Well, You Needn't

A magical place

2011-06-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

Today we visited Crook Hall in Durham, a place we return to once every couple of years. Each time, its charm increases, its interior displays have developed and its garden has grown. A hidden gem in the city centre, nestling only a few hundred yards from the concrete horrors of the passport office, this lovely little 13th century house weaves a special magic.

When we first visited, dd and her friends were most taken with the ghost stories, which may or may not have any foundation. Apparently, the ghost of a beautiful and heartbroken young woman (aka 'the white lady') periodically appears on the staircase, and there are spectral sensations to be felt on touching the walls of the Jacobean hall.

Spooks or not, it's a lovely space in which to walk, to draw, to tackle the maze, or simply to sit and chat. Much drawing done today by dd, which will doubtless end up in some digitized form further down the line.

Climbing the wall

2011-06-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Climbing the wall ... literally ...

Today, the home ed teens went rock climbing.

You know, those poor, sheltered kids who never get out among other children! (LOL)

Pride and Prejudice

2011-06-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

I've certainly learned my lesson regarding the Comments sections of mainstream newspapers. This report on why Brangelina's children won't go to school prompted so many prejudiced and stereotypical views of home education that I couldn't resist countering some of the more extreme assumptions. Naturally, my pride in dd's achievements and interests shone through, which clearly irked some of the more judgmental participants in the debate. The fact that DD attends a writing class facilitated by a professional author (alongside schooled children - it's one of those social activities that they don't believe our kids have access to) was evidence to this person that I am "an idiot of a parent". Presumably, this was because I had the arrogance to believe that a published writer might be best equipped to help children with their own writing.

And despite several home educators outlining exactly how much socialization our children have, comments kept on coming through to the effect that children shouldn't be home with their parents all day. Because it's well known we keep 'em in the cupboard under the stairs until they turn 18! I despair, really I do.

Never again - it's not worth the effort to type a response to such ignorance.

The forces of darkness

2011-03-28T14:57:00.000-07:00

We've just come back from Whitby Gothic Weekend. It's our fourth visit and every time I'm deeply impressed by the warmth and friendliness demonstrated by the dark and scary looking people we encounter there. Judging; books; covers, that kind of thing ...

DD is a huge fan of dystopian science fiction, so veers towards a really futuristic look. "1984", "Brave New World", "We", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" - that kind of thing. So much so that one of her 14th birthday presents was an electric sheep T-shirt from Think Geek . I'm gradually becoming very enamoured of the steampunk style. There's something really enchanting about alternative histories where the future is clockwork, Babbage's difference engine really did change the world a century before the internet, and the likes of HG Wells and Jules Verne were dealing in reportage rather than science fiction.

DD sees this kind of thing as hopelessly romantic and holds true to her much darker visions. Well, except in the case of the inspired lunacy that is Robert Rankin's world . Sadly, in terms of the real world, I think her dystopias might be much nearer the mark.

Idleness

2011-01-30T14:34:00.000-08:00

Dd has one of her fairly regular bouts of tonsillitis. Though gradually - hopefully! - decreasing in frequency, every few months they leave her well enough to potter about at home but too croaky and headache-y to venture out too far. Sometimes I think they represent her body putting some brakes on too much activity and, if so, it sure works. We've spent the last few days virtually glued to the sofa, just enjoying companionable quiet. She might be online, playing WOW or reading TV Tropes, or we'll watch a comedy show together. We've played a couple of games of chess (slightly bad-tempered on her part because she normally beats me easily when she's not so groggy). Not much talking because resting her voice helps. And I've pottered around the house, catching up on washing, baking bread, and taking it pretty easy myself.

Which is great, because the book I have on the go at present is by the editor of The Idler. Tom Hodgkinson's How to Be Free is a gentle anarchist polemic calling on its readers to reject the trappings of the career treadmill and modern consumer society and instead learn to live cheaply, locally and with a renewed joy in simple pleasures such as being with friends and family. It's certainly not perfect. For instance, its viewpoint is very much that of a male journalist who can easily freelance, it's a bit too reactionarily anti-TV and his portrayal of medieval society is a tad naive, verging on the rose-tinted. He also seems to think that the Diggers were protesting against Tudor norms, which would be a Civil War and around 50 years off the mark. But the general drift is still inspiring. It's made me appreciate all the more the down-time at home. And it's set me determined to get out into the garden at the first opportunity and to grow some more of our own food. The question is, will dd come along and help to dig? Jury is firmly out on that one ...

Tiger parents and results culture

2011-01-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

There's been something of a press furore about Prof Amy Chua's claims that the methods of ultra-strict 'tiger mothers' are superior to our lax western ways. Quite apart from the gross cultural stereotyping in such claims and the title of her book, it's upsetting to read her confident assertions that bullying and belittling children is the only route to success. Dd just achieved A grades (of which even a so-called 'tiger mother' might approve) in the IGCSEs she sat in November, without any such coercion. She simply chose to study a couple of subjects which she liked in a format that she was comfortable with. She didn't have to miss any sleepovers or TV or games. She didn't have to do anything. Ultimately, will a particular IGCSE grade really matter? Probably not - it might conceivably mean a few less hoops to jump through for a very particular range of careers. Even so, in real life, people are valued for a myriad things other than such ephemera. But at least she has the pleasure of having achieved what she set out to do, without having been berated or disparaged or forced to conform to someone else's vision of what she should be.

Lionel Logue and credentials

2011-01-09T15:22:00.000-08:00

We've just got back from a trip to York where Friday's rain forced us into the cinema. Lucky us - because we got to see "The King's Speech", which deserves all the plaudits it's currently attracting. Brilliant performances from all and a fascinating story of adversity overcome.

What prompted me to write about it here, though, was the scene just prior to the new King George VI's coronation, in which various members of the powers that be challenged speech therapist, Lionel Logue because his techniques were self-taught. Logue was an Australian actor-turned-elocution tutor who had learned in the wake of WWI to help shell-shock victims to recover their voices and their confidence. But, to the chagrin of the British establishment, the man who was helping their new king overcome his stutter was working from experience rather than from qualifications and credentials. Of course, those with more formal qualifications had advised their patient to smoke more because it 'relaxed the larynx' or stuffed his mouth with marbles and ordered him to speak, because that was the received wisdom of the time. I suppose that these were the guys with qualifications because regurgitating received wisdom is often the surest way to pass an exam. Instead, Logue watched and listened and developed his techniques through empathy, experimentation and observation. And in this case the unqualified person won through because he was capable of learning from experience.

Who'd have thought a costume drama about a turbulent period of royal history could include such subversive educational matter?

Exams, Awards and Shopping

2010-11-22T14:09:00.000-08:00

It's been an ... interesting couple of weeks. Dd had her first bash at some IGCSE exams in English and English Literature. She'd wanted to study for these and, English being one of those qualifications that employers always like to see, I was quite glad for her to do them. An autonomous decision, though it does make me wonder if either of us has really deschooled as yet. Despite having quite a long drive through the rush hour to reach the exam centre, all went well on the first 3 papers. Sadly, the last paper is much more of a concern. The questions on poetry left dd with little choice but to deal with poems about imminent death and bereavement. Not ideal for her, having so recently lost her gran. Not ideal, I suspect, for a lot of teenagers (there must be a fair proportion each year who are coping with grief). We've requested special consideration (and presume others will have done likewise) but it did seem very insensitive of the exam board to set questions which left no really viable option but to analyse the most morbid poems in their anthology. Ah well, time will tell what effect it had and at least we're not worrying about our position in the GCSE league tables.

Thankfully, the day after this rotten exam paper we travelled to London for an Awards for Young Musicians workshop where the young people who'd received this year's scholarships were presented with their award certificates. Dd got to catch up with some friends she made at last year's event, had a masterclass with a lecturer from the Royal Academy of Music and, along with the other young musicians and with the facilitation of Charles Hazlewood, helped devise a collaborative, improvised piece of music which they'll be performing at the Royal Festival Hall later this month. All really exciting stuff. It was utterly inspirational to hear 9-year-olds just starting out on their musical journey alongside 17-year-olds who were ready for conservatoire; and for rock drummers, jazz saxophonists and folk fiddlers to be mixing with orchestral harpists.

A complaint among several parents at the awards event was the lack of support - even obstruction - they received from their children's schools. Some parents were on the verge of their children being disciplined because they'd taken a couple of days off from mainstream lessons in order to perform in international music festivals. Forget the prestige, they might only achieve an A rather than an A* in double science. Surely this way madness lies? It was telling that out of 50 award holders, at least 3 are home educated.

