Learning the old fashioned way; autonomous education, the oldest method in the world

One of the most endearing features of autonomous home educators in both this country and the USA is the way that many of them seem to be convinced that they are doing something daring and revolutionary by leaving their kids to learn what they wish. They apparently believe that this is a radical idea; that they are on the cutting edge of educational theory! Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact there is something rather quaint about those who choose to adopt this antiquated method of educating their children.

Modern humans have been around for at least 10,000 years. Until perhaps 3000 years ago, there was nothing at all like a modern school. For the first 97% of humanity’s existence, home education was the only game in town. Gradually, the idea of sending children to be educated by strangers became popular. It was a slow process. In Elizabethan England, only about one child in eight attended school; all of them boys. In other words, as recently as the 16th century, only one child in sixteen in this country went to school. Things continued in this way for another three hundred years or so. Most children were educated at home. One of the commonest ways of undertaking this was to let the children themselves choose what to learn; or indeed whether they wished to learn anything at all. The best way to see how this worked is to look at a fictionalised account of home education in the early part of the 19th century. Pride and Prejudice is generally reckoned to give a good picture of life among the upper classes at that time. Here is Elizabeth Bennet describing the education which she and her four sisters received;

Such of us as wished to learn, never wanted the means. We were always
Encouraged to read…those who chose to be idle, certainly might.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this sort of education, especially for girls, was very common at that time. As for the ordinary working class child; home education was almost universal.

As a matter of fact, it is universal, compulsory schooling which is the radical alternative in education; not home education, which has been around for at least a hundred thousand years. Those who choose this path are not blazing some new trail, but turning backwards to an older way of life. They put one in mind of the American Amish, who prefer to follow a deliberately archaic way of life. The one thing that radical unschoolers and autonomous educators are not is revolutionary.

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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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Teach and forget; a common strategy for parents

I want to look today at what motives parents might have for teaching their children systematically and then forgetting that they have done such a thing; in effect, airbrushing this from their family history. This is by no means uncommon among both home educating parents and also those who send their children to school. Some motives for this are restricted to home educators and so I shall deal with these first.

Quite a few home educating parents seem to feel almost ashamed to be seen to be pushing their children academically and those who do ensure that the children study literacy and mathematics in a structured and traditional way often conceal this from other parents. I want to think about this first and see if we can discover what could be responsible for this extraordinary state of affairs; educators who seem to be embarrassed about educating! There are several reasons why home educating parents might behave in this way. Before we go any further, I want to make it quite clear that I do not want to become bogged down in terminology here. I am talking about parents who teach their children and then keep quiet about it afterwards or try to erase it from their minds. I do not mind whether we call this coercive education and contrast it with autonomous, or whether we talk of imposed teaching and compare it with unschooling or informal education. The fact is, that parents do it.

Many, but not of course all, home educating groups are ambivalent about teaching and imposing discipline upon children. I have heard from parents who say that when they have said 'No' to their child at a group, they are stared at as though they are child abusers. One mother mentioned that her eight year-old son would be studying for GCSEs when he was older and the reaction was very hostile. How could she possibly know that he would do this? Wasn't she being presumptuous? Did she not want to give the boy a choice when he was older? I think that quite a few readers will know what I am talking about here. Under these circumstances, there is a tendency to adapt to the mores of the group and keep quiet about anything that might smack of 'school at home'. There is also, incidentally, a tendency to pretend that one does not permit visits from the local authority, this being another of those things that many parents are expected to give lip service to. People who accept visits are sometimes made to feel as though they are letting the side down. One sees this attitude a lot on Internet lists. The family who I mentioned yesterday, for example, claimed in the newspaper to be unknown to the council and said that if registration became compulsory they would leave the country. In fact, just as with many other autonomous educators, they enjoy a perfectly amicable relationship with their local HE advisor from the council. This is also common; quite a few parents have visits from their local authority and then keep quiet about it for fear of being thought Quislings!

