HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Come back when you’ve put the crackpipe down.

The sick thing is I loved learning and finished top of every subject (despite the intimidation from anti-achievement fellow pupils). But I hated the environment, it was just crowd control (and it even failed at that). As it was I never gained any qualifications and have spent my life on benefits, so even if money is all they care about it’s uneconomical.

This is exactly what could happen if these recommendations become law.
I’m sorry that apparant lack of options has had such an effect on your life. I know personally of many people who have been affected by issues around school being unsuitable for them personally and further damaged by there being no choice but to attend.

“Can’t Go Won’t Go” by Mike Fortune Wood is an excellent book on the topic of school refusal and the alternatives.

Instead of Education by John Holt is a book that looks at learning out of the box for bothe children and adults. It’s had an effect on the adult education in our home as well as the children’s.

Best wishes

Elizabeth

But back to education. Your point, Bishop Hill, about teacher accountability is a good one, and highlights the difficulties in the current system. It’s a good example of the problems of centralised, representative democracy; we do need it, but we also need citizen involvement at the local level. A lot of noise is being made about this at the moment by politicians, but very little in the way of practical ideas that will make a difference.

The Mill quote is one I know well. I seem to remember doing a post on it a few years back.

Why does the state have to exert so much control over state education? Why can’t they leave teachers alone?

This is a feature, not a bug. Accountability of teachers can come in one of two ways. Either through market discipline – direct from school to parent – or it can go from school to politician to parent, via the ballot box (occasionally). Politicians are just trying to make teachers do what parents want. The fact that parents want different things is too difficult for them, however, so they end up making a shambles of everything.

Are rural roads in the USA and Germany privately run?

Re schools. I think you’re wrong here. It wasn’t just church schools. (Ragged schools, quaker schools, private schools, dame schools too).

A Council of Education survey of Northumbrian miners in 1840 found that 79% could read. In 1865 a survey of marines and other sailors found that 80 of the marines and 89% of the sailors could read. For those recently recruited, the figure was 99%. In Hull in 1841, 92% of adults could read. In 1839 92% of Gloucestershire handloom weavers could read. (Figures are all from West: Education and the State>/i>)

And besides, do state schools provide an education, in the sense that you use. I would dispute it.

“I plan to have kids. I don’t want them intellectually crippled by a school system designed to create cubicle drones: I’d like my kids to be heretics [1] Secondly, I grew up in a tribal world: I feel the lateral disconnection of particularly urban Britons very acutely. I would like my kids to have some sense that the people their parents select as role models were chosen, not allocated by a post-code lottery.”

Unasked for advice

Unschool your kids and set up or join an intentional community

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk

“Schools. It is a myth that education was limited to the middle classes before the state got involved. The Newcastle Commission of 1861 found that over 95% of children were schooled. Who was buying Tom Paine and Charles Dickens if it was only the middle classes who could read?”

Good book on this topic
Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4012

“But this is to miss my point anyway. If you are concerned about access, talk about access (education vouchers, personal healthcare accounts etc etc).. But let’s not avoid the fact that the state monopoly has to go.”

Tom Hodgkinsin in The Idle Parent….
(Obviously hide this book when LA come round to check the children are safe and well)

“We must take personal responsibility. That way lies freedom from whinging. Take Mill’s wise words on education, which most of us leave to an external agency:

‘If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased., and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against the State education do not apply to the enforcement of education by the state, but to the State’s taking it upon itself to direct that education which is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another… it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. ‘

Why does the state have to exert so much control over state education? Why can’t they leave teachers alone? Mill is right that few parents would complain if they were given education vouchers that could be redeemed at any school. It is the ideological control that we object to.

So we whinge about our schools, whether they be private or state. Moaning about the private school we have chosen for our child is an example of ‘moasting’ at its most absurd, but moaning about any school is ridiculous, since there are plenty of alternative available, including homeschooling and learning groups. Once you’ve made your bed you should lie in it, and if you don’t like it get out.”

DIY education!! that to me is the best answer, so much easier to sort it out yourself than to have to battle with schools or the state to get it right. How much better we would all be educated if we followed this philosophy?

Elsewhere in the book he says:

“We must take education into our own hands, whether that means changing existing schools or creating new ones. And we don’t have to wait to be given permission by anyone. We can do what we want.”

