Misinformation about home education

Apropos of the talks taking place between Graham Stuart MP, Chair of the Children, Schools and Families select committee and a group of home educators, it was suggested that it would be a good idea to identify local authorities who were behaving as though Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill had actually been passed. On a national list, somebody put forward Essex as an example of such an LA, on the grounds that they say of home education on their website:

' The LA has a duty in law to monitor that children who are `educated otherwise
than at school' receive suitable education. If the LA is not satisfied with the
arrangements made by any parent for their child's education, there are legal
requirements on both the authority and the parent.'

Now the claim that they have a 'duty in law' to monitor that children being educated at home are receiving a suitable education is, to say the least of it, a little dubious. However, is it worth getting worked up about? Is it really any worse than putting a statement like 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' on a notice board? After all, that's not true either, but nobody usually rushes round getting worked up about legal fictions of that sort. Should parents in Essex be trying to get barristers from London and busybodies from Wales to trot down to Colchester and try to get Essex to change their website? The fact is that most parents, both in Essex and elsewhere, seem to be reasonably satisfied with their relationship with the local authority. True, some individuals have had difficulties with certain local authorities, but even in the area covered by some of the supposedly worst local authorities, those at loggerheads with the council seem to be very much in a minority. The average local authority might know of five hundred or so home educating parents and only a handful are fighting tooth and nail to avoid having a visit. It does not seem to be a widespread problem.

This does not mean that we should simply let local authorities say what they wish or impose outrageous restrictions upon home education. Although there is little sign that they are doing so currently, that does not mean to say that it will not happen in the future. That being so, it is very right and proper that parents keep an eye on their LA. There is another area where things need to be watched and that is the education and training of future employees of local authorities. I have noticed lately that as new textbooks on education and childcare are published, they tend to include more and more misleading statements about home education. Here is an example. Earlier this year Hodder Education published a new edition of Child Care and Education by Bruce et al . On page 402, we find a handy definition of Statutory Schooling. This is, and I quote:

'The age at which children are legally required to attend fulltime education, unless they have the agreement of the local authority that they will be home educated.'

I need hardly say that this is not true; the agreement of the local authority has nothing to do with the case. This is a standard textbook which is used on BTEC courses in childcare and education and is also read by trainee teachers and those working in nurseries. Anybody reading this textbook would gain the impression that it is necessary to have the agreement of the local authority before home education may take place.

I am in two minds about this sort of thing. On the one hand, I think it very wholesome for parents who are thinking of using home education as a way of avoiding problems with truancy to believe that they need permission from the local authority before they de-register their child from school. I can think of other occasions too when it might be helpful if parents were to swallow this mistaken idea about requiring permission to home educate. On the other hand, it might discourage a parent who genuinely wishes to educate her child at home and is worried about seeking the approval of the local authority. This sort of thing, both on the websites of local authorities and in textbooks for those who will one day work for local authorities, might discourage parents from home educating. It is a finely balanced point and I cannot make up my mind about what I think should happen about this kind of thing. What seems clear though is that an increasing amount of the information written, printed and disseminated by local authorities, writers of textbooks and those connected with the world of education generally, now contains statements to the effect that parents need somehow to gain the cooperation or approval of their local authority before they are able to educate their own child at home.

Read More

Anti-sexist childrearing

During the 1980s, I ran toy libraries and playgroups in the London Borough of Hackney. Although we made every effort to create anti-sexist and gay-friendly spaces, it was all pretty much of a flop. We leant out various books in addition to toys, including the notorious Jenny lives with Eric and Martin. Which meant of course that we were, indirectly, the sort of people who precipitated Section 28! Every effort was made to encourage the boys to play with the buggies and dolls and to get the girls to play with the toy cars. It's true that the boys liked the brooms and buggies, but this was only because the brooms could be held like miniature rifles and they could chuck the babies out of the buggies and then race round the room with them pretending that they were motor cycles. We had realistic little people of various ethnic mixes which could sit in the toy cars. The moment that I realised that we were wasting our time was when a group of little girls were, under our urging, reluctantly playing with the toy cars instead of the dolls. We had removed most of the male figures so that the cars and people they were playing with were an almost exclusively female society. How cool was that for the girls? One girl got upset though. She had a car and a group of female figures but thought it was unfair because she didn't have a driver for her car. When I looked, I found that all the male figures had been co-opted as drivers and that all the cars had men driving them. It was so clearly the natural order of things for these girl-children from a multi-cultural, inner London borough.