Best of all for dd, though, was the opportunity to go shopping. Especially in Camden, where the quirky, the funky, and the completely off-the-wall are the norm. This, more than anything else, was the ideal antidote to all the exam stress of the previous week.

Children Missing Education???

2010-10-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of concern in blogland recently (eg here, here and here) about mission creep, especially in the way that policy guidance and local authorities are now approaching home education from the viewpoint of Children Missing Education.

Only today, I learned of a local home educator who had challenged her LA visitor when this official mentioned home education and Children Missing Education in the same breath. Apparently, the LA officer very quickly backtracked to the position of "It's not you, of course, your provision's wonderful, but there are others ..." (etc, etc). But it's not about a single insulting instance, it's about the way that the two terms are becoming increasingly linked in the standard, unexamined parlance of government and local authority officials. In the minds of stressed workers, whose minds are probably far more obsessed with whether or not they will have a job next year, it just becomes easy to lazily and unquestioningly use one term interchangeably with the other.

And this is dangerous. Like other stock phrases like "You're making a rod for your own back" or "If you don't listen to me it'll end in tears"(there's a great list here), if you repeat a thing often enough it becomes accepted as right and proper. The less we challenge the nomenclature, the more at risk we are.

Our children are not missing education. There are plenty of children in schools who, for one reason or another (undiagnosed special needs, bullying, shyness about voicing bewilderment) ARE missing education. But the assumption is that only those outside of school need to demonstrate that education is indeed taking place. Once again, home educators appear to be seen as guilty until proven innocent. Only months after Badman, it looks as though we have a new fight on our hands.

Colour Vision Envy

2010-10-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

Dd got to try her hand at watercolour landscapes yesterday, at an art group for home educated teens. All these young people came up with rich and evocative blends of sky, sea and land simply by applying swooshes of colour to a page. Dd didn't enjoy it - being a sci-fi kind of gal, she thinks that only monochrome and bold graphic lines will do. This made me absolutely green (how much of the world we view through coloured lenses) with envy. She was casually dismissing something that I'd love to be able to do, but, as a colour blind person, I find incredibly challenging. (Remember these little tests from your school days? It was my first intimation that adults don't necessarily have all the answers when the school nurse was adamant that I must be faking my inability to discern the numbers hidden in the dots because "girls can't be colour blind". Wrong!!!)

Guided by a very talented home ed mum, all those at yesterday's art group could see colours in the world around them and then mimic these by blending paints on a palette. Yet dd complains that "watercolours just aren't for me", while I look on in awe at anyone capable of negotiating the colour wheel.

I hope she opens her mind to it all, but I guess that's the way things go when your child has freedom to choose - they're not necessarily going to place the same value on those things that seem deeply impressive to their parents.

Writing with reason

2010-10-03T16:08:00.000-07:00

Dd is spending a lot of time thinking about bashing out a novel in the space of a month. This is the target set by NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which argues that one of the things that prevents most of us from becoming really creative writers is that we're overly aware of our "inner editor" - a mean little English teacher who leans over our shoulders and tells us that we can't possibly continue until we correct this bit of grammar or that clunky plot device.

It's great fun and frees her to think about churning out words rather than obsessing about quality. We've also discovered a cool new writing group for local teens, where she's met some really like-minded people. I love it that she's found spaces where she can express herself and that she has the freedom to really throw herself into these activities without worrying they might get in the way of her homework. Remembering my own schooldays, I'm still at a loss as to why educators believe it's an efficient way of learning to pile on hours of evening busywork, often only to reinforce how little they've actually understood during their lessons in school. I'm sure that some would argue it at least encourages a work ethic, but if so it's an ethic based on threat of punishment rather than for its own sake. You could dutifully plough through a worksheet or you could really be playing with ideas. I know which sounds most like real intellectual activity!

Loss and first steps to healing

2010-08-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

I've not blogged all this month because one of the most terrible things I could imagine happened to us early in the summer. Very suddenly, after a short bout of what looked like a relatively innocuous illness, we lost DD's gran. My beloved mam, who was also my best friend, died and our world changed overnight. The shock has been so appalling that in all honesty I don't think we're grieving properly even yet - none of it seems real and every now and again I catch myself about to pick up the phone to tell her some news before reality strikes me, hard, and right between the eyes.

Because I knew that we can't afford, psychologically, to spend the bank holiday weekend in the house amid all our sadness, we took some tentative steps towards healing by spending some time at Belsay Hall. Beautiful surroundings and a gentle walk through glorious scenery helped to blow out some cobwebs from our weary souls. There, English Heritage is currently hosting an exhibition of art called Extraordinary Measures, which is very striking in its use of Belsay's magical environment.

We were particularly taken with street artist, Slinkachu's photographs of miniature figures which he'd placed around the grounds to take their chances in the face of the public, animals and the elements. The tiny models provided a wry commentary on what we humans do for days out: groups of people queuing for portaloos, or standing awestruck before a monument that was in actual fact an upended cigarette butt.

Mat Collishaw's The Garden of Unearthly Delights was housed in the Great hall of Belsay Castle. This installation was a mesmerising thing of utter beauty but also very dark and cruel in its message. It consisted of a zoetrope which conjured images of dancing butterflies, birds and imps playing in some mythical garden. But, unnervingly, the nasty little imps were up to no good: coshing fish, snails and other creatures seemingly for the pleasure of violence alone. Perhaps Collishaw sees himself as the Tarantino of the zoetrope?

I can't post images of the copyrighted artwork itself, but have included some photographs which we took on the walk through the quarry gardens that link the Georgian neo-classical Hall with the medieval castle, all dappled light and cliffs and ferns and ancient trees. The pathways looked to be likely homes for fairies and imps, be they Disney good or Collishaw evil, and added to our sense of being in a mystical place. It felt like the ideal place to be, with the dull ache of our loss nagging away at us, but enjoying the beauty in which my lovely mam, DD's fantastic gran, would have exulted.

Sticks and stones ...

2010-07-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

There's been a fair old bit of name-calling in the comments section following this excellent article by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison.

It set me to thinking about the predictable pejorative terms that are usually thrown our way. Do I personally know of any home educated children (or home educators) who fit these stereotypes? Actually, no, we're a fairly normal bunch. But what happens if we consider some historical examples?

Those who perhaps conformed to one or two stereotypes

Hot-housed: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In a world of their own: Agatha Christie; Hans Christian Anderson; Beatrix Potter; William Blake; Margaret Atwood; Walt Whitman

Opinionated: Abraham Lincoln; George Washington; Thomas Jefferson

Eccentric/hippyish/yoga fanatics: Yehudi Menuhin

Obsessive/single-minded: Sir Ernest Shackleton; Joan of Arc

Evidently, some people could turn perceived problems to their advantage. The world would be poorer for the loss of their eccentricities.

Now for those who clearly subvert the stereotypes

Self-centred: Albert Schweitzer; Florence Nightingale; Thomas Paine

Middle-class: Charlie Chaplin; Louis Armstrong; Irving Berlin

Only good at one thing: Leonardo da Vinci

Poorly socialized/shy/lacking in confidence: Whoopi Goldberg; Noel Coward

Divorced from the real world: Alex Issigonis; Frank Lloyd Wright

Undisciplined: Douglas MacArthur; George Patton

Okay at arts but weak at science: Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Edison; Sir Frank Whittle; the Wright Bros; Michael Faraday; (the list of home educated scientists is very long!)

Aware of only limited social and ethnic groups: Margaret Mead; John Stuart Mill

Locked away indoors: John Muir; John Burroughs

Elitist: John Barry; Hanson; Will Rogers

So there are famous people who may reflect some of the common assumptions about home education - but those I've found appear to have developed these supposed shortcomings into definite advantages. Far, far more seem to demonstrate that most of the common prejudices and lazy assumptions are massively off-the-mark.

Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words ... sometimes just become too predictable to argue about.

Learn Nothing Day .. again

2010-07-25T14:47:00.001-07:00

Well, yesterday was our second annual attempt at Learn Nothing Day. This is the day when you do your level best to avoid learning anything at all - to prove just how near-impossible it is to avoid discovering something new every single day.

Dd was at an orchestral rehearsal in the morning, but they were running through music that they already knew. You could use some sophistry to argue that this constituted practice and building muscle memory rather than learning anything new. So far, so good. But then another member of dd's section told her about a wonderful bit of music practice software. Dd learned there was something she was quite excited to download. Only a few hours into the day and we'd already blown it.

Meanwhile, I learned that recipe kits from certain major supermarkets are rather more time-consuming than cooking from scratch (though I have to say that the resulting enchiladas were delicious).