We will need permission to get on and educate our kids our way if the recomendations of the review are put in place.

Roads: more doesn’t necessarily equal better. That was the mistake the Soviets made. As to quality, have you ever compared the quality of a pay-road (in France or the US) to a state-run road?

Have you ever compared the quality of our C-roads with rural road upkeep in America or Germany? Do you really think the M6 Toll Road is better engineered than the rest of the motorway network of equivalent age? Given that it’s being built to precisely the same specifications, for statutory reasons… Do you really think it’s a good idea to put things that one needs, as opposed to commodities one wants, into private, profiteering hands which will set up cartels, like OPEC, or price-fixing schemes, like the mobile phone operators? We don’t need mobile phones. We do need roads. We do need educated kids. Privatisatisation is not a panacea; sometimes you have to spend money to get things, rather than spending money to get more money.

Schools. It is a myth that education was limited to the middle classes before the state got involved. The Newcastle Commission of 1861 found that over 95% of children were schooled

One day a week, until the age of 9, to a level that equates to K1 today. By the church, who were a functional monopoly on the education of any poor person, due to their willingness to do it as charity rather than expecting remuneration.

Who was buying Tom Paine and Charles Dickens if it was only the middle classes who could read?

Well for a start, Tom Paine was half a century dead by 1861, and I’m assuming you’re not seriously suggesting that literacy included 95% of the country in 1809? And the people buying Dickens were newspaper and magazine subscribers. Who you think were the newspaper subscribers in the 1860s? Seriously. What a modern person thinks of as ‘education’ was available only to the very select few until quite recently.

But this is to miss my point anyway. If you are concerned about access, talk about access (education vouchers, personal healthcare accounts etc etc).. But let’s not avoid the fact that the state monopoly has to go.

Well, yes. I know. In fact, I said as much:

No monopoly is good, including most government ones

I’ve also argued in several places in this thread that HE is a good thing, that it should be detached from governmental interference.

You raise a lot of points here, most of which I would take issue with.

Roads: more doesn’t necessarily equal better. That was the mistake the Soviets made. As to quality, have you ever compared the quality of a pay-road (in France or the US) to a state-run road?

Schools. It is a myth that education was limited to the middle classes before the state got involved. The Newcastle Commission of 1861 found that over 95% of children were schooled. Who was buying Tom Paine and Charles Dickens if it was only the middle classes who could read?

etc

But this is to miss my point anyway. If you are concerned about access, talk about access (education vouchers, personal healthcare accounts etc etc).. But let’s not avoid the fact that the state monopoly has to go.

It is those of us who do not use formal teaching methods who are most under attack in this review.

Yes. One of the political aims I have which I care a great deal about is changing the understanding of ‘education’ from how to recite orthodox answers into how to ask useful questions. The reasoning (for me) is to do with the difference between paper-based information search-and-storage and a more effective, higher-bandwidth world that we now live in: but I’m an ex-geek whose field was designing internet networks.

It’s not anything new or radical but the kind of learning that is forgotten by many (while something we all use often unconsciously). It suits our modern world full of explosions in information and learning methods. It seems radical but only because it is so different to school which has become our main way of providing education to children.

And we seem to agree on that bit.

the criticism that middle class parents should not be fleeing the state school system, a view we personally held strongly ’till our own child was suffering and we were powerless to work with the system to solve the problem. So we jumped outside it and all is now well. This is the freedom that must remain for all parents regardless of class hoping we can hold on to it.

We certainly agree on this bit.

I happen to have a vested interest in distributed educational networks, both from my own history but also, and more importantly, because I plan to have kids. I don’t want them intellectually crippled by a school system designed to create cubicle drones: I’d like my kids to be heretics [1] Secondly, I grew up in a tribal world: I feel the lateral disconnection of particularly urban Britons very acutely. I would like my kids to have some sense that the people their parents select as role models were chosen, not allocated by a post-code lottery.

[1] A term I still read as meaning ‘free-thinker’. My religion is into orthopraxy not orthodoxy, and I still twitch when someone tries to tell me the ‘right’ way to think. In so far as there’s a right way to think, it is independently.