The problem was of course society and the families in which the children were being raised. We could not hope to have any sort of impact in an hour or so each week. When my own children were born, I decided that the only solution was not simply to avoid sexism, but aggressively to challenge it in our home. Many of our friends tried to adopt a neutral attitude to sexism and homophobia, hoping that the fact that they were not displaying any overt signs of either sexism, racism or homophobia would be enough to counter the prejudices to which their children might be exposed at school. This invariably failed; the pressures of society need more than this passive resistance to be overcome.

My wife and I structured our lives so that the children would not have traditional roles reinforced. I do not drive, so that was OK; they grew up thinking that driving was something which a woman usually did. We decided that washing up and doing the laundry should be my part of the housework and anything which looked physical or dirty should be my wife's. Of course, once the kids were in bed, we eased up a bit on this. Books like Heather has two Mommies became favourites for the children as bedtime reading. Dolls were ethnically balanced and anatomically realistic. Some were disabled. I acquired from an American supplier a wheelchair for teddies, as well as little leg callipers and white sticks. Action man and Barbie rubbed shoulders in the toy box and it was not uncommon to see action man tricked out like a Drag Queen and Barbie carrying an assault rifle. A lot of what we did during the children's early years sounds like a caricature of left wing practice. We did not have soldiers with our boiled eggs; we had suffragettes! No mention of firemen, it was always fire-fighters.

Home educating my younger daughter meant that this sort of lifestyle was not countered by any sort of foolish influence at school from other children. I have to say, the whole thing has been pretty much of a success. More so with the girl who did not go to school than with her sister, of course, but that is only to be expected. I never indoctrinated either of the girls with this ridiculous middle class ethos about not hitting back. I think that the most dangerous nonsense to teach girls. Both grew up to be pretty handy with their fists and even today it would be a brave lad who tried to take liberties with either of them. Simone is a keen fencer, not only with epee but also the sabre. I can assure readers that I would not like to face her when she has a sabre in her hand. All the stuff that we did has given them both the firm idea that there is nothing at all that men can do better than women. And of course, vice versa. The idea that women should be better at nursing a baby or cleaning a floor is utterly alien to them.

Perhaps the best thing that this sort of childhood has given the girls is the air that they carry with them, an air of 'Don't mess with me or you will live to regret it'. They walk in what some have described as a masculine way, striding along confidently, obviously ready for whatever comes at them. Groups of local youths who tease passing girls with sexist remarks or throw snowballs at them in winter always gave my daughters a wide birth. This is also good because it means that they do not present as suitable targets for rapists or muggers. One look at them tells anybody that you are apt to bite off more than you can chew if you tangle with them.

It is not enough when raising children to take a neutral stance upon prejudice of any kind. Prejudices must be tackled head on, not just as they arise from time to time but in a pro-active way as part of a lifestyle. It is simply not enough to talk like a liberal when the subject of sexism comes up or to avoid using derogatory terms about minorities. Home education gives one an ideal opportunity to do this, freeing a child from the negative influences of schools and children who might already be infected with the very prejudices which we are attempting to eradicate in our children.

Read More

Breeding hobgoblins

A few weeks ago a parent emailed me to say how much she enjoyed this blog. She said that she had unsubscribed from the HE-UK list because she had, after reading the messages there, started laying in bed at night worrying that her children were going to be taken into care! I can see her point. Reading some of the HE Internet lists and blogs, one does tend to come across a lot of scary stuff. It's enough to give anybody insomnia. Stories of parents having their children taken from them because they are home educating, social services interfering with families, oppressive actions by local authorities, the threat of having children removed for interrogation if this piece of legislation or that is passed, a 'war' on home education; the list of scare stories is endless. I have over the last year or two been put in mind many times of what the American journalist H. L. Mencken said:

'the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous of being led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.'