Conforming to the expectations of a group in order not to be rejected is one reason for maintaining these pretences, but there are other motives at work. Saying, 'We're autonomous' is a bit of a catchphrase in some circles. It makes one sound 'with it'. It's a bit like saying 'We're organic'. It is a shorthand code for a lifestyle rather than merely an educational philosophy. There was of course also the enjoyment during the campaign against the Badman review and Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill of pretending to be part of a persecuted minority. For a while, some of these parents could make out that they would be forced to flee the country or go on the run like desperate criminals! This was the only chance some of these families would ever have to feel like members of a despised minority and it would have been foolish to pass it up. Of course one had to be an autonomous educator to be part of this. Structured educators who were registered with their local authority could not make out that they were threatened by the proposed new law and so many parents denied that they had visits and let everybody think that they too felt that the new law would stop them home educating. This particular game encouraged many home educating parents to pose as being autonomous.


Perhaps the strongest motive for teaching one's child and then forgetting that one has done so is this. People tend to sneer a little at pushy parents and those who appear over anxious for their child to succeed. Let's face it; it looks a bit sad to be so desperate for your child to do better than everybody else's! It is much cooler to pretend that your kid does not have to work hard and that you certainly don't have to put the hours in on their education. When GCSEs were are taking place, every single one of our friends would claim that their children were doing no revision and that it was confidently expected that they would do badly at their exams. This was despite the fact that many of these kids had had private tutors for years and the parents were insisting that they stay in and study practically every night. (To say nothing of completing their coursework for them!) When their children achieved a string of As and A*s, it made it look as though the kids were little geniuses who had managed this without trying. The same thing happens when people teach their children things like reading and mathematics. If they then forget about this, then it looks as though their child must be super bright for being able to learn the thing later without any formal instruction. I must admit that I was tempted to do this myself. Had I kept quiet about all the teaching which I did, then I could have made out that my daughter had 'just picked up' literacy, the four basic arithmetical operations and everything else up to and including calculus. This would have had the double pay-off both of making me appear a laid back and right-on parent and also presenting my child as a real brain-box!

I have to say that there is often no conscious deception involved in this process by the parents. Some of our friends seemed genuinely to have forgotten the years of tutoring, the extra-curricular activities and so on. They honestly seemed to believe that their children's GCSE results were entirely their kid's doing. I am sure that the same thing happens with home educators who spend time teaching their children. If I had my time over again, I might well be inclined to erase all the intensive work with flashcards from my memory and allow my daughter the credit for simply picking up reading of her own accord.

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Autonomous education; a case study

Those who are sceptical about the benefits of autonomous education often read with raised eyebrows the accounts of children learning to read spontaneously and acquiring other skills without being taught. Still, it is usually impossible to prove or disprove such claims. Once in a while though, a case crops up where the evidence and records are so extensive that one can see exactly what has been going on and how a child has actually been learning. Usually, when one is able to examine the evidence in this way, a very different picture emerges from that which is first presented. We looked yesterday at an eight year-old boy called Christopher. The suggestion was made that he had been autonomously educated and I want to look at one particular aspect of his education, to see if we can gain some insight into what really happens when children pick up skills like reading and mathematics, supposedly without being taught them by an adult.

Let us consider reading. Some home educating parents, as well as one or two academics like Alan Thomas, believe that it is possible to learn to read simply from the experience of being surrounded by print in society. In other words, a child might acquire this skill without any explicit teaching from anybody. He might just 'pick it up', particularly when he found that it was necessary for some interest or other. This claim, that a child has learned to read without being taught, is not an uncommon one in the world of autonomous education. The child featured in the clip from a BBC programme yesterday apparently learned in this way. At the same time that this programme was broadcast, the family were featured in a local newspaper. Here is the article;

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Are-home-educated-children-better-off.htm


This contains the standard legend of the autonomous learning of reading. We read that;

'he didn't want to start learning to read until he was six, and has rejected the system of phonics which is used in many schools.'

'Kit was not forced to read, but instead started to pick it up when he realised it would be useful for him to learn about other things.'

I have asked a large number of people what they understood this to mean and without exception they said that they took it to mean that the child was not taught, but picked up reading at the age of six because he found he needed it for things which interested him. It is hard to see what other construction could be put upon the words used. So far, so good. A fairly typical sort of claim from an autonomously educating family. Sounds a bit fishy, but I suppose we'll just have to take their word for it! After all, we can't really know whether they taught him or not or if he just 'picked it up'.