Later on, dd visited a close friend recently returned from a very frightening spell in hospital. She had to learn how to negotiate that difficult transition period where every-day common-or-garden friends become a really important mutual support system. Her friend was really quite fragile and dd was at a bit of a loss regarding how to talk to her on a normal, relaxed level while acknowledging the things she'd been through. In the end, I don't think they did that much real-world talking, but their Sims characters did this by proxy. Sometimes videogames really help.

While dd was out, I spent some time on the web. Inevitably, I drifted to sites that help to clarify the realities of becoming freelance: I've just been made redundant from my job of 3 years. Must admit, this is both scary (financially) and a huge relief (in terms of sanity).

On a sad note, late in the evening we learned that snooker legend Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins had died. Seeing the clips of his glory days brought back a rich sequence of memories - he was the reason I actually bothered to buy tickets to snooker tournaments back in the 1980s. Of course, (like his compatriot George Best) he was mad, bad, and dangerous to know but he brought much-needed colour, character and excitement to a sport that is fundamentally two people in smart clothes bashing a few balls around a table.

We didn't actively set out to learn and what we did discover doesn't appear on any curriculum that I know of. Yet, clearly, we failed miserably at learning nothing. Which, I guess, is the whole point!

Scareware

2010-07-03T13:00:00.001-07:00

Dd's laptop has a virus and is currently in the care of a nice, kind PC doctor. The virus is a piece of "scareware", a trojan which adopts the guise of anti-virus software (AV Security Suite). It informs you that your computer is being attacked and then links to an extortionately expensive software package which purports to remove the threat (which they'd created in the first place!). The main hint that it wasn't genuine was the number of big typographical errors on every page.

This happened to our family's "digital native", so she spotted that it was a scam straight away, but I decided to post about this in case it alerts anyone else who might be too busy to stay alert to these cons. I reckon that I might just have absent-mindedly clicked on the links and possibly made things even worse.

Meanwhile, dd, sans laptop, is catching up on a lot of reading!

A Two-Tier Education System?

2010-06-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

There's a much debate in the media about Michael Gove's proposed free schools. Now, I've no particular axe to grind on this policy. After all, why set up a school with all the capital expenditure and systems and contracts of employment that this implies when you can really individualize your child's education by stepping outside of the system altogether? It seems unnecessary to bring in yet another type of education factory, even if it is a tiny bit more small scale and artisanal.

But I am absolutely stunned by the sheer hypocrisy of the likes of Ed Balls in suggesting that the creation of these schools will "create a two-tier education system". What planet is the man living on? Oh, sorry: he's living on the planet where his family are safely within a decent catchment area, where schools might not be exciting places which encourage genuine learning but at least you're likely to get through to the age of 18 without having been beaten to a pulp for being ever so slightly different.

The reality for those of us in the real world is that the education system is already deeply tiered. There are lots of wealthy people who can happily tout their egalitarianism by keeping their children in the state system because they can afford to buy a house close to decent schools. The rest of us have to put up with education factories which fail 50% of their pupils. DD could have ended up in a comprehensive where the proportion of pupils gaining 5 or more A*-C GCSE passes is 43%. The school down the road, nearer to the more expensive houses, achieves 84%. Now, meaningless as GCSE league tables are in the wonderful world of home education, for a large sector of this country passing the requisite number of exams is the definition of gaining an education. In that case, I'd reckon a system that permits one catchment area to achieve almost double that of its poorer neighbour is already two-tier.

For real equality of opportunity, we could look at the implications of Paula Rothermel's research, which highlights these two surprising features of home education:

Socio-economic class is not an indicator of achievement levels: whilst the home-educated children outscored their school counterparts, those from lower socio-economic groups outperformed their middle class peers. Figures indicate that at least 14% of the parents in the home-education sample were employed in manual and unskilled occupations.

In this study, parental level of education did not limit the children's attainment. At least 38% of parents in this study had been educated at comprehensive schools and at least 21% had no post-school qualifications. Whilst 47.5% of parents had attended university, at least 27.7% of parents in the study had not.

So children with parents of lower social class and lower parental education levels (children who everyone knows tend to have lower attainment in schools) actually do NOT suffer any lower attainment when educated at home.

In which case, I can see there's only one way forward for those who'd like to see the end of a two-tier education system: get the children out of the schools which have become hothouses for accentuating social difference.

Getting my blog mojo back

2010-06-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

I've had a bash at redesigning this blog in the hope it'll encourage me to blog more. Time will tell whether or not it's worked. For now, I'm enjoying the brighter colour scheme. Apologies to those of you who (unlike me) aren't colour blind ;-)

Johann, I'm Only Dancing

2010-05-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, that IS the name of the latest CD by Red Priest . Yesterday we did a 100-mile round-trip to see them at Swaledale Festival . It was a really worthwhile journey despite lousy weather which dampened the Dales' bucolic charms, especially for poor gran who was struggling to negotiate the puddles with her bandaged leg.

This group is just spectacular. All brilliant musicians who specialize in historic performance, they take the spirit of the baroque at its most literal and, where necessary, happily reinvent and improvise. This was really evident in this tour, where a recorder-led quartet is taking on the work of Johann [geddit?] Sebastian Bach, despite the fact that Bach didn't compose for recorder. And it's absolutely marvellous stuff - familiar old warhorses like the Brandenburg Concertos, Toccata and Fugue in D min, and Badinerie take on a completely new life that's genuinely exciting while retaining a core of authenticity (the Swingle Singers it ain't!). DD is, of course, a very serious young recorder player and was lucky enough to be sitting directly in front of recorder genius, Piers Adams. She watched his technique like a hawk and every time he picked up a different instrument, I could see her mentally building her new shopping list.

But, above all, it's the spirit of fun and the interaction between the musicians that stays in your mind - sparkling talent demonstrated with the lightest of touches.
Playfulness is the word that springs to mind - the sheer pleasure of being really good at something, experimenting with and enjoying it for its own merits, rather than following tramlines towards a safe definition of standardized recognition. Pretty much an analogy for educating otherwise - no wonder we love this group!

Election day

2010-05-06T11:07:00.001-07:00

Well, I voted. I didn't spoil my ballot paper with scribbles or "None of the above" (my default position since Iraq dispelled all my illusions). The party whose policies chime best with my own (increasingly anarchistic) views didn't field a candidate in my constituency, so I was left with a choice between the big 3 and the scary ultra-right. So I voted for the party/candidate on the ballot paper that looked likely to do least harm. Who knows, maybe millions of other disillusioned old party loyalists might have done the same?

Weirdly, I've come to the realization that I've become a single-issue voter: I really want a hung parliament because a government that has to heavily negotiate over the big things is less likely to try and mess with home education. Selfish? Probably. But ... look at the alternatives, none of them too pretty!

Dd observed the voting process and was shocked at how quickly a voter's duty is discharged. She's looking forward to staying up to watch the results - gonna be a looooooong night. All the older HE kids seem to have really discovered politics this time around. Who knows, we may have a future prime minister among them?

Meaning from movies

2010-04-20T05:46:00.001-07:00

Today, dd and I watched the feature film "Gandhi". She was visibly shocked at the scene depicting the Amritsar massacre. Afterwards, she summed up passive resistance in one comment: "They didn't give the British Empire what it wanted - rioting and violence - so it was obvious to everybody that the rulers were unjust".

So good to see how children can grasp historical meaning without being presented with a textbook list of easily digestible bulletpoints.

All washed-up

2010-04-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

Time for a huge sigh of relief - the draconian home education clauses of the CSF Bill have failed to make it through the "wash-up". My boundless thanks to those, like Graham Stuart and Lord Lucas, who've supported us in our fight to retain fundamental rights and to all those wonderful home educators up and down the country who've been the best mutual support system anyone could hope for.

Anyone who knows our family will understand that we tend to view everything through a musical lens, so what should be the soundtrack to these momentous events? I toyed with The Pogues' "Fiesta" but it's now obviously the property of Harry Hill. I looked for a decent YouTube vid of "Freedom Jazz Dance" to no avail. In the end, I decided that a bit of vengeful gloating would do. Here's something from His Bobness dedicated to His Ballsness:-

A Tyranny of Busybodies

2010-03-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

Today I was leafing through dd's collection of Charlie Brooker essays, "The Hell of it All". One article really struck me. It dates from 2008 and is a rather eerie portent of what was about to happen to us home edders. I just love this bit where he borrows from C S Lewis. It sums up why it's so frustrating to be subjected to well-meaning but ill-judged scrutiny:-

"Once upon a time, in between scrawling allegorical fables about lions and wardrobes, CS Lewis said something prescient. "Of all tyrannies," he wrote, "a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." "

Better start queuing for my Freedom of Choice permit ...