This is essentially what has been happening with home educating parents; a small group of people have been whipping up fears and threatening them with all sorts of dangers; dangers from which they alone can rescue them. Consider for a moment the Badman review of elective home education. I have no idea at all how the ordinary home educator might have reacted to the news that somebody was to look at the practice of home education and check if anything needed to change. We will never know, because before anybody had a chance to think about the thing, national home education groups told them what they should be thinking and feeling. On January 19th, 2009, the announcement was made that the review was to take place. That very same day, the BBC reported this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7838783.stm


'Home educators are angry'. Well of course, it was a little early to say, a few hours after the review had been launched, how the eighty thousand or so parents of home educated children in this country felt about it. What this headline really means is not that any parents actually are angry, but rather that a few people in a national organisation think that they should be angry. This is an attempt to shape and mould the opinion of home educating parents; to put the wind up them before they even have a chance to think about what is happening. It was pretty successful as well, as subsequent events showed.

Mind you, many parents seem only to happy to believe any sort of nonsense that anybody says about home education and the supposed threats to its existence. It looks to me as though a lot of them enjoy being scared about various nonexistent crises which menace their very way of life. In other words, people running Education Otherwise, Home Education UK and so on are certainly working hard to alarm parents, but they find no shortage of dupes and credulous fools willing to gape open mouthed at the ridiculous stories they peddle. Perhaps its like going to the cinema to watch a horror film; maybe these people enjoy being scared!

Let us look at another example of how the leaders of national HE groups and ordinary parents get together to enjoy a good scare. On September 19th this year one of the HE Internet lists to which I belong carried a story that the Metropolitan Police were treating home education and co-sleeping as risk factors in child abuse. It took me a day or two to track down the truth, talking to various people in the Met and speaking to the author of the piece which was causing concern. This was the Child Risk Assessment Matrix or CRAM for short. When I posted the results of my conversations, people expressed irritation. What did it have to do with me? Why was I interfering? It was as though they wanted to believe this foolishness and were annoyed that somebody had allayed their fears. Enter stage left Mike Fortune-Wood, the home educating parents' fearless champion. He wasn't convinced and was determined to get to the bottom of the matter! Talking to people indeed, I must be a gullible fool! He had made a Freedom of Information request to the Metropolitan Police and my word, he meant to find out the truth about this. Cheers of approval and relief that he was on the case. This was on September 20th. Freedom of Information requests must be complied with within twenty days and yet here we are, forty five days later and no news. My suspicion is that people like Mike Fortune-Wood and various others at Education Otherwise don't really want to reassure people about these imaginary threats. They are pleased, because it makes them indispensable. A similar scenario developed with the idea of weighing and measuring home educated children in Wales and Oldham. There is a panic, I find out what is going on, people are reluctant to be reassured and others claim to be making FoI requests. Then silence. The conclusion I draw is that many people want to be alarmed and see me as being a bit of a spoilsport for throwing cold water on their fantasies. What is interesting is that I often find that people from EO and other groups have actually been there before me and spoken to the same people. However, when they learn that there is nothing to worry about, they keep the news to themselves. Why would they do that, I wonder?

There are many motives for becoming well known as a champion of home educators. The obvious one is financial, hence the use of the term 'rent seekers', which we are seeing applied to those who are talking about home education to Graham Stuart. I do not myself believe that this is the primary reason for these people trying to maintain a sense of anxiety among home educators. I think it far more likely that it is the desire to feel important and have a chance of busy-bodying around; the same motive which caused people to descend upon Birmingham last month. I am irresistibly reminded of Rabbit in the Winnie the Pooh books. It will be remembered that he liked to boss people about and be the one organising things. Here is an extract from one of the books and it seems to me to describe perfectly how people like Ian Dowty, Fiona Nicholson and Mike Fortune-Wood probably feel. Just substitute mentally one of the above names for Rabbit when you read it and you will see what I mean:

'It was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days. As soon as he woke up he felt important, as if everything depended on him. It was just the day for organising something, or for Writing a Notice Signed Rabbit...'