Actually, this is where things get really intriguing. In this case, we are able to check up on how this child began to read. We can even listen to him learning to read! Let us begin when he is two years and four months old. Listen to this;

http://www.evilsusan.com/susan/Recording3.mp3


This recording was made on January 29th, 2004. We can hear Christopher's mother showing him a series of flashcards, some of which are pictures and others numbers. Five days later, on February 3rd, she is teaching him to read individual letters;

http://www.evilsusan.com/susan/kitalphabet.mp3


The mystery of the child who at the age of six seemingly 'started to pick it up when he realised it would be useful for him to learn about other things.' is now solved. Far from 'picking it up' at the age of six, he was taught to read by an adult at the age of two. In addition to this, he attended a playgroup where the children were taught to read in preparation for school. This is precisely as I suspected. In every single case of early reading like this which I have been able to investigate, the child concerned has been taught. This is exactly the sort of work with flashcards which I undertook with my own daughter. It is what some people call 'hothousing'.

The real mystery here is why some parents wish to teach their children systematically and then claim that their children have learned the skills without assistance. This is a matter of psychology and tomorrow I shall be looking at what prompts people to perpetuate these myths. If the type of thing which I have described above were rare, then it would hardly be worth drawing attention to, but it is not at all rare. Far from being an isolated case, the home educating parent who works hard to teach her child to read and then denies having done any such thing is actually a stock figure in the world of British home education; one encounters them frequently. These ideas can cause great harm to gullible parents who do not understand what is really involved in learning to read. We shall end by reading a very sad account by a mother who has swallowed such stories unhesitatingly and is waiting patiently for her children to teach themselves to read;

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


Some parents like this have a very long wait, because they have been misled into thinking it likely that their children will somehow 'pick up' reading of their own accord.

It may seem to some unfair to focus on one family in this way, but I do not think so. The number of parents not sending their children to school is increasing and newspaper articles and television programmes like this are encouraging such parents to believe that their children can just 'pick up' reading without being taught. This is a dangerous idea and one which needs, for the children's sake, to be challenged.

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Debating philosophy

I have been pondering lately the extent to which a certain type of home educator finds it impossible to separate abstract philosophies from those expounding them. I discuss education with many people, practically everybody I meet and know in fact. My views often differ radically from those of the people to whom I talk. Some of my best friends are teachers, for instance, and they do not really approve of the idea of home education. Others are social workers and they have reservations about the practice from a safeguarding viewpoint. I often meet teachers and social workers whom I don't know very well and I talk about education with them as well. Almost without exception, all the parents I know send their children to school and nursery. Despite these great differences of opinion, I find myself able to discuss the topic of home education amicably and am able to keep the ideas themselves quite separate from the person expressing them. In other words, there is no animosity involved and even though we argue strongly about home education, there is never any ill feeling. How very different from the situation when trying to discuss home education objectively with people on the Internet!

Part of the problem when discussing home education on the Internet is that people are typically more aggressive than they would be if they were talking face to face. This is common to all topics talked about online; it is not restricted to home education. The fact that people wish to conceal their names does not help. Somehow the anonymity encourages individuals to make scurrilous attacks on others without fear of any unpleasant consequences. Everybody feels braver if hiding behind a mask. As I say, a lot of this is common to all debates on the Internet, but even taking all this into account, there do seem to be some remarkably bad tempered and aggressive people in the world of home education! I am not thinking so much now of the lists such as HE-UK, but whenever and wherever home education crops up, there always seems to be a really angry person ready to post something sharp and confrontative. I see this on the comments sections of online articles a lot.

