Making It Up

as we go along

John Holt

Interested in (home) education? 7 authors you should read.

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home education books

1) John Holt. Despite (because of?) his experiences as a teacher and lecturer, John Holt became the leading spokesman for the home schooling movement in the US, publishing a magazine called Growing without Schooling for parents teaching their children at home. It was his books, How Children Learn and How Children Fail that first introduced me to the idea of home education while doing a maths PGCE in the early 1990s. They talk about how learning is a natural state, and teaching isn’t, and they’re really incredibly persuasive. I’ve since gathered as many of his books as I can get my hands on, though I’ve still not read Never Too Late: My Musical Life Story and I must.

2) Free Range Education: How Home Education Works edited by Terri Dowty, is a book that gives an insight into a whole variety of different ways of approaching home education. It’s a great book for sharing with family and friends who might not be quite sure about how the whole thing is going to work, and although it’s hard to get your hands on a copy, it’s well worth it.

3) John Taylor Gatto taught in New York for 30 years, and was even New York State teacher of the year. His classic, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling is a real eye opener as to what is going on in the school system that no one wants you to think about. Education *isn’t* about the individual child or their achievements.

4) The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education is aimed squarely at teenagers, and while the chapter on legalities is probably rather outdated, and definitely very US centric, the attitude of being in control of their own education is one that I think every teenager could benefit from.

5) Ross Mountney is an UK home educator and her book A Funny Kind of Education is about her experience with children who just weren’t thriving in school, something far too common at the moment it seems. This is a warm and honest account of day to day life in a newly converted home educated household, and it’s lovely to read. Ross also has a website that’s worth a visit.

6&7) Particularly for parents of younger children, works by and about Charlotte Mason

and Maria Montessori

are well worth a look. Two completely different systems of educating, that might give some ideas on what to do on that first monday morning without school.

Of course, there are plenty of online resources for home education, including this and many other blogs. But sometimes, a book is what you need 😉 Have I missed out your absolute favourite? Let me know in the comments 🙂

(Affiliate links are to Amazon, other bookstores are available. )

My educational philosophy.

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a b c 1 2 3 chalkboard

The law in this country relating to education states:

Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—

a: to his age, ability and aptitude, and

b: to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

(section 7 of Education act 1996)

And case law states:

The responsibility for a child’s education rests with his or her parents. An “efficient” and “suitable” education is not defined in the Education Act 1996 but “efficient” has been broadly described in case law as an education that “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”, and a “suitable” education is one that “primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”.

(From edyourself.)

All of that was just to explain what your responsibilities are. (And I’d add, parents are responsible for education, even when your children are in school. LAs and headteachers don’t want to get sued for not providing it after all 😉 ) Very often when people set off home educating, one of the things that they are advised to do is write out an educational philosophy. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not sure I ever did 😉 Looking back though, it’s easier to pick out the strands that have remained constant over the years. One is that bit about fitting children for a life in their community, and this quote from Time enough for love has always stuck in my head.

Perhaps our kids had a weird education…but a girl who can shape a comfortable and handsome saddle starting with a dead mule and not much else, solve quadratics in her head, shoot straight with a gun or arrow, cook an omelet that is light and tasty, spout page after page of Shakespeare, butcher a hog and cure it can’t be called ignorant by New Beginnings standards.

Now, I’m not quite sure why any child living on a frontier farmsteading world (it’s a science fiction book (amazon link)) needs to be able to solve quadratics in their head (or indeed any child in this rather more high tech world) but that apart, the point is about having the skills to get by, and bend the world to your own needs, rather than being bent by it.

So my philosophy is very much in line with the law. That I should equip my kids to cope and more than that, to be successful at being independent adults. This to me means not just academics, but independence and social skills, and the ability to earn a living one way or another. But I’m flexible on how we achieve that, and our methods have changed several times over the years.

My attitude to education was shaped by exposure to the writings of John Holt, primarily How Children Learn (kindle link) and How Children Fail (amazon link). I still think they are massively important books, and highly recommend you read them. But I’ve discovered that unschooling doesn’t really suit my family. So we mix and match. A bit of structure, a bit of autonomy. Small is probably the most structured at the moment, as he does some maths, some english, some history or geography or science most days. Broad and balanced, that’s us.

He also does extensive minecrafting, which has taught him lots about software, computers, and programming. He recently completed an Android app development course using Java, and reads lots and writes reviews.

Weekly both of the big children has responsibility for cooking one night a week. Big does the washing one day a week – Small often helps hang out and fetch in, though I’ve yet to let him loose on the machine. They are involved in meal planning and budgeting, and both aware of our business, Big increasingly so.

So I guess if I had to sum it up in one line, our philosophy is really that education is life is education – it’s difficult to split them apart.

It works for us fairly well. Except in that I’m a bit of a resource hog, so we’re drowning in stuff that *might* have an educational purpose, so I can’t possibly get rid of it can I? Worked nicely the other day though when Small sat down and read through most of What your year 6 child needs to know (amazon link) which I’d been sent for review. Books like that are massively useful actually, for giving you a one stop resource that can help you devise a rough plan. I don’t think it’s something I would use exclusively, but as a core to build an approach around, for the academic bit of education, it’s really not a bad start. I’ll be using the Year 1 book with Smallest over the next year or so, mainly for us to springboard ideas off. On top of that we’ll go on doing what we do. Including the children in day to day life. Spending part of that life in the past 😉 Building websites for sale, blogging for cash from time to time. Our life has a portfolio approach to it, and so does their education.