Read More

Diversity of home education in one local authority

Essex has quite a few distinct types of home educating parents. It is true that there are a few home educating groups of the sort that one finds in other parts of the country. The people at these groups often are concerned about things like the Badman Review and the idea of compulsory registration. This is not the whole picture though. There is a pretty large number of religiously motivated home educators in the county. Near Harwich are quite a few Jehovah's Witnesses who educate their own children. Closer to me is a Christian community a bit like the Amish or a Hutterite Colony in the USA. They are an agricultural community, pretty separate from the rest of society and they teach their own children. There is also a large number of Gypsy/Roma/Travellers and a lot of showmen and their families. Basildon has a number of disaffected fourteen and fifteen years olds who have been de-registered fairly recently. These different sections of the home education scene in Essex have very different aims and objectives to those who meet to arrange activities for their children and gossip about the experience of being a home educating parent. You won't often see Travellers, Witnesses and so on at home education group meetings like this at the local library.

The Hutterite community are happy to allow Essex to visit once a year. they put on plays and musical performances for the advisor. The idea that anybody would expect them to prevent access to Rumer Lacey, the EHE advisor, would strike them as absurd. Similarly, the Witnesses at Harwich. As long as Essex County Council are not going to require them to swear an oath, take part in a war or stop worshipping Jehovah, they are quite happy to talk. The Travellers do not care overmuch about the precise legal situation anyway. If they want to allow somebody from the council to visit, they will. if they don't , then they won't. The parents of the disaffected youths in Basildon will cooperate because they are afraid of getting into trouble otherwise.

What seems to have happened over the years is that those who are connected with large organisations like Education Otherwise, along with the parents who run regular groups for home educating parents, seem to have fallen into the error of supposing that they are home education in this country. I have had at least one home educating activist from Essex commenting here and suggesting that I cannot be a normal or typical home educator because she has not heard of my attending any home education groups in the county. The problem is though, that that type of home educator, the sort who joins groups of other home educators and attends meetings of other home educators, represents only one strand of home education and not even the largest or most important strand at that. Certainly the strand with the greatest readiness to ring the papers or contact MPs, but this does not make then any more typical of home education than the Witnesses at Harwich.

Tomorrow, I shall be looking at the relations which some of these home educating parents have with the local authority. For now, I want to point out that home education in this country is a composed of a huge number of individuals, some of whom belong to distinct categories. The category from whom we hear most are those who meet in local libraries, organise trips to the zoo for their children and lobby MPs about the iniquities of Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill. This is without doubt the most vociferous category of home educators, but of course having the loudest voice or being most ready to write to the newspapers does not necessarily make you the most important person around. How many Travellers or Witnesses belong to such groups? Do they have many parents of off-rolled teenagers? When protests are organised and the press take photographs, it is very noticeable that the people present are often all white. In other words, one wonders to what extent such groups are really representative themselves of most home educating parents.

A small minority of home educating parents are members of national organisations or even belong to local home education groups. It is easy though, if you are involved with such things, to start thinking that you are part of the mainstream and important bit of home education and that everybody else is somehow on the fringes. I have noticed this attitude very clearly with some of the people who comment here. It is a mistaken view and one which can, unless checked, lead one to behave in an arrogant and overbearing fashion. It might be time to step back a little and look at the broader picture of home education, in which Education Otherwise and those running various Internet lists might not be the most important players at all.

Read More

The New World Order

The home educating community in this country has a tendency to seize upon slightly unusual words and then use them all the time in their communications, both to each other and to outside agencies. 'Conflate' was one such word, 'narcissism' is another. And of course, 'statist'. 'Conflate' is just a buzz word of course, but 'statist' is rather different. It ties in with a mental attitude which seems to be becoming increasingly common with home educators and is fuelled by six or seven of the main Internet lists.