The impression one gets is that many of these people take criticism of their educational philosophy as a personal attack. This is a bit strange. Many people have over the years criticised the idea of my home educating my daughter. I have never seen this as a personal thing, as a criticism of me. I for my part have said things to others about the schools that their children attend, again without this being seen as an assault upon them personally. With home educators though, things are often different. An attack on the idea of home education is an attack upon them. I really struggle to see this point of view. After all, some autonomous educators talk about 'coercive' learning and teaching being 'imposed' upon a child. This is a ludicrous misrepresentation of structured teaching, but it does not bother me; I don't get angry about it. I have seen some pretty grotesque distortions of the early education of children as well, made by autonomous educators. One could say, if one wished to use the terminology that some of these parents affect, that these people are 'lying' about structured teaching and spreading untruthful ideas about conventional education. I suppose in a way they may well be, but it does not particularly worry me. I don't think any teacher or highly structured educator would get worked up about such things. Autonomous educators on the other hand do get worked up about it if somebody says something which they feel to be a misrepresentation of their chosen educational methods, it is a personal affront!

A few days ago Kelly Green on her blog claimed that I was a government advisor; a suggestion which has provided a good deal of innocent amusement in the Webb household. When I said on here that I regarded this sort of invention as being qualitatively different from a mistake or exaggeration about an educational philosophy, one of the people who comment on here would not accept this. If she was being honest, and I have no reason to suppose otherwise, she regards any distortion or misrepresentation of her favoured educational philosophy as being worse than if somebody had fabricated a story about her private life. In other words, her personal life and her philosophy are so closely entwined that an attack on one is every bit as offensive as an attack on the other.

So strange do I find this attitude towards educational techniques, that I have to pinch myself to make sure that I am not dreaming when I talk about this. I am not a fan of synthetic phonics. Can it really be the case that among the advocates of this method of teaching literacy there are individuals who would rather have people make up and spread lies about their personal life than see any criticism of the teaching of reading by phonics? Can I for my part imagine that I would sooner have people make up silly stories about me than hear them saying bad things about structured teaching? This is so peculiar that I can think of no parallel in any other type of educational philosophy. The only comparison I can make is with members of certain religions and cults whose beliefs become so important to them that they become one with their life as a whole. All I can say is that using the Look and Say method of teaching reading was never that much a part of my very identity and that when people talk foolishly about 'coercive' teaching, I do not find this the same as somebody inventing fantastic stories about my professional background.

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Inquiry-based learning

Home educators are not in general great ideologues. They tend to get on with their lives and their children's education without worrying overmuch about which pedagogical technique they might theoretically be using. There is however one exception and that is of course autonomous education. This is an ideology or philosophy of education which many home educating parents, particularly in this country, have taken to with enthusiasm.

Autonomous education is really no more than a rather extreme version of inquiry-based learning, which is itself descended from the sixties notion of discovery learning. In all these schemes, the teacher assumes the role of facilitator and not an infallible font of knowledge and wisdom, which was all too frequently the image presented by the traditional pedagogue. Proponents of this philosophy scatter words like 'contructivist' and 'experiential' around when they are writing about their methods.

Now there is of course nothing at all wrong with a little of this sort of pedagogy. Many children have hobbies and interests that they have taken up spontaneously and with which their parents only help when specifically asked to do so. My own daughter was a keen bird watcher and she read up a great deal about birds and their habits, observed them, took notes and also photographed them. I would help when asked by taking her to nature reserves and zoos and buying her various books which she wanted. A perfect example of what I would call enquiry-based science and many home educators would describe as autonomous education. Hot diggety, it sounds as though the guy has had a Road to Damascus type experience! Does this mean that he has become one of us and will soon start posting about the wonders of autonomous education?. Well, no.

One of the great things about home education is that it is possible to segue smoothly from one pedagogical method to another depending upon circumstance, mood of the child, phase of the moon and so on. In the morning there might be intense, highly focused work on mathematics and then in the afternoon an aimless ramble through the countryside to observe whatever one comes across. Obviously, one wouldn't want to stick to the same intensive work all day, every day. However, effective very structured academic work is, one wouldn't want this to be the only sort of learning. Similarly, one wouldn't want the education to consist of nothing but aimless rambles in the countryside. This too would be unbalanced and not make for a good education. Some parents though, eschew entirely the kind of structured teaching which has been planned in advance by adults. They feel that discovery learning should be the primary or even the only technique used with the child. That is to say, the child should lead the education by asking questions and following interests and the parent should simply be on hand to assist in this process. What could be wrong with this?

