The one-trick ponies of home education

Regular readers will, I am sure, be familiar with Mr Peter Williams of Alton in Hampshire. He frequently comments here and is apparently obsessed by the fact that his son is not receiving a good education at home, but would be better off at an independent school like Eton. Mr Williams belongs to a small subset of home educators, who wish their children to develop one particular skill to the exclusion of all else; in his case, chess.

I say that this is a subset of home educators, but in fact it was once the only type of home educator of which anybody seemed to hear; people like Harry Lawrence and Laszlo Polgar, determined that their children will be the best in the world at something. Whether it is mathematics, chess, piano playing, singing or tennis; these children must be the best in the world. I have remarked several times before that it is always fathers who seem to be at the back of this type of home education, but today I want to focus upon whether this sort of thing is good for the children themselves.

The great problem with being brought up to be better than anybody else at something is that if you spend all the time with your family and don't attend school, then you may come to believe this to be true, even if it is really no more than an ambition or delusion of your father. The shock of discovering the truth, that there are many better musicians, mathematicians or chess players than you, can be profound. Once in awhile, this kind of enterprise pays off. We have seen it with the Williams sisters, who are the best at what their father taught them. We almost saw it with Judit Polgar, but not quite. In most other cases, it does not turn out that the child being raised like this is anything special. This is where the process can be traumatic. For years, a child has been told by her father that she is brilliant and special, that she will be world famous at whatever it is that the father has chosen for her. Every aspect of life is geared towards the realisation of the father's ambitions and the child herself becomes no more than an extension of the father's own thwarted hopes for his life. Sooner or later the realisation dawns for the child. First, she has sacrificed many of the ordinary pleasures of childhood for the sake of somebody else's goal and secondly, she it has all been in vain because she is not the world's best singer, mathematician or chess player at all. This often leads to an estrangement from the pushy father, coupled with a crisis of identity. If the child is not the world champion whom she believed herself to be; then who is she?

We do not hear of most cases of this sort. The ones of which we generally do hear are people like the Williams sisters, who are the best, or those like Ruth Lawrence, who showed great early promise and went to Oxford at a very early age. For every such case, there are many other children who are coached and pushed by their parents to the exclusion of all else in the search for perfection at the field chosen by their parents. There are psychological dangers in this type of home education, but there are ethical considerations too. Ruth Lawrence was not allowed to associate with children, because this would waste her time. All children who are being groomed for stardom in this way, inevitably miss out on many aspects of childhood. These are often things which however successful they might be in later life, are irreplaceable. The chance to become engrossed in other hobbies apart from the important passion of their fathers. Being able to spend a summer not practising tennis or chess, or even taking up something quite different and focusing their energies on that instead.

I have always been fascinated by this particular strand of home education and I have to say that although to most home educators this kind of thing is seen as very unusual; for the man in the street, it is what home education is all about. They have all heard of the Williams sisters or Ruth Lawrence and the popular perception of home education is largely defined by mad fathers pushing their kids on to become champions! Do any readers know of this sort of thing in real life, apart of course from Peter Williams? I would be curious to hear of modern examples of this practice and to know in what field the kids are being trained.

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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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Waterloo Road

I was as irritated as anybody else when first I saw the apparently negative portrayal of home education in the BBC series Waterloo Road. However, unlike some of the home educating parents who have been fuming about this, I do not see it as government inspired propaganda designed to show home education as a foolish and bad choice likely to lead to misery. There is a much simpler explanation than that. In fact, when you look a little closer at the matter, it is hard to describe what is happening in the series as being at all negative; it is more a realistic depiction of a certain type of home educated child.

We have to think a little first about how home educators are perceived by ordinary, non-home educating parents. Now for most people, home educating is about hot-housing and/or anxious parents trying to keep their children from bad influences. Nobody except home educators has much idea about autonomous education or any other sort of home education apart from structured work at the kitchen table. I found it amusing that when I wrote about this perception in one of the newspaper articles on home education published last year, people became quite annoyed. I said;

‘ Most people, if asked about home education, would probably picture a child being tutored at home by his parents; perhaps working at the kitchen table rather than sitting in a classroom.’

A number of home educating parents said that this was not at all what home education is like for many children today. They were of course quite right, but the truth still remains that this is for most people exactly what home education means. I notice that in the first episode of Waterloo Road, this very expression is used, there is mention of the child sitting ‘at the kitchen table’. This really is how the average person, including the average BBC script writer, thinks of home education. Of course there are good reasons for this view of British home education. The only individual home educated teenagers of whom one ever hears in the newspapers or on the television tend to be just this sort of child. After all, ordinary teenagers who just happen not to have been to school are not really as interesting as the precocious geniuses and are unlikely to find their way into the papers. I have to say now that some of these hot-housed home educated types come across as just as weird as the girl in Waterloo Road. Name a home educated teenage girl; quick now, without thinking about it. Most people come up almost at once with Ruth Lawrence. Although it is about twenty five years since she was in the public eye and despite the fact that she is hardly representative of today's home educated teenagers, Ruth Lawrence symbolises for many the typical home educated child. Brainy, precocious, pale, speaking strangely and pedantically; wholly different from any other child of her age. I cannot really think that it is a coincidence that the home educated child in Waterloo Road is also named Ruth; the allusion is plain. Let’s watch Ruth Lawrence, just to remind ourselves of what a certain kind of home educated teenager is like. Have a look at the link below. Read the article and then watch the video.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2492000/2492853.stm


This then is one of the most enduring images of home education in this country; a thirteen year old girl called Ruth who is a little odd and fantastically bright because she has been intensively tutored by her strange father. I don't think that we need look any further for the source of the character in Waterloo Road. This is a precise description of the character of the home educated girl who appears in the programme, i.e. a thirteen year old girl called Ruth who is a little odd and fantastically bright because she has been intensively tutored by her strange father. Truth to tell, the script writers have simply taken a genuine home educated teenage girl and modelled their character upon her! I think that the worst one could accuse them of is laziness in not thinking a little deeper about home education or doing some research on the modern scene. I have to say that I find the programme itself is almost unwatchable. The characters make stilted speeches about multiculturalism and so on in a very wooden way. It does come across rather like a public service announcement at times.

Apropos of Ruth Lawrence and also the fifteen year-old boy, Arran Fernandez who is going to Cambridge University, has anybody ever wondered where their mothers are? I used to be intrigued by this when I saw Ruth Lawrence; no sign of her mother either. This is pretty much a leitmotif of intensive home education; the phenomenon of the invisible mother. The same thing with Judith Polgar, the Hungarian chess champion. Show me an intensively home educated child and you can be practically sure that the mother will have been airbrushed out of the picture; you will only ever see the father posing for the press with his kid.

I must finish by asking another question which has vexed me greatly over the years. What is it with home educated teenage boys' hair? I observed that Arran Fernandez had a most peculiar Pudding Basin style haircut, a style which I have seen before on home educated boys. One noticed the same thing about the children who were apparently killed by their mother in Edinburgh recently. In the most widely circulated photograph, the boys have this same, Pudding Basin style haircut. I could have guessed that they were home educated just from looking at their hair. It always seems to be either that or really long hair that makes the boy look as though he has just escaped from the nineteen sixties. Does anybody know why home educated teenage boys should be so fond of having shoulder length hair? Is it perhaps a reaction to the strange haircuts which their parents have inflicted upon them in their childhood?

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