As many are aware, as a result of writing a couple of newspaper articles on the subject of home education, I am more or less officially a pariah among other home educators! Nevertheless, many contact me by email and we then speak quite amicably on the telephone. Some of these are fairly well known figures who, in public, denounce me as a traitor and a fool. Talking to two such individuals in the last week or so, I was struck that both made casual mention of the New World Order and World Government. These references were so run-of -the-mill that it was plain that they assumed I would catch the allusion, which indeed I did. It was still pretty alarming to hear reasonable people talking of such things in a way which suggested that they bought into this idea. On reflection though, it is not at all strange; much of the home education scene, not only here but also in the USA, is permeated by the same unspoken assumptions which provide the foundation for the idea of the New World Order.

The New World order is a conspiracy theory which originated in far right American circles. The basic premise is that powerful and influential people have been working behind the scenes for decades or even centuries to establish a global government which will mean the end of individual countries. In the last few years, left wingers on both sides of the Atlantic have adopted a version of this idea. It ties in with globalisation, which many left wing types detest and also mass surveillance. For some in America, the United Nations is the embryonic World Government and all its works must be viewed with suspicion.

How does all this fit in with home education? In the USA, the Home School Legal Defense Association is a large home education group with members in Europe as well as America. They are at the forefront of the fight to prevent the USA from ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Of all the countries in the world, only America and Somalia have not signed up to this. For many right wingers in America, this is all a plot by the United Nations to take away traditional American rights such as freedom to raise their children as Christians, teach them at home and allow them access to firearms. It is the HSLDA which is fighting the Johansson case in Sweden and curiously enough the father in that case thinks that he has lost his child not because of home education but because of his involvement with Vaken, a weird website which exposes the New World Order.

New World Order conspiracy theorists have a few favourite bees in their bonnets. Interestingly enough, vaccination is one of these. In the Johansson case, the lack of vaccination for the child was mentioned again and again. Many home education activists in this country are convinced that vaccinations are designed not to make their children more healthy but are part of a heartless plot by the globalised big-pharma complex which will at best poison their children and at worst make them autistic. Concerns about mass surveillance are very common among British home educators. They see the annual entry into their homes of a local authority officer as not just another irritating manifestation of the Nanny State, but more a deeply sinister plot to deprive parents of their rights. Once again, this is a key concern of New World Order believers.

Talking to and reading what some of the more militant and active home educators in this country say, one is struck by the sub-text; the message which is not spelled out explicitly, but assumed to be common ground between them and their readers and listeners. If somebody working for the NSPCC says something mistaken about home education then this cannot be a simple error. It is because the NSPCC itself is corrupt and venal; they care not about children but are a self-serving bunch of people who are only after more money. Vaccination? A money making dodge by globalised companies. Local authorities are not genuinely concerned about vulnerable children, but are rather waging a war against home educators. In other words, the simple and obvious explanation for much of what goes on in the world is never enough for many home educating parents. Others may be hoodwinked, but they alone can see where all these things are leading!

Of course many ordinary home educating parents are not like this at all, but if they spend much time on the Internet, they are liable to become influenced by these ideas. If the link to some document on the Department for Children website is broken, most parents assume that it is just a technical malfunction. As soon as they go onto some blogs or Internet lists though, they will learn that this too is part of a government conspiracy to deprive people of their rights. The more that one looks at the concept of the New World Order, the more that a lot of what is being said by leading advocates of home education in both this country and the USA makes sense only from that perspective. Taking one aspect alone, it must have struck people how much talk there is on some Internet HE lists about vaccination? And has it ever occurred to anybody to wonder why an obscure concept like statism should have become a common term in home education circles? I shall be posting further on this whole topic in the next few days, as it is worth exploring in a little more detail.