One of the problems home educators face is that they are often a little out of touch with mainstream education. They sometimes have very negative feelings towards schools and teachers and this can become generalised and lead to a dislike of anything which smacks of orthodox education. This is unfortunate, because there are some pretty important debates going on right now about the value of inquiry-based learning. Since this is very similar to what home educators call autonomous education, these debates are worth following. The gist of the matter is that although enquiry-based learning is still popular in many schools, serious questions are being asked about its effectiveness. There is little empirical evidence for its working and most supporters rely merely upon theory and bare assertion. In short, they say that philosophically it's a great idea and that it must be better than sterile, conventional teaching. It certainly sounds better. We find this attitude not only among orthodox educationalists but also of course in the world of home education. Both teachers and parents can provide plenty of philosophy to support their chosen method, but hardly any solid evidence to show that it works

What it comes down to is this. There is a huge body of evidence to suggest that conventional teaching is pretty effective in getting ideas and knowledge across to children. There is little evidence to suggest that inquiry-based learning and problem-based approaches are similarly effective. The sensible dodge would be to make the ordinary teaching the basic method of education and then supplement it with those methods about whose effectiveness there is doubt. Instead, some parents abandon the tried and tested methods and adopt solely a technique which may be a very inefficient way of learning.

I have never been much of a one for philosophy or ideology myself. I am a fan of Karl Popper, for instance, but when he makes a claim I want to see the evidence. I feel the same way about Dewey, Froebel and anybody else who has what they claim to be a brilliant insight into the nature of learning and education. Any fool can propound a theory of education which sounds plausible. What we need to ask ourselves is how is education based upon this theory working out in the real world of real children and their learning? In the case of inquiry-based learning, the answer is, 'Not very well'. Despite forty years or so of the use of this method, there is very little evidence that it works at all. This contrasts sharply with the huge amount of research and evidence which demonstrates that conventional teaching is effective. For now, and until further evidence emerges, it is probably safer to use traditional methods for the great bulk of a child's education and then supplement it with small amounts of less orthodox learning methods.

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A curious case of apparently autonomous education

I am often accused of ignoring evidence for successful autonomous education, although this is not really true. I examine everything in this area closely whenever I get the opportunity. So I was intrigued a couple of days ago when somebody posted the following here;

' My AS child took science GCSE's as a way of consolidating her knowledge, and was very disappointed when she realised that her knowledge already far exceeded that which was necessary for the GCSE course. She got A*s without doing a stroke of work. She is completely self-taught, and was teaching me by the age of 11.'

What are we to make of this? Firstly, it is apparently being touted as a case of autonomous education without any teacher being involved. ' She is completely self-taught' certainly suggests strongly that she taught herself without anybody actually teaching her. For most people, this would indicate that she has not been attending school. Also, this comment was posted following a discussion of autonomous education and home education. The implication is plain. This is certainly the impression which others gained as well. The next comment was;

' well done to your daughter for learning so much without a course, Simon really has no idea, does he?'

This person too seems to have got the impression that the child passed the GCSEs without actually studying a structured course, either at school or anywhere else. She already knew more than enough to pass the GCSEs and barely needed to glance at the syllabus. A clear triumph for the autonomous method.

I found this all very interesting for several reasons. Firstly because I give advice and assistance to some local parents who have withdrawn their children from secondary school. They all want their children to take GCSEs although this is very difficult because of the problems of coursework and practical investigations. If it is possible to take ordinary GCSEs without following a distance learning course or attending school, this would be pretty exciting. Most find GCSEs almost impossible to do out of school unless they have a few hundred pounds to spare on a distance learning course, which these people don't. Science is particularly tricky, because of the practical work. The second point is the use of the plural; ' science GCSE's ' , ' She got A*s '. Obviously, this person's child did not take the usual double award science but instead opted to take separate sciences; biology, physics and chemistry. Now I have to say that I have never heard of any home educated child managing to do this with the standard GCSEs, due to the problems about authenticating coursework and carrying out the practicals in the laboratory. I don't say it has never been done, simply that I have never heard of it, either in those home educators whom I know or on any of the lists. Naturally, I wanted to know more about the business.