Growing up, or an effect of home education?

2010-03-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

Today, dd participated in a music competition where it was unlikely that she would win. One of only two 12-year-olds in the finals among a bunch of older teenagers, aged 15 and upwards, she was lucky to have made it this far. She played really well, though obviously with a few more rough edges than some of the more experienced (and stunningly talented) older performers. What made me glow was not that she was a finalist, nor that her performance was undoubtedly very good, but that she was very poised and comfortable while playing, fully aware that she wasn't one of the main contenders. And when the result came and the prize went, deservedly, to a really lovely older girl who dd knows a little, she was absolutely thrilled for her.

Just over a year ago, while she was still at school, I know I'd have been worried sick about her response to this kind of situation. That, faced with a competitive situation where she was at a disadvantage, she'd withdraw, feel inadequate and possibly resent the winner. Now, I don't know whether it's a sign of her growing maturity or of the freedom from the obsession with class-position, but I knew she'd be fine with a chance to play music she loves among people who would appreciate it and that she'd realize that it's not all about winning. Over the past few months, she's had a very easy ride - achieving awards in festivals and being told she's ever so clever. But above all of these, this is one of the moments when I've been most sure that home ed is working for us. DD suddenly seems so much more comfortable in herself and so much less brittle in her self-esteem. I couldn't be more proud of her.

Double standards - precisely the problem

2010-02-12T11:50:00.000-08:00

This blog post says it all about damning an entire community on the basis of an isolated case:

http://threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com/2010/02/lords-and-tainted-ladies.html

It's so good to read some common sense.

Well, that was January ...

2010-01-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

I've not posted since the Christmas holidays. It's simply been too busy. This seems paradoxical, as we've had extended periods of being snowed in, but at that point we had nothing much to report. Since the thaw, we've probably gone a bit overboard with activity to make up for the prolonged Christmas veg-out.

The new year's seen lots of new ventures in the local home education scene: board games clubs; drawing classes; French groups; a proposed teen club. And DD has joined both the young archaeologists' club and a creative writing group that has been going some time. On top of her musical activities every weekend. She's certainly not short of opportunities to socialize.

Also, we spent 3 days in the company of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. The Holmes Science lectures at Newcastle University are held annually for children aged 10-14. But I think this is the first year that the lectures' organizers cottoned on to using their namesake as a dramatic device to impart all manner of scientific information. It was very funny - Holmes keeps turning up at Watson's surgery complaining of various symptoms. We're then taken through the science of ECGs, brain scans, radiography, and other medical tests. Of course, Holmes' symptoms are discovered to be down to his rather degenerate lifestyle (pipe-smoking, cocaine snorting and hip-flask swigging).

Once again, home educators came out very well in the quiz at the end of the lectures. Last year, Dd came joint second and her home educated friend won. This year, another home educated boy came joint second and Dd won. The quiz was only a bit of fun and it wasn't a question of being competitive: it was simply nice to see a handful of HE kids do well in a sea of uniformed children. A little vindication of our choice when so many in authority seem to erroneously believe that home educated children might "fall behind". As if 'lifelong learning' is a race, in any case!

The Third Degree

2009-12-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

I suppose it's not surprising that people might want to understand our decision to home educate. But it can be stressful. While having a very pleasant night out with some of my oldest friends, the conversation turned to our "home-schooling" (their terminology, which demonstrates one of the fundamental misunderstandings that are so difficult to challenge - that we all attempt to provide miniature schools-at-home).

Relaxed chat turned into feeling like I'd been given the third degree, with all the predictable questions: "what about socialization?"; "what we do about science?"; "surely there can't be enough 'experts' in enough subjects among home-schoolers to provide a balanced curriculum?"; "how many hours a week in our timetable?", etc, etc?

I started by trotting out the standard and very easy answers to these questions, the things that home educators understand through the process of living this life. That our children's social lives are far more rooted in the diverse relationships that they will encounter in the real world (as opposed to being herded into age-specific groups and coerced into the same space at the same time, regardless of personal disposition). That, in an information-rich society, anyone who needs to learn about anything can find ways to draw on the necessary resources. That any learning undertaken in the real world is highly efficient, so that a new concept that takes 10minutes to discover could, in a school environment, take a term's-worth of lessons paced to the average student in a class of 30, with all the attendant targets and repeated explanations and registration periods that go with this approach.

But, do you know, at a certain point, I thought to myself, "Why am I bothering?" I know that there are people who I'll not convince, and it's a waste of effort to try to change their opinions. It's too easy to come across as defensive when it's preferable to hold to the mantra that "It's working for now and if it stops working, we'll find another way of doing things". After all, I'm sure that my friends would be deeply offended if I queried every aspect of every lesson and every extra-curricular activity that their children undertake at school. I'm sure they'd tell me it's none of my business. Rightly so.

So, here's a New Year's Resolution that I firmly intend to make: I'll no longer waste energy attempting to justify our choices to those who will not be swayed, but instead will simply do my best to ensure we live and learn to the full in our own way.

New leaflet tells it like it is

2009-12-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

New from the AEUK blog, a succinct summary of what's so wrong with the proposed legislation. Please pass it on to all who might be interested:

“Parents bring up children, not Government”1
If you think this is New Labour policy, think again

Clauses 26 and 27 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill currently in Parliament would lock home educating families into a bureaucratic system that is all about restricting educational freedom and nothing to do with ensuring children are well educated and looked after.

What is the Government proposing?

If the proposals in the Bill become law:

• Every year, parents would have to ask permission from the Local Authority to home educate
The Government is calling this a ‘register’, but a more accurate word would be ‘licence’. Local authorities would have the power to refuse ‘registration’ or to remove children from the ‘register’ if their parents do not cooperate with the system. ‘Registration’ would have to be renewed every year.

• Unregistered home educated children would be ordered to attend school
Local authorities would not be allowed to consider whether the education of unregistered children is suitable for their needs. The only consideration would be whether the child was ‘registered’ or not.

• Parents would be required to supply an advance plan for their children’s education every year in order to remain on the ‘register’
Local authorities would be given the power to decide whether the education provided is suitable, and whether it measures up to the plan. The power to decide what constitutes a suitable education for an individual child would be taken out of the hands of that child’s parents and given to a local council officer, who may have met the child only once.

• Local authorities would have to reassess home educated children and parents every year
If home educated children, or their parents, do not give consent for a child to be interviewed alone, the local authorities would not have the right to insist. But they would have the right to remove that child’s name from the ‘register’ as a punishment for this refusal to cooperate. Loving parents would be forced to override their children’s wishes in order to protect their freedom to be educated outside the school system.

Clause 26 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill gives this or any future government the power to issue guidance to local authorities about what they may demand of parents as part of this new ‘registration’, monitoring and inspection regime. MPs are being asked to approve the Bill without having sight of this guidance.

Clause 26 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill has been presented to Parliament before the results of a public consultation on the proposals have been released. Over 5000 people responded to the consultation but their views have been completely ignored in the drafting of the Bill.

There is no need to change the law regarding home education. Home educated children are at no more risk of abuse than any other group of children. Local authorities already have powers to take action if parents are not educating or caring for their children properly.

Please write to your MP now and demand that they vote for the removal of Clauses 26 and 27 from the Bill.

1 http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/childrensplan

Please, please sign ...

2009-11-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

Petition to uphold that parents have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of their child, to not undermine parents legitimately fulfilling their fundamental duties, and to assume that the best interests of their child is the basic concern of parents unless there is specific evidence to the contrary.

This is a big civil liberties issue, folks. If we let this legislation through, then I reckon it won't be long before they suggest we all need licences in order to become parents.

(Meme) Mento-Mori

2009-11-24T13:11:00.000-08:00

Sandra Dodd's blog (link on the sidebar) featured this. Great fun - all you do is pick the 6th photo from the 6th picture folder on your computer and then post it. Here's mine:-

Actually, my sixth folder was - inexplicably - empty (it should have contained images of a coalminers' banner) So this is from my seventh. It contains pictures of an experiment we did about .Boyles Law - and the relationship in gases between pressure and volume.

It's a cool meme this, bringing you back to things you might not otherwise look at for ages. Just what I needed to cheer me up.