“Teaching != formal teaching methods”

It is those of us who do not use formal teaching methods who are most under attack in this review. Oh and working class and other parents who are patronised and misjudged by prejudiced middle class professionals. (speaking here as a probably middle class professional who certainly appears like a looney hippy mum to some of the prejudiced middle class professionals who deal with our family) There’s nothing like becoming the weird one to challenge ones own prejudices.

The review quotes case law from the 80s saying this Autonomous Education is no more than childminding.

I beg to disagree with the intended insult this is (while having ultimate respect for the job of childminding myself)

For information on Autonomous Education see here

http://homeschooler.org.uk/links/issues/autonomous-learning

It’s not anything new or radical but the kind of learning that is forgotten by many (while something we all use often unconsciously). It suits our modern world full of explosions in information and learning methods. It seems radical but only because it is so different to school which has become our main way of providing education to children.
Mr Badman and Mr Balls can’t get their heads round it so they wish to outlaw it.

http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.com/2009/06/autonomous-learning-cant-be-planned.html

I’ll drop back to provide a final answer to the question of whether Home Ed benefits people who feel they are “working class” and answer the criticism that middle class parents should not be fleeing the state school system, a view we personally held strongly ’till our own child was suffering and we were powerless to work with the system to solve the problem. So we jumped outside it and all is now well. This is the freedom that must remain for all parents regardless of class hoping we can hold on to it.

Thanks to all for the insights provided.

Elizabeth

Do you recognise the difference between essentials/infrastructure and commodities in terms of how market forces interact with each other?

If the planned economies of the post-war era hadn’t taken infrastructure build seriously, our road network would be a lot sparser and worse-engineered (i.e. cheaper) than it is. Ditto education; if there had not been a liberal push in the early 20th Century to expand systematic education beyond the middle classes we would still see 60% of the country illiterate. Equally, compare and contrast our health situation with that in the USA if one does not earn a lot; at least over here, we try to reflect the basic idea that being sick means you should get healthcare, rather than that being rich means you should get healthcare.

No monopoly is good, including most government ones: but the open market is notoriously bad at building things that are necessary but will never turn a profit. The point of public services is that you put money in and get services out. How effective a given government is at delivering on this principle varies: but for a business, it isn’t even a relevant idea. Businesses put money in and get more money out. Failing to understand this basic principle is why most of Africa sees its infrastructure development money going into the pockets of individuals; they see public services as an opportunity for some private person to get money, rather than a need for the public as a whole to spend it. Bizarrely, that also describes the Tory’s PPP and Labour’s PFI quite perfectly.

I’m not following you. Enterprises sell to individuals and make a profit if they sell what those individuals want. “Public services” deliver what they like and don’t have to worry if anyone actually wants what they deliver.

That’s why you want profit-seeking businesses delivering things and not state monopolies.

Once again, we are back with the “professional”. Who are they meant to be exactly? We can all acknowledge that parents can make mistakes but, trying to appeal to someone other than them eventually leads you up to some other rather less obvious claim to authority.

There’s a distinction between choosing a teaching methodology, source materials and approach (there’s more than one choice in each of these decision, considerably more than one, that work) and the craft skill of teaching and assessing effectively. There is then, also, a capacity for teaching which is an analogue to a capacity for drawing or music; ‘talent’ is a deprecated word these days, but it’s the appropriate one.

You can’t train people in the last, but you most certainly can inform people as to their choices in terms of techniques, theory, approaches and source materials: and you certainly can train people in the craft skills. The difficulty experienced by a number of families in the system I was part of was that the parents in question, dedicated and serious though they were, did not have either the knowledge to assess (for example) the differences in quality and approach between U. Nebraska correspondence courses and a self-designed curriculum: nor did they have the teaching skills and practice that a trained teacher would have.

Other things useful to know: the environment was one of extreme isolation, where families were living in village situations anything up to 200 miles from the nearest ex-pats and any anywhere up to 500 miles from the nearest library. The adults in question were all at least to some extent academically experienced, being professional linguists and grammarians for the most part. This did not equip them to teach GCSE-equivalent physics to their kids.