Most home educated children who wish to have qualifications in sciences take the International GCSE or IGCSE. This gets round the problem of practical work in the laboratory. There is simply an extra paper which replaces the practical. This is how my daughter took her examinations in physics, biology and chemistry. My daughter of course did not attend school for a single day of her life, nor did she ever follow a distance learning course or anything of that sort; a genuine case of home education.

Now one of the people who commented about this may well have thought that, ' Simon really has no idea, does he?'. I understood this to be a reference to my supposed inability to appreciate the efficacy of autonomous education. Actually, I did have an idea; the idea being that there was more to this case of a child apparently being completely self-taught and breezing through separate sciences at GCSE than met the eye. So it proved, because when I asked about the circumstances, I was told, 'To answer your question on yesterday's post, my child did GCSE's at school.' This is pretty breathtaking. After claiming that the child was, ' completely self-taught, and was teaching me by the age of 11.' we are now told that she actually attended school and took her GCSEs there like everybody else.

It's a good job that I took the trouble to ask about this because otherwise people might have gone off with the impression that here was a child who simply taught herself science by the age of eleven and then passed science GCSEs without studying any course or syllabus. Let's hope that this scotches at least one little myth in the making. In fact this is just the sort of anecdote which many parents of ordinary schoolchildren tell all the time and nothing to do with home education. I have lost track of the number of parents who have told me, 'My daughter is so bright. She already knew everything that the teachers tried to tell her and she didn't do a stroke of work; just sailed through her GCSEs. And she got A* for them all'. My daughter did actually get all A* for her IGCSEs, but it took some pretty hard work by me teaching and her studying! I couldn't truthfully say of her that 'she didn't do a stroke of work'! See;

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/efnews/4569389.LOUGHTON__Home_educated_girl_gets_eight_A_s/


Shortly after this discussion on the comments, somebody posted a link to a GCSE course in Coventry which they thought might be suitable for home educated children;

http://www.covcollege.ac.uk/courses/Pages/Types/Course.aspx?@ID=882


I followed this up, but it is really aimed at overseas students from whom fees may be extracted. The person to whom I spoke at the college was surprised at the idea of a teenager without any experience of previous GCSEs starting the course and did not think it very likely. Back to the drawing board I fancy on this one.

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Coercive education

It is curious that the term 'coercive' education or learning should be used in a pejorative sense, as many home educating parents in this country seem to do. I can offhand think of no better way to introduce children to a wide variety of new ideas and experiences.

Before we go any further, a personal anecdote. A few years ago the local authority had money to spare for activities for young people during the summer holidays. These ranged from archery and kayaking to assertiveness training and musical workshops. My daughter signed up for everything she could. Unfortunately, so few children wanted to do some of these things that they had to be cancelled. this, despite the fact that they were all completely free and local kids are always moaning that there is nothing to do round here. I took the trouble to ask a few young people why they had not signed up for these activities and the answers were very revealing. 'I'm no good at sports', 'I can't act', 'I've never done anything like that before', 'I'm not musical' were all typical responses, in addition to the predictable, 'I wouldn't know anybody there'. In other words, some of these kids rejected new experiences because they were new and others didn't like the idea because they felt it might be something which they wouldn't be any good at. Had this programme been laid on during the term as part of a school project and the kids given no choice about participating, many of them would have thoroughly enjoyed themselves and perhaps found new interests and hobbies. This often happens when children are not given the option about whether or not they join in something.

An awful lot of people first acquire a taste for Shakespeare, Dickens or other great literature at school. They are not consulted about this, they simply have to study these writers and learn about their works. As a result, many a child has come to love literature and the theatre. A lot of these children would have declined to read Charles Dickens if they were offered a choice, or refused to watch a play by Shakespeare. Because they were not given the choice, they have become familiar with the works and come to appreciate them. In the same way, many children have found a love of art or music, history or mathematics, by being exposed to them as part of an education over which they were able to exercise no control at all. This also happens in some home educating families of the more structured type; it is not limited to schools.