We currently have a parliamentary petition on the go, to attempt to stall the speed of this draconian new bill. I've found support from surprising quarters - friends with whom I've never really discussed home education, but who have come to their own conclusions from personal research. I've also found that other friends truly see the government as a benign institution that can be a superior parent to ... well, parents. I've heard several very intelligent people quote back to me the very smear campaigns that we thought we'd managed to see off through cool, clear reason and properly applied statistics.

So, the smears represent another, more sinister, kind of meme entirely. I guess it's a lesson in the power of propaganda

After the Queen's Speech - our place in society

2009-11-18T14:55:00.000-08:00

Nice to see where Number 10's website placed the home education initiatives unveiled as part of the Children's, Schools and Families Bill. Home education is mentioned under the heading "Safeguarding the Vulnerable" and in the same breath as intervening in failing Youth Offending Teams.

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21345

Which just goes to show where within society the government places elective home educators - alongside NEETS, ASBOs, and young offenders. Funny that, considering I've yet to encounter a single home educated young person with an ASBO or a criminal record, yet schools seem to have a regular proportion of pupils who drop into this category.

Power Plant

2009-11-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

Tonight we walked through Durham's Botanic Gardens, which were lit in a magical and other-worldly way as part of the city's Lumiere festival. I only hope the rain (torrential towards the end of this evening) doesn't discourage people from attending before the event ends on Sunday.

It was not only about the use of light but also fascinating sounds created by long tubes (ghostly harmonies), old gramophones, temple singing bowls, and (apparently, according to the brochure), bat echolocation noises. I just loved walking through backlit bamboo. There was lots of organic-influenced stuff - evolving projections showing plants putting down roots, then growing, then changing into the shapes of single leaves. Better still, a psychedelic kaleidoscope that was created by projecting the split image from a camera of a bowl of snails slithering over leaves. There were fires that put me in mind of primal solstice ceremonies, but which dd's friend reckoned were like "Lost in Space" or "Planet of the Apes". And a stunning display of electronic flowers, pinwheel-dervishes, and a gramophone made of light, all reflected in the pond. And there was ghostly gauze to run through, lit by shafts of light and rendered spooky with dry ice (even eerier once you viewed it through the raindrops): dd and friends kept running through it and shrieking as the dry ice came out of the pipe. Oh, and there was an area by the benches that was lit by a string of ordinary standard lamps - a twisted version of an old fashioned sitting room.

I wish that I had photographs worth sharing. I took a few as souvenirs, but only those with heavy-duty digital SLRs would have succeeded in getting anything that really captured these beautiful images. Even then, without the sounds and the chill in the air and the scent of the damp vegetation, it wouldn't really come close.

A Victorian Masterpiece

2009-10-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Today a group of us visited Newcastle's Swing Bridge, built in the 1870s by Sir W G Armstrong & Co. The gleaming machinery should give you an idea of what a lovely piece of working heritage it is.

With the help of some very big hydraulics, the bridge can rotate (swing) to enable ships to pass. As I suppose you might expect from engineering that originated from an arms manufacturer, the wheeled mechanism on which it rotates is basically built on the same principle as a giant gun turret.
All the children were given the chance to press the button that works a (really loud!) hooter that alerts people on either side of the Tyne that the bridge will be turning. We were really lucky because our visit was on a day when a swing was planned. So we climbed to the viewing tower (scarily steep steps!) and watched as engineer, George, put the engines into action. It was amazing to see the gap open up between the shore and the edge of the bridge:

And it was stunning to see these old engines in action and to marvel at how quietly they run. A real Victorian masterpiece among all the iconic bridges over the Tyne.

Hydroponics

2009-10-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos of our experiments with hydroponics. Apparently, most supermarket lettuces are now grown hydroponically, which I guess explains how little soil you see on the leaves. We sowed some fast-growing cress seeds in expanded hydrogel. In the petri dishes, we experimented with one watered only with water and another with some vinegar added
.
In the cut-down bottles we tested seeds fed with some nutrients (the packet of blue-tinged powder) against a control of watered seeds.
The seeds in the 'vinegar' dish didn't germinate at all; the seeds in the shallow, watered dish did germinate but didn't really grow much - possibly too shallow a layer of gel or insufficient water?
Both the deeper containers allowed germination and growth. But the best shoots were, surprisingly, those that weren't fed the nutrients.

We'll keep observing the two deeper containers to see what happens over the next few days. We may need to investigate what happened to prevent the nutrients from working. I've read on some forums that some proprietary nutrient formulae act like junk food on hydroponically grown plants, so maybe we've supersized the portions too much and left them bloated and unable to function.

Nice in Nice

2009-09-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how appropriate it is to name a blog post after a Stranglers single celebrating their drugs bust in the South of France, but it's a pun you just have to use!

Anyway, we're back after a week in Nice. A couple of rainy days meant that the trip was surprisingly cultural at times. We got to see the Matisse and Chagall Museums (photo of the beautiful house that's the home of the Matisse Museum above).
And we saw some amazing, playful work at the Museum of Contemporary Art. We were particularly entranced by the work of Niki de Saint Phalle, especially her Loch Ness Monster:

But of course, Nice is also about THAT beach, and that weather and that amazing Provencal food and that way of life. When the sun came out for the last few days, we were able to wander around the harbour and the old town. We could swim (at least till a shot of icy water gave me an ear infection). Dear daughter had some fun avoiding a suntan, which is verboten for one as goth as she!
But she just adored the relaxed pace of life, the language (elongated vowels and rolling consonants compared to crisp Parisian - but we so need to work on our spoken French). And the chocolate. And the olives. And the churches. And the bell towers. (And, at least for us parents, the wine!).

We also found a little gem in a suburb of the city - a Russian Orthodox Church. For a few blocks, you see shops full of Russian produce with cyrillic lettering on their doors. They're cheek-by-jowl with the usual boulangeries selling pissaladiere and baguettes. A lovely example of effortless multiculturalism (ironic, given the goings-on near Calais this week).

I'm sure we'll go back, although next time I'll bring more mosquito repellant - we gave some of the local insects several square meals, but perhaps it's the season!

Deary speaks out

2009-09-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

In these 'interesting times' how good is it to hear that someone you admire shares your views?

This quote is from an interview by Sinclair Mckay with "Horrible Histories" author Terry Deary (Telegraph, 1st September 2009):-

Deary is profoundly opposed to schools. That is, to the institution of school itself – to the extent that he will never accept an invitation to give a talk in one.

“I get 200 requests a year and the answer is no,” he says. “I detest schools with a passion. I’d rather cut off my left arm and eat it with Marmite than go into a school. And I don’t even like Marmite.

“Schools are an utter waste of young life. Learning things that will never be any use to you. The only reason they are there is to keep kids off the street. They were a Victorian invention. The Industrial Revolution took kids from their families and made the parents work in factories long hours. Then they said, ‘we can’t have these little kids working here.’ So what do we do? Lock them all up in the same room all day and we’ll call it school. I spent hours learning trigonometry, physics, none of which prepared me for life. Relationships, talking to people, managing money, planning your career, how to help someone who has cut their leg open. I have had to learn these things by default.

“There won’t be any schools in 25 years. There will be mentoring. Older people passing their skills on to younger people. Teachers know nothing about life and the real needs of pupils.”

Go Terry!, Go Terry!, Go Terry! ....

A bat called Bovril

2009-09-03T15:15:00.001-07:00

This evening we went out on a bat walk organized by a local nature group. The weather was pretty foul and so, even equipped with specialist bat detectors, we didn't see/hear any out in the wild. Bats themselves might be reasonably hardy, but their prey (at least in Britain) are insects, who don't venture out in the kind of winds we had today. The great thing was that the resident bat expert had anticipated our lack of bats in flight and had brought along a pipistrelle born in captivity while her mother was being cared for by a bat rescue service. This tiny creature, called Bovril, has never learned to properly echolocate because her mother flew away before she was ready to take wing - the poor little thing wouldn't survive in the wild. So she's well cared for by the bat society and does major PR work for them. Having seen this incredibly cute creature, Dd would love a pet bat: we've had to explain this would not only be cruel (except in Bovril's exceptional circumstances) and plain illegal.

Heard some other fascinating stuff. There were recordings of the bat sounds which we might have heard on a less windy night - pipistrelles sound a bit like tap dancing in a puddle; noctules seemed a bit like the old Rolf Harris wobble board, while horseshoe bats (sadly not native this far north) sound a bit like R2D2 or a modem on acid! And a fascinating fact - bats mate in autumn but the eggs are only actually fertilized when the female is ready to start pregnancy (so if a particular Spring is cold the pups can arrive a bit later). Now that's family planning! Amazing creatures - we were spellbound.

