newspapers with quotes from them. Later on, things which I had posted on this list began to appear on blogs and websites across the world! On October 7th 2009 Wendy Crickard posted a message on the HE-UK list asking for details of previous posts of mine made to the list. She explained that she wished to show these to Linda Waltho MP, who was sitting on the select committee.

One might have thought that if anybody on this list was really concerned about the privacy of messages which were posted there, then at least one person would have raised an objection to this. In fact Janet Ford, another of those who seems to be ashamed of her own name, posting as Mehetabel, started a new thread called, '[HE-UK] Simon Webbs previous posts for Wendy :-‏' She then listed every post of mine that she could find, so that others could pass them on to MPs and anywhere else.

It was at this point that I realised that the posts which people made on the HE-UK list were not really regarded as being private at all. It was clear from the fact that nobody objected on the list to all this, that all the members found this it quite acceptable to use posts in this way and to publish them anywhere. From that time on I have not bothered at all about the privacy of this list.

I hope that it is now plain that I did not put anything in my two articles from any of the home education lists to which I belonged when I wrote them. I hope it is also clear that when one finds that all those on a private list, from the list owner downwards, are perfectly content to publish private messages across the Internet, in national newspapers and even submit them as evidence to a select committee, then the idea of a 'private' list is no longer really possible. It is clear that private messages on such a list are really regarded as public property. I have behaved accordingly ever since this happened. I do hope that this will be the last I have to write about this topic.

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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.

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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.

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