The younger that this exposure to a wide range of academic and other activities occurs, the better. Many young children, even by the time they enter formal education, have a visceral distaste for certain things. For example many dislike anything which smacks of high culture; opera, classical music, theatre and so on. Many of these children would never voluntarily take part in anything like this, although many enjoy these activities when they actually do encounter Shakespeare and Beethoven. Others don't like books and reading or feel that they will find history boring, mathematics difficult and so on. A number of these children will, because they have been given no choice in the matter, find that they enjoy reading and history and go on to become enthusiastic about them.

These childish prejudices can become entrenched if not tackled young and it is as well that they are dealt with at a very early age. Otherwise the result can be an adult who says, 'I've never liked books' or 'I've always been hopeless at art'. It is only by being exposed to all these things and taking part in them when young that they are likely to overcome these feelings. Allowing a child who says that she does not like sums to avoid mathematics, or a child who claims to dislike books to avoid reading, will allow these childish feelings to become lifelong and irrational prejudices: something which I have no doubt happens frequently with children who have been educated autonomously and allowed to avoid academic subjects and experiences which they claim to dislike.

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Giving children a shove

Every time I write here about a curriculum or indeed any sort of planned structure for a child's education, I am sure to be told of the innate curiosity which children exhibit. This sense of wonder and longing to find out about the world is portrayed by autonomous educators and unschoolers as a holy thing, a spark which must be carefully fanned into flame rather than being smothered beneath the dead weight of a formal curriculum. This is all fair enough and there is a good deal in it. Children are inherently curious and do have a huge desire to explore the world and discover things about it. What is less certain is if this wish to explore their environment and find out about things would be enough in itself to lead them to discover Shakespeare and Milton, calculus and the lives of the Tudors, photosynthesis and the nature of radioactive decay. I don't want to go into the question of whether it is desirable for children to be offered a 'broad and balanced curriculum'; I am aware that for many unschoolers and autonomous educators, the very idea is little more than a sinister and coercive tool of central government. The very idea of prescribing a body of knowledge is, for some of these parents, anathema. I am just thinking for now about the child's chance of stumbling across these various topics by accident while she is exploring her own interests.

While it is true that children are by nature curious about the world around them, many have another characteristic, one which is seldom even mentioned by autonomously educating parents. This is a desire for the same thing regularly, a wish for the familiar rather than the strange. This can manifest itself in a conservative attitude to food; many children will only eat certain foods, sometimes only if prepared in a particular way. It can also be seen in children who only want to do the same things every day. Perhaps they prefer to learn only from the Internet rather than books or maybe they dislike leaving the house to visit museums and want to stay in their own home and garden. One of the great things about school of course is that children are, often against their will, obliged to join in activities which they feel that they will not enjoy. These can range from playing teams games to reading poetry, from studying the Romans to moulding clay, learning about the planets to discovering other religions. Why should this be a good thing? Because often a child finds that she actually enjoys some of these things, even though she was at first reluctant to become involved in them. By giving the children a gentle shove, they are given the oportunity to get to know about things in which they not only have no interest, but might actively dislike.

The suggestion above that children should be compelled to take part in learning and other activities against their will probably go against the grain for many home educating parents. After all, their whole theory of education is predicated upon children not being pushed to do things that they don't want to do. Sometimes though, we need to look beyond the wishes of a child and consider his ultimate welfare, think about a future which he may not be able to visualise himself. Just as a small child might not be able to foresee the consequences of not brushing his teeth, so too he may be quite unable to realise that his lack of interest in physical activity may harm his body in the future. He might not be able to see that it is necessary to know about geography and percentages in order to make sense of his world in the future. More to the point, he may miss out on some things which he would very much enjoy. Unless an effort is made to insist that he listen to poetry and plays, he may reject these out of hand and characterise himself as somebody who does not like poetry. This can mean that he will end up missing out on a lot in later life.

For many children embracing the familiar and rejecting the strange and new is a way of life. They may well be curious about the world, but they are also a little nervous and prefer to play safe and stick to what they know. Sometimes they need to be encouraged, even forced to join in things and at least get a taste of something which they do not like. Bad habits can grow stronger if left unchecked and while it is quite true that the habit of curiosity and wonder can grow as a child develops, so to is it the case that some children can become less willing to try new things and new ideas as they grow older. It is part of our duties as parents to see that they do, for their own sake.

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