Read More

Anti-democratic activity in Birmingham

A couple of days ago I wrote about my concerns for democracy when it comes to home educators and their dealings with government, both central and local. My problems centre around the home educators and their allies rather than the local authorities and Parliament. A meeting was scheduled on October 12th for home educating parents in Birmingham to meet with the local authority officers who deal with elective home education in the city. This meeting was to be completely open, with any home educators at all welcome. The council were even laying on creche facilities for children, so that all parents could take part. Education Otherwise became involved in the business and began inviting various people from outside Birmingham. Mike Fortune-Wood from Wales, for instance, Fiona Nicholson from Sheffield and Ian Dowty from London. This changed the whole emphasis of the thing. From a meeting to discuss local issues, it began to turn into something like a national conference!

I have, as is my habit, been ringing people up and asking a lot of questions about this and the impression which I gained is that the local authority officers in Birmingham were not very happy about this attempt to bring outsiders into the meeting in this way. They originally thought that it would be just a discussion between local parents and council employees. Here is the email sent by Birmingham about the meeting before anybody mentioned bringing a barrister from London:

Please see below the final venue and agenda for the meeting on the 12th of
October.

The meeting is being held at the Council Offices, Margaret Street between
10am and 11.30 am.

Agenda;
1. Introduction
2. Issues raised by Home Educating parents
3. Response by LA officers
4. Actions to take forward

The following people will be attending;

Jason Lowther (Policy Director)
John Smail (Assistant Director, Integrated Services for Young People and
Family Support)
Michael Innocenti (Acting Head of Pupil Connect)

Gary Carruthers (Elective Home Education Advisor)
Carl Kirland (Elective Home Education Advisor)
Marie Murphy (Elective Home Education Advisor)
Alex Mroczkowski (Special Educational Needs Assessment Service)


As you know Leisure Services will be hosting a session for any delegates'
children who wish to take part and it is important that they have final
numbers
by next Tuesday (5th).

As can be plainly seen, this is an open meeting; they just want an indication of the numbers. The EHE advisors had told all the families with whom they worked about this meeting and a large turnout was expected. Gary Carruthers, one of the EHE advisors in Birmingham, said;

'I had invited over a dozen non-affilliated families myself as well as Education Everywhere. I also asked those I'd invited to ask others they thought may be interested in taking part. Jason had invited other home educators.'

No doubt that this is open to all local parents. Dozens of families have been invited; the local authority are expecting this to be a big and open event. At some stage of the proceedings, local home educating parents who wished to attend were told by the local Education Otherwise representative that it had suddenly become a small, invitation only affair and that they would not be allowed to attend. It is unclear why this should have been. Local authority officers told me that they were uneasy about the possibility of having a lot of people from outside Birmingham coming to the meeting. There has been so much bad publicity about Birmingham recently that it was feared that a newspaper reporter might attend. They also could not see why they should be providing facilities for the children of parents who did not even live in Birmingham! A fair point really. The end result of all this was truly surreal. At the meeting were people from Wales and Sheffield who were supposedly looking after home educators interests, even though they were neither home educating parents nor residents of Birmingham. Home educating parents from Birmingham who wished to attend were told that they could not do so. It would be three weeks before they were even told what had been said at the meeting.

I cannot tell readers just what a lousy example of democracy this episode is. Local home educators wishing to attend a meeting about home education in their city are barred, but members of national organisations who are not themselves home educating parents are allowed in. I have never heard anything like it in my life! This could have been a brilliant example of grassroots democracy, with ordinary parents dealing directly with the officials from Birmingham City Council. Instead, it was hijacked by people from large organisations and the ordinary parents were squeezed out.