Through a camera darkly

2009-08-22T03:38:00.001-07:00

Dd has been making films with 9 other young people this week. They were let loose on the streets of Newcastle with cameras and sound equipment and a very broad theme to write, act and film something about being strong. At the screening yesterday, we were really impressed by the quality (one of the older kids is already an absolutely brilliant editor) but also by the ways in which they approached the theme. How can a bunch of under-15s come up with anything so DARK? We had some very sensitively handled stories of alcoholism, abuse, bullying, disability and surveillance - more issues than a 6-month run of East Enders! Some very funny moments too - especially the 'bloopers' reel (most of which I suspect were filmed deliberately!). Looks like we have another big enthusiasm on our hands.

Today's been a much more laid-back affair - just a nice, relaxing swim and a long soak in the jacuzzi ... aahhh!

Autonomy - an individual thing?

2009-08-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

We've been in this picturesque setting for the past week. Dear daughter got to indulge her love of baroque and early music at the lovely Norvis (Northumbrian Recorder and Viol Society) summer school, where all manner of ensembles come together to play and sing.

The surroundings were absolutely gorgeous, and we saw rabbits, squirrels and huge dragonflies while we ate picnics on the lawn. The music was marvellous too - Rameau, Gibbons, Handel, Purcell (lots from the latter 2, due to significant anniversaries).

The jokes were probably just as ancient as the composers ...

Best of all, though the range of participant ages was from 12 to 80-something, dd got to spend time with several teenagers who share her enthusiasms. This music is a quirky minority interest for young people and it takes peculiarly strong-willed individuals to pursue it in preference to rock, R&B, or modern orchestral. Plus, they got to be kids together in the bar and social areas after each day's events - telling each other stories and playing games.

The schedule was frantic and yet we were totally energized by the experience. Dd couldn't stop smiling and would give me spontaneous hugs just to say thanks for bringing her to this lovely event.

This week has brought me to an interesting realization about autonomy, a topic hotly debated after the publication of an inflammatory article in the TES recently (TES article and comments). Dear daughter is genuinely happiest when she is busy, REALLY busy ... so long as she's flat-out actively doing something that she loves. I sometimes lose this understanding as I strive to ensure the kind of calm and space that I visualize as necessary for her to "unschool". It demonstrates how easy it is to be drawn into confusing autonomy with a completely laissez faire approach. Yet, in order for us to genuinely follow her wishes (surely the definition of autonomy in this case is to allow the young person to do what suits their own personality, energies and interests?) we have to be willing to facilitate her busy-ness, to take her to these events and let her use her energy in the way that she wants.

A day of contrasts

2009-07-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the final exhibition of work done by young offenders in an art project that I evaluated. The art was stunning - marvellous graphics and animation made during long months of art workshops. But there were some really sad statements in the words that accompanied the images. One young person wished only to see his baby daughter grow up with a better life than he'd had. This is a 17-year-old! It seems so tragic that he's already written off his own contribution to society. Hopefully he will have a wonderful relationship with his girlfriend and child and he'll see things differently in a few years' time. One heartening thing is that this art programme is part of allowing creativity back into the young people's lives, but it'll probably be a long uphill struggle towards any meaningful sense of self-worth.

So we left the gallery and as we were walking back to the car, dd took a call to tell her that she got a distinction in her latest music exam - grade 6 recorder. She was absolutely thrilled, of course, and I'm so pleased she got the result she wanted and worked for. Of course, exams are only markers (heaven help us when they become the actual purpose!), but this was a big step up in technique for her and she knows how much her playing has developed recently.

A day of contrasts, then. Firstly, seeing a bunch of kids who've been in the school system all their lives and who're only just beginning to value their own creativity now that they're doing something where "learning outcomes" matter less than self-expression. Sadly, it takes the kind of emergency situation where they're in danger of becoming long-term criminals before they've had access to this kind of programme. Then the very different situation of seeing my lovely daughter, outside of the school system (which a certain G Badman sees as the best - almost only - route to achievement), sure of her own ability but still thrilled to have played well. You certainly couldn't draw any general theory from these two isolated moments: it was just a weird and slightly ironic juxtaposition.

Learning nothing

2009-07-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

Well, today was officially Learn Nothing Day (see link on side panel of this blog). The aim is to go through a day of ordinary life sincerely endeavouring to learn nothing. It shows how much we DO find out just by living.

We thought we'd found the perfect solution: an afternoon at an outlet shopping centre. Hardly the stuff of intellectual enlightenment. Except, except, except... We drove through the Tyne Tunnel and saw a sign relating to travaux publics, so I learned that a French company are part of the construction while dd learned some new vocabulary. We all learned how the construction was progressing and we wondered whether we'd have a northbound and a southbound tunnel or matching 2-directional routes.

When we got there, we had a sandwich and dd learned that a key ingredient in pesto is basil, and she remembered we have this growing at home. I remembered I need to look up how to prune our container of mint which is looking tall and spindly.

While we were caught in traffic on our way home, dd was puzzled why UK vehicle licence plates are white at the front and yellow at the rear. Do you know, I'd never ever thought about that? A quick internet search suggests that the yellow at the rear is to prevent the driver in the following car being dazzled by the reflection of their lights on a white plate. The white at the front is possibly to afford clearer recognition of the registration number (and therefore the speed camera's friend?).

When we got home I learned about a lot of interesting home ed day-trips that are on the horizon. And I learned that my credit card had definitely been hacked. Thankfully, the bank caught it in time. I now know the purpose of those verification panels that seem such an irritation when you're trying to make an online purchase.

That's a lot of learning on a day when we tried to avoid it altogether and it's not that late yet.

All Growed Up

2009-07-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

My little girl is definitely growing up. Her friend invited her to a birthday party and, where it would once have been soft-play, it's now a pampering session at the local beauty salon. She's so excited. I hope the nail artist is ready with suitably doomy colours!

It's funny how, of all the indicators of adolescence, this is the one that's made me realize how close she is to adulthood.

More "News from Nowhere"

2009-07-20T07:44:00.001-07:00

Aha, I've found the relevant section of William Morris' utopia now. It's on pp23 -25 and it involves the narrator of the tale (who has awoken to mysteriously find himself in a very different England) being shown around by one of this new world's long-time residents:

"School?" he said, "yes, what do you mean by that word? I don't see that it can have anything to do with children. We talk, indeed, of a school of herring, and a school of painting ... but otherwise," said he, laughing, "I must own myself beaten." ...

... I thought I had best say nothing about the boy-farms which I had been used to call schools, as I saw pretty clearly that they had disappeared; and so I said after a little fumbling, "I was using the word in the sense of a system of education."

"Education?" said he, meditatively, "I know enough Latin to know that the word must come from 'educere', to lead out; ... but I have never met anybody who could give me a clear explanation of what it means." ...

... "Well, education means a system of teaching young people." ...

... "I can assure you our children learn, whether they go through a 'system of teaching' or not."

And so it goes on, with the narrator discovering that all children learn according to their aptitudes to swim, to ride, to thatch and carpenter and cook. That learning to read is a matter of waiting until the books that are lying around are interesting enough to encourage the child to decode the symbols. That writing necessarily comes later, when the child is dextrous enough to make the calligraphy 'handsome' [here we have Morris the handicrafts-obsessive at work!] Languages are picked up as necessary, and

"many people study facts about the make of things and the matters of cause and effect ... and some ... will spend time over mathematics. 'Tis no use forcing people's tastes."

This discussion happens just a couple of pages ahead of the tale's narrator discovering that the new use of the Houses of Parliament is as a store for manure. So, not much change there, then!

The REAL Home Education Review

2009-07-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

This is AHED's (Action for Home Education) briefing paper in response to the present climate of suspicion about home educators:-

AHED Briefing Paper

Says it all, really.

News from Nowhere

2009-07-19T14:36:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's because the BBC are promoting a bodice-ripper costume drama about the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood that I've been thinking about William Morris. He of the obsession with handicrafts and the poetry as flowery as his wallpaper. But this was the man who in 1890 created "News from Nowhere", a socialist utopia that's unusual because, more than a century on, it doesn't read like a vision of mechanistic hell. I've always had a soft spot for this book: of course it's naive and idealizes pre-industrial life but, hey, when you compare it to almost every other utopian vision, it's incredibly human.

In Morris's visionary society, children don't go to school - learning's far more organic. I was browsing the web for the relevant section of the book and fell instead on an article from a couple of years earlier. Dated 1888. It made me smile. Sometimes those of us who reject school are written off as casualties of 1960s idealism (I'm sure a certain Mr Badman believes this), yet there were people who could identify the underlying paradoxes of schooling almost as soon as it became universal.