If you’ve an educational philosophy post to share, please pop it in the linky. And if enough people (five or so?) join in, I’ll write up a proper carnival post next week.

School, huh, yeah, what is it good for?

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Despite appearances to the contrary, given that we home educate, I’m not actually anti school per se. I’m just not sure I can see the point of it. And I think that there are an awful lot of ppl with similar sneaky suspicions out there, who are using school and just wondering if…

So let’s break it down. School was designed on a factory model, in an industrial age. It took children in to keep them out of dangerous working conditions and equip them with basic skills, mainly so that they would be more productive factory workers.

The ppl who were destined to be the factory owners never went to those schools. Home education, I believe, is in some ways a by product of that exclusion – the clause was left in the law to allow the rich and powerful to continue educating their children as they saw fit with tutors and round the world trips.

So, you have a factory line model – take all the children in at one age, feed them all the same information, chuck them out at the other end. And no amount of tweaking, or individual progress plans, or special educational plans is going to get around the fact that this model just doesn’t work. Not for lots of children.

I’ve had conversations on twitter with ppl wondering how to help their gifted children who are bored in the school environment. They are going to be bored. It’s the way it is. Even if your school is the most flexible school in the world, the teaching model is still the basic sit down and listen to what I have to say, and with the greatest of respect for teachers, many of whom really do believe in what they are doing, sit down and listen isn’t a good style of learning.

Gifted children need to be able to follow their interests, and stretch their minds. Your gifted child could well be more gifted than the teacher they are faced with, and pushing at that teacher’s boundaries. My gifted child at home is doing that to me – but when it comes down to it, I find him the tools and step back. And it works, it really works.

I’ve had other conversations with ppl worrying about their children with special needs. School is equally bad at coping with those children. Those children need family environments, to learn from their parents and siblings, because that is how children are set up to learn. And time off for the parents is a different issue, one that society should be handling differently, not by expecting parents to shove their children in to school.

I saw a tweet yesterday that said something like I get really annoyed with ppl who say homeschooling(sic) is the answer to all problems, it isn’t for everyone. And I thought about that for a while. Home education as we call it in this country does present a lot of practical difficulties, not least the fact that one parent has to be at home and therefore not holding down a traditional 9 – 5 job. Makes it tough. But it can be done. And, again with the greatest respect, let’s turn it around.

What does school add to society? I keep being told children have to go to school to socialise, but that’s a complete red herring. Where else do you spend your day with just ppl the same age as yourself, from the same social background and living area? Nowhere, basically. So what transferable social skills are children learning from that? Um, none.

Is it important to be able to listen and follow instructions? Yes, sometimes, but it’s way more important to be able to figure things out for yourself. A varied education does that for you.

I think that the problem is our style of school tbh. I think there are other models that would work better, but it would require a brave, brave society who would make the change. You can’t just tweak it a little and hope it would work.

Montessori has a lot going for it, with truly child-led education, and mixed age learning groups. The directress doesn’t teach, she demonstrates, and it doesn’t depend on her own educational background for success, as long as she is following the methods correctly. That’s the flaw in Montessori tbh, it’s easy for it to fall down, if ppl don’t just follow the method.

So what I’d really like to see is schools as resource centres. Places equipped with books, computers, labs, gyms and with a list of experts that you could book time with. Not teachers, as you wouldn’t need teachers. I’d like them to be open to ppl of all ages who actually want to learn, and open pretty much round the clock to make them as flexible as society needs to be.

Think about it – as an adult, has there been anything you’ve needed to learn? Did it take you very long? I’m a programmer – my first computer language took me a year to learn at university. (Discounting the stuff I taught myself way back when, I was never expert then.) Once I got into the world of work, we were given training courses that lasted a week, and took us a lot further into the language. University was no more efficient than school. When you want/ need to learn something, you do it fast.

I’d like to see community resource centres that offered ppl the stuff they want and need. I’d like to see families clubbing together to look after children and offer education, like I see with the historyetc and latinetc days my home educating friends put on. I’d like to see skill shares going on more commonly, and communities actually working together.

School is often held up as being a centre of the community – I don’t see that. It’s very exclusive – Big has noticed that children at her guides/swimming/whatever tend to stick just with the children from their own school. So if you don’t go to one of those, you get left out. Great social skills being learnt there then 🙁 Have you *ever* popped in to a school fayre for a school that no one in your family used? Thought not. Really bringing the community together there then.

I’ve lots more I could say on this topic, and I probably will. But before I ramble on, I’d like to know what you think. Step out of your comfort zone, just for a second, and imagine if it schools could be different. Could be better. What would they look like? And what would society look like as a result?

If you want to read more about this sort of thing, I’d recommend starting with Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling for more about what school is really up to and some John Holt for alternatives that really do work.