I've recently been pulling together a presentation for a conference about visual representations of "Northern-ness". My bit focuses on the TV documentaries made in the 1960s by Philip Donnellan (http://www.philipdonnellan.co.uk/index.asp) about the Elliott family of Birtley. The Elliotts were a mining family: folksingers, working-class heroes, atheists, all-round iconoclasts and good eggs (http://www.petewood.co.uk/elliotts%20of%20birtley.htm ). I'm really privileged to know a couple of members of the family and to have played at their long-running folk club.
In 1962, Donnellan made a half hour film about them entitled "Private Faces". It was never shown. The powers that be decided that it was inappropriate viewing: too many jump cuts, too much rough editing, too much swearing, and the impertinence of Donnellan discussing religious beliefs with the family. Donnellan knew that the real reason that the film couldn't be shown was political censorship: here were working people who did not know their place. They had no need of a mediator to tell their story, and their articulate and reasoned discussion of Darwin and Hegel and community and society must have utterly undermined the cosy assumptions of the media paternalists. They were just not the right sort of working class.
What's this doing on a home education blog? Well, I can't get it out of my head that similar assumptions are being made on our behalf now by a paternalistic state. Home educators are today's uppity workers. We've been given this 'world-class education' by professional educators and bureaucrats - if we dare to challenge its predominance, then we're not just ungrateful, we are dangerous and require suppression. We're just not the right sort of parents.
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