Morris, Thoughts on Education Under Capitalism

Here's a telling excerpt that neatly anticipates the ideas of John Holt and especially John Taylor Gatto:-

"Though even our mechanical school system cannot crush out a natural bent towards literature (with all the pleasures of thought and imagination which that word means) yet certainly its dull round will hardly implant such a taste in anyone's mind; and as for the caput mortuum, the dead mass of mere information which the worker comes away with when his 'education' is over, he will and must soon forget this when he finds out that it is of little use to him and gives him no pleasure.

I must say in passing that on the few occasions that I have been inside a Boardschool, I have been much depressed by the mechanical drill that was too obviously being applied there to all the varying capacities and moods. My heart sank before Mr M'Choakumchild and his method, and I thought how much luckier I was to have been born well enough off to be sent to a school where I was taught - nothing; but learned archaeology and romance on the Wiltshire downs."

Of course, the reference to M'Choakumchild derives from the schoolmaster in Dickens' "Hard Times". Dickens described his hellish fact factory in 1854. These concerns that schooling can squeeze the life out of the imagination go back a long way. Of course, approaches to schooling have come a long way since children were drilled with facts, haven't they? But replace 'facts' with 'targets' and 'drill' with 'literacy/numeracy hour', and I'm not so sure how much has really changed.

Solar powered

2009-07-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

Just a little video of the solar powered car that we built from a kit. Great fun - but, boy, does it remind me of the old Reliant Robins. It goes backwards because we put the worm gear on the wrong way round! The wheels are CDs which came with the kit. But it could also be a way of recycling any albums you love to hate! DD would quite like to do this to every High School Musical and Cascada recording ever released.

Oh, and check out this talk about creativity. A very serious message delivered with the comic timing of a great stand-up comic.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

I keep hearing that there's a big policy drive towards 'creativity' in education at the moment. There's the 'cultural offer' and 'Find Your Talent', trying to 'deliver' 5 hours of creative activity for every schoolchild each week. I've never yet worked out how 'delivery' of creativity would work. I HOPE it succeeds, but, to be honest, there seem to be a lot of ready-made national-curriculum-style instant solutions being handed out to teachers during Inset days (learn these songs and that'll tick off music, etc). How genuinely creative it'll be I don't know, but, hey, it's got to be better than yet another 'literacy hour'. How nice it'd be if they genuinely gave the kids freedom to explore and freedom to fail. Meanwhile, it's nice to have the space to let our girl find her own way as creatively as she can.

Not exactly Glastonbury

2009-07-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today, we heard dd playing at a music festival. Not exactly Glastonbury, it was a very civilized indoor affair, with children aged from 7 to 18 performing classical, jazz, folk and rock music. Despite all the inevitable hanging around between rehearsals and performances, it was really thrilling. Dd's choir sang some lovely African tunes, with lots of dynamic changes and lovely harmonies. And her solo piece, a Handel recorder sonata, was gorgeous, in spite of the fact that by that time she was in visible discomfort in the cool new gladiator sandals she'd bought especially for the day (she's a slave to her highly individual sense of fashion!). I often don't give her enough credit for her ability to compartmentalize - it was painful to watch her hobble on stage, but then she started to play and the sore feet were obviously forgotten. Then she walked off again as if on hot coals. Even after this, pride prevented her from putting on the spare shoes I'd brought with us. Oh well ...

We were soon distracted by some stunning music from all sorts of instrumentalists and singers - particular favourites being dd's friend on piano (plays like a brilliant adult, looks like a little kid!), a lovely flute and Northumbrian pipes duet, and a wonderfully powerful violin piece by a girl who we've seen develop dramatically over the years from gawky adolescent to supremely assured young woman. It's incredible to watch how quickly they all mature and it makes me realize how precious is the time while we still have dd at home with us.

But they ARE still kids. Next week, as a thank you from the music centre management, they're all going on a trip to a bowling alley - yay!

Every child has a right to be safe?

2009-07-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

The powers that be seem obsessed with conflating home education with child welfare. Their tedious refrain is that only children 'seen' at school can possibly be safe from abuse. That teachers and schools are in the best position to ensure the safety of each and every individual child.

Which makes recent headlines somewhat ironic ...

On being safe:-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090709/tuk-teacher-held-on-attempted-murder-6323e80.html

On being seen:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1198428/Your-sons-pleasure-teach-I-havent-clue--Dont-believe-word-school-report.html

On being safe AND being seen:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8141950.stm

It would be a mistake to gloat over these reports. Real children have suffered - certainly in the cases covered in the first and last reports. It's a scandal, a disgrace and it should not be allowed to happen under the cover of the school in loco parentis.

Another day, another petition

2009-07-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

This one's international. Let's get as many signatures as possible worldwide:-

www.gopetition.com/petitions/support-homeschoolers-in-england.html

Aerosol Art

2009-07-06T04:50:00.000-07:00

Today, we donned goggles and respirators and made our first proper attempt at aerosol art. What a blast!

I'd been shown how to do these canvasses by the graphic (and participatory) artist, Tommy Anderson ( www.baselineshift.co.uk ). And they're great fun to make.

First, you use masking tape to mark up a design on your canvas.

Then, put on your gas mask ...

And (preferably outdoors, and using a drop-cloth!) spray your first layer of colour:

Then remove your first layer of tape, mask up the canvasses again with a different design and spray on another colour. We found it fun to experiment with getting close to the canvas and then further away, thus changing the intensity of the paint. We also made thinner stripes with spaghetti and, another time we might try to add squares and circles to the mix.

We got as far as 3 layers and then the rain got us! Which, in itself was interesting because the raindrops added a nice extra texture to some of the finished pictures - I suppose it was a bit Jackson Pollock to let the elements make their own impact. So here are some of the finished items:-

Ooh, at the end of all that it felt a bit like we should have a Blue Peter Badge!

New campaign postcard - please forward to all who might sign the petition!

2009-07-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

2009-07-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

Well, we might once have believed that there were lies, damned lies and statistics.

Now, the Badman Report gave us misrepresentations of the truth ("the number of children known to children’s social care in some local authorities is disproportionately high relative to the size of their home educating population"). And now we have the statistics to demolish these weasle words. Check these out:-

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rbrk5-GEdrUdcmfi670Mihg&gid=2

No wonder the report made claims only with regard to numbers 'known' to social services (of course, a lot of home educated children have SEN - and are automatically 'known'!). No wonder the report didn't cite the figures relating to abuse. Quite simply, the incidence is LESS THAN HALF of that within the general population!

What is so depressing is that the media have picked up the slurs pretty much wholesale. Who knows if they'll be so quick to disseminate the truth?

Paranoia and being a bit goth

2009-07-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

This morning, dear daughter was padding down the stairs in shiny tights, when she slipped and fell halfway down them. It was a horrible fright, but thankfully there was no harm done. She was really shaken by the scare, though.

Do you know what saddened me beyond belief? Having checked that dd hadn't hurt her spine (she landed on her back) and calmed her down, my first thoughts weren't sheer gratitude for how lucky we'd been that she hadn't broken something or had a head injury. No: my immediate worry was that any neighbours who overheard a thud and a scream from a child during mainstream school hours would, in the light of the current negative publicity around home education, think of calling social services. Other home edders I've talked to are suffering from the same bouts of paranoia.

Yet what could I have done to prevent the fall? Installed a stairgate for a 12 year old? Banned shiny tights? In reality, absolutely nothing. It's truly sickening because, if anything's going to turn us into overprotective helicopter parents, it's this kind of fear. And that doesn't make for a happy engagement with the world.

Oh well, we had a lovely afternoon. DD met up with her oldest friend and they yomped through a very rainy and thundery Durham. We walked through the cathedral cloisters, looking for signs of the pipistrelle bats who've taken up residence in the rafters. And, because it was graduation day today, entry to the Treasury was free, so we got to see St Cuthbert's coffin, plus a portrait of an incredibly severe former bishop from the time of the Restoration (ironically not the kind of bloke you'd imagine having much to do with Charles II), and lots and lots of glittery chalices and candlesticks. All very gothic really, which suited the gloomy skies - and dd's lethal fashion sense - rather well.

MOTs for Teachers?