This is a perfect illustration of why local home educating groups are the democratic way forward. The reason for the presence of people like Mike Fortune-Wood, Fiona Nicholson and Ian Dowty was very simple and had little to do with the difficulties of the parents in Birmingham; many of whom had specific concerns which they wished to raise with local authority officers and which they were prevented from doing because the meeting had become an exclusive one for 'important' people from big organisations. Education Otherwise and Home education UK feel that other local authorities are looking to Birmingham for a lead when it comes to monitoring elective home education. They are therefore anxious to change what Birmingham are doing before their methods are widely adopted. One can see this point of view, but the way they went about it meant that local home educators were sidelined and ignored in their own area. This was disgraceful and the very antithesis of democracy. It must always be borne in mind that nobody has ever voted for people like Mike Fortune-Wood or Ian Dowty, whereas the parents in Birmingham are actually voters and therefore have a direct stake in what is happening in the city. These people were the only ones who had any business at all at the meeting on October 12th.

Read More

Learning alongside the child; one of the great joys of home education

One of the biggest differences between home education and school is of course the use of questions. In schools, questions are usually asked by adults. At home, it is children who tend more to ask the questions. I say that at school it is the adults who ask the questions, but that is not strictly speaking true. The great majority of these 'questions' which the adults are apparently asking are not really questions at all, if by this we mean requests for information. They are instead questions to which the adult already knows the answer. 'What is six times five?, 'What is the capital of France?' and so on. When children ask questions, on the other hand, it is usually because they want to find something out.

As adults and also unfortunately often as parents, we sometimes feel that there is something a little shameful about not knowing something. If we are talking to other adults about some topic about which we know nothing, many of us just keep quiet for fear of revealing our ignorance. Children are seldom like that! The less they know about something or other, the more questions they will ask. Perhaps this is why children learn more quickly and effectively than adults do; they don't feel the need to hide their ignorance. Well, they don't until they start school. At school, ignorance is a bad thing. Children become embarrassed and learn to be ashamed of not knowing things in the classroom. Because it is not really the child's place to ask a lot of questions at school, they soon learn to keep their mouths shut and instead of learning by asking questions, they simply become more skilful at concealing their ignorance. This is not a very good frame of mind if we want our children to become keen at learning!

Spending all day, every day with a small child is an invigorating experience for an adult who may be in the habit of pretending to other grownups that he knows everything. Children can penetrate this cloak of omniscience which so many adults try to assume. At first, this can be a bit annoying. Where does the kid get off, badgering you about why leaves change colour in the autumn or why Pi is not an exact number? You might not even have thought about these things since you left school yourself. Once this irritation can be conquered, the parent might find something incredibly exciting happening. She might stop pretending to know so much and admit that she knows hardly any more about a lot of things than her five year-old daughter. Once this has been accepted, then the adult is free to ask questions of her own. Genuine questions, not the stupid pseudo-questions which are used at school. The parent might ask the child, for instance, 'Why does the sky go red in the evening?' Or perhaps, 'Why do you never hear of performing cats?' Parent and child can then find out together about these things.

Once this stage has been reached, the stage of allowing the child to realise that you do not know the answers to so many questions, even though you are a wise and tall adult, then parent and child can begin to learn together. This is a far more interesting process anyway than the adult handing down knowledge to the child. It means that you are given a second run at childhood yourself. You can play with your child one day and learn alongside her the next. The truth is that most of us are extremely ignorant about so many aspects of modern life. We don't really know how nuclear power stations work or what genetic modification actually entails. We have forgotten, if we ever knew, the difference between covalent and ionic bonding in molecules or what distinguishes a concerto from a symphony. We have no idea how to solve a quadratic equation, nor why anybody would wish to do such a thing. In some ways, we know even less about some things than a child at school!

This willingness to learn alongside a child can be one of the most valuable and enriching aspects of home education if we will only accept that we too need to learn a great many things. Those parents and teachers who stand on their dignity and try desperately to maintain this mad fiction that all adults are next door to being all-knowing gods, miss out on so much. They miss out on the opportunity to learn and play alongside a child on equal terms. The chance to se the world from a fresh new perspective, rather than through a set of tired and outdated preconceptions. They are able, in short, to experience the world through the eyes of a child again. Whatever benefit a child may gain from home education, the adult can without doubt get even more out of the enterprise, provided that she is prepared to drop, if only in her child's company, that terrible affectation of knowing and understanding everything!

Read More