The solution we developed (I say we; I’m talking about my mother, using me and my sister, along with six other kids, as internal assessment candidates for the development process) was called the Educational Resource Centre. It functioned by developing a communally funded, communally developed and maintained resource base kept up to date over time, and a team of three itinerant teachers who were responsible for tracking the lending function of the ERC. They traveled to visit (as in, live with, typically for one to three months) families during which time they could assist with teaching and assessing the kids, but much more importantly they could train the parents in how to effectively teach the kids subjects the parents did not know well. Skill training and monitoring are not bad things.

The ERC worked remarkably well, and delivered quality educations to perhaps 200 children K1-K3 between 1981 and 1991 (the time period I was directly involved) using one lending library of resources and three qualified teachers. The system is still operating, though I know very little about what’s happening now as I’ve not been home in 15 years. The flexibility of the system can be seen in that children were successfully prepared for re-integration into Western education establishments in no less than 12 countries, including the UK, the USA, South Korea and India.

When I mentioned professionals being involved in the process, this is what I had in mind. Having someone who knows what the hell they’re doing is useful if you’re going to learn a craft skill: and teaching is a craft. Now, if the 1980s in rural Africa had been equipped with the internet, we could probably have enhanced the model considerably as well as making it massively cheaper and more efficient. I suspect one could develop that starting point into a very interesting model for UK communities of home educators.

What I think I agree with you on is that I see no particular reason for the teachers in such a model to be government-involved or funded. In fact, it would be considerably better if they weren’t, because they would then work directly for the parents and thus the children they served in any given HE network. I would be much happier about that, than I am about what Labour are trying to sell.

Joshua Mostafa @34:

In my experience, home education gives you such a massive head start over a school-educated child – more efficient, because it’s tailored to a child’s abilities, no queueing, no slow progress to make sure everyone in the class keeps up, and if the child is slow at a subject, no stigmatisation, and as much extra help as is needed – that the parent would have to be quite sensationally crap to do any worse than a school.

Or just biased. I was very lucky that my father is an academic theologian, or the ‘Religious Education’ aspect of my home-schooling would have been conducted according to the wishes of my mother, who is an American fundamentalist evangelical. This would also have affected how I was taught biology, history and geography, to name but three fields where such bias can seriously screw up your education practices.

There’s a lot of things that are advantageous about HE which are to one extent or another value judgements but at least two, which are implicit in your summary but not clearly delineated, are objectively significant. The “massive head start” over school educated children is (or should be) literal: I could read aloud paying attention to performative punctuation, and also write my own (very short!) fiction, when I was 3. Point being not that I’m brilliant but that my parents started teaching me to read before I could talk properly, mostly through the medium of Dr. Seuss books. A very small child fits inside the gap between book and parent and can thus associate pictures => cadence and words of parental voice => words on page much faster than using most traditional teaching methods. The head start is literal: it’s gained by actually starting earlier, not just working better. You can give your kid that head start whether you plan to home educate in the long term or not.

Secondly, 1:1 teaching time is the root of most of the advantages you then split out. Tailoring, differentiated progress curves, lack of peer stigma, etc. are all symptoms of the basic advantage, which is very small class sizes.

Look at it this way. What sort of bookshops and publishers do home educators buy their materials from? Are they (at least sometimes) profit making by any chance? Does it matter, if the materials are good and at a decent price? Isn’t there likely to be some sort of correlation between an organisation’s successful pursuit of profit, and their delivering goods that parents find useful?

Sure. The point still stands though. A business will only make money if it sells to the public things that the public wants. A public service can deliver what it likes.

However, I think the problems arise when the education authority expects you to follow the national curriculum. This kind of defeats the point – it enforces its own mediocrity and what it thinks is the best way to teach a child, which it isn’t, especially outside a mass-production education system.

And yes, the department of education was very intrusive and annoying under the Tories. It’s easy to sound like whatever you want when you’ve been out of power for a while.

@ Bishop Hill. Enterprises do not give the public anything; they sell to individuals. The only time they do provide a public service is via hybrid systems like PPP, which amounts to giving our (the people’s) tax money to shareholders – state-subsidised monopoly capitalism – the worst of all possible worlds.

Once again, we are back with the “professional”. Who are they meant to be exactly? We can all acknowledge that parents can make mistakes but, trying to appeal to someone other than them eventually leads you up to some other rather less obvious claim to authority.