2009-07-02T15:08:00.001-07:00

Don't you just love it? The whole education system is collapsing under the weight of endless tickboxes and a target-driven culture and what do the government come up with? More tickboxes and more targets. More worrying still is that it could be a mechanism for ensuring teachers' performance is judged against the yardstick of how they communicate the national curriculum. I'm certain it's there to weed out heretics.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had several truly inspirational teachers when I was a kid. Each and every one of them would nowadays be considered a heretic. For example, if something interesting was in the news, our wonderful English teacher would let us debate it over the course of a week or more. Macbeth could wait - after all, he'd been on the stage and on the page for more than 400 years . I strongly suspect that these days such a diversion from the thought-police schedule would represent poor performance and gross irresponsibility. Yet it was immensely creative - a gentle meander through real issues and a chance for us to rehearse our own personal philosophies. And, funnily enough, we all got great Eng Lit grades, despite (because of?) the lack of cramming.

If the system has lost such fantastically effective diversionary routes to learning, then it's hardly surprising so many of us are risking the wrath of Balls, and opting out. At least we're getting close to the 5-year MOT of this government. Let's scrap the clapped out old banger. The trick will be to avoid putting what's effectively just a different heap of rusty old rubbish on the road.

Frantic

2009-06-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

Today, dear daughter followed up her regular music lessons with a piano masterclass. It was good fun - the participants all got to hear each others' favourite pieces and had some input from an expert pianist who doesn't normally teach them. All very friendly and relaxed. And very heaven for kids who are that way inclined.

But - even though she was doing something she loved - the extra hours mean that she was busy from 10 in the morning to almost 8 in the evening. Of course, so were the other children involved in this activity. But only dd and the 2 other home educated children at the music classes were able to go home comfortable in the knowledge that tomorrow they don't have to face another 5 full days at school before they can get a decent break. When did kids' lives become so frantic?

Back when she was at school, dd and her pals had chess club, book club, or swimming club on a Monday, choir on a Tuesday, drama or hockey on a Wednesday, piano lessons or pottery on a Thursday, orchestra on a Friday. The sporty ones would have matches on the Saturday (the less sporty might have art or history groups), and then most had some kind of organized activity like dance classes or horse riding on a Sunday. In between all of this frenetic activity, there was masses of homework ... and, of course, full school days. No room to breathe, no room to stand and watch the seasons change, no sense that they could just 'be'.

And then there are the other kids - the ones that so concern Ed BALLS (sorry, I always feel like I have to capitalize his so apt surname). These young people have no access to organized activities whatsoever and their presence on street corners causes middle England much angst. Just think of any of the recent TV accounts of 'brave' celebs such as Jamie Oliver venturing into the badlands and count the images of bored kids.

This is where class divisions now seem most obvious: our young people are so obviously tiered into those that 'do' activities and those that 'don't'. And the gap seems to widen to the point that the do-ers are pushed to the verge of a breakdown and don't-ers are bored to the point of desperation.

Of course, there's an alternative and home educators are living it. Our children can follow their own interests with as much passion as they can muster, and are free to recover with an easier pace of life the next day. That way, energy is expended on real discovery rather than busy-work. Strange that this is the very rhythm that the government are trying to disrupt by dictating what constitutes a "suitable education".

As far as I can see, children engaging with mainstream education have to face yet another stark multiple choice question: Do you want to be (a) absolutely frantic or (b) fantastically apathetic?

Being in the world

2009-06-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

This week, we've had some really nice encounters with the real world. You know, that place that exists outside of the classroom.

We joined several other home educators at the beach on Monday, where dear daughter got chest deep in the North Sea ... in T-shirt and cargo pants (well, early that morning it hadn't looked like the weather would be good enough for more than paddling!). The drenching was worth it, and thankfully we could pull together enough spare clothes to drive home relatively dry. It's lovely to watch how these young people, aged from toddler to teenager, interact with and look out for each other.

Today, we were in a different kind of real world. Some time ago, we signed up to volunteer at a local museum and we've been for a few visits over the last month or so in order to establish where we'd most like to work. We've seen large object stores, photographic archives, exhibits, repair sheds. Literally behind the scenes at the museum. Typically pre-teen, dd chose not to be a costumed interpreter. But we both took to the idea of oral history, myself because I like doing interviews; dd because she wants to show off her typing speeds when transcribing. (Her typing IS scarily good - over 60 wpm, mainly through exposure to role playing computer games). So, this afternoon was our training session for oral history. We heard an amazing recording of an elderly lady remembering a moment in her childhood when she sneaked out in her nightdress to join the celebrations after the relief of Mafeking. Just magical stuff, to sit in a present day room and to hear that voice from the recent past, talking about the more distant past. Anyone who believes technology has no soul would have to think again after hearing that recording.

The age range of the course participants was from 12 to 83, and part of our training was to interview one another. What fascinated and slightly surprised me was just how good and sensitive an interviewer my daughter can be. I heard her interview someone about her first job during the 1960s. DD asked intelligent questions, allowed space for 'thinking pauses' (apparently, many adults jump in too quickly and miss important information), and she managed to move things forward without interrupting the speaker. She was also able to envisage herself in the role of an interviewee. When asked what she'd talk about when she's an older person, she reckoned, "I'd talk about my laptop, because they'll be obsolete by then". I was so proud to be her mum and realized how often (no matter how well I think that I know her talents, interests and personality) I can still understimate her.

I'm slowly learning that the less I actively demand of my daughter, the more that I can expect her to willingly give.

The powers that be and the wonderful Elliotts

2009-06-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

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.

NASA aspirations

2009-06-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

On Monday, we went to a talk by former NASA astronaut, Rhea Seddon (http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/seddon.html ). Very interesting it was, too. - she was one of the first women on the space programme, and she talked us through a video of one of her space shuttle flights. Fascinating facts included what astronauts do with their time-off (they climb on top of each other to see how easy it is for the person at the bottom of the pile to do a press-up in zero-g). We also learned that, technically, those in the space shuttle don't really experience zero-g. They're still within the earth's orbit, so what they experience is more of a kind of giant, very low gravity free-fall.

Anyway, we were a small group of home educators among a swathe of school uniforms and there were odd bits of the talk that were clearly designed to motivate the schoolchildren. We were told by someone other than Rhea that we shouldn't be disruptive in maths lessons (!), to which our astronaut added that the harder you work, the luckier you get (I thought, "Ha! Tell that to the miners"). But, all in all, it was a fascinating event and Rhea's presentation skills were inspirational. She talked for an hour without notes, hesitation or repetition, and was really persuasive. I wonder if there's something in the US water system that makes people so much better at speaking? Oh no, I forgot, that would make Dubya an amazing orator.

All the children had their photos taken with Rhea, and while we were waiting in the autograph queue, we got chatting to a young guy in a jumpsuit who is working for Virgin's new space tourism programme. I couldn't help wondering if we could volunteer Badman for a one-way ticket.

Here we go ...

2009-06-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I suppose it's just a facet of my impeccable timing.

The first time I decide to start a blog about our new, exciting, school-free lives just happens to coincide with the publication of the government's latest attack on home educators. So what should be a happy first post ("Here we are and isn't this all lovely?") is now an angry one.

Graham Badman's report seems a particularly nasty specimen. Draconian recommendations include universal compulsory registration, plus the right of local authority staff to enter homes and to interview children without their parents present.

http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/8318-DCSF-HomeEdReviewBMK.PDF

This is being justified with reference to child welfare 'concerns'. Home educators are being comprehensively and unjustly painted by both this report and the media as potential abusers: the assumption seems to be that we are guilty till proven innocent. Imagine the uproar if they attempted a similar smear campaign with reference to any other minority group: say, homosexuals, BME communities, faith groups. ... I'd like to think we're a sensible enough nation for there to be uproar. But somehow there seems to be a big blindspot with regard to elective home education.

Just as bad are the recommendations relating to monitoring and ensuring provision of a 'suitable education'. Oh, now that's a can of worms - please would someone tell me what a 'suitable education' looks like? Heaven help us all if it has any similarity to the national curriculum. And there are some very ill-informed assumptions about autonomous approaches. Badman appears to believe that autonomously educating parents simply leave their children to their own devices. He cannot have bothered to read any of the literature about being present and interested, about strewing opportunities (for the child to accept or reject), about the very real and well-documented benefits of allowing children to read when they are ready rather than according to an external schedule.

It's not really surprising that the government are acting quickly on a report they commissioned and (I suspect) pretty much wrote prior to the 'consultation'. But the short-sighted model of this research only emphasizes the shortcomings of the way we educate people today. It looks like they're acting on a standard national curriculum model: find the easy solution (if it doesn't have a textbook, just Google it), isolate the scapegoat, build an additional layer of draconian bureaucracy, standardize, standardize, standardize, and never genuinely question your original assumption. Oh, I despair.

Jude x