100 Days - day fiveteen

Oh how I laughed. Look, parents are going to sue the government for failing to provide education for their children. Having been a home educator for many years with the Education Welfare Officer breathing down your neck every now and then, demanding that you demonstrate you were providing an education for your children on pain of having them forced back into school, I did find this report most entertaining. Call it karma or something. 

I have read, mostly on facebook, a lot of posts about people 'homeschooling' during the coronavirus lockdown, both positive and negative reactions. Lots of jokes about how teachers should get a big pay rise because making two children sit down and jump through the academic hoops you have planned for them is really hard. Others saying how much their children have flourished away from the stresses of compulsory school attendance. Also home education pages pointing out that what parents are currently doing is *not* home education. It is crisis management. If you're interested Idzie Desmarais writes at 'I'm Unschooled, Yes, I Can Write', and this article on National Geographic. I hope that the experience, the enforced extended companionship of their children, has shown parents that children are people too, and that they don't need to control their every waking moment for them to be 'learning' stuff (whatever that means).

In keeping with the rest of the post, today's Book to Make You Think: Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto from 2013

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload

Mass Instruction (weapons thereof)

Most people don't realise that compulsory schooling has only been around in western society for a relatively brief period of time, since around 1870. John Taylor Gatto has been around and writing about the evils of school for over twenty years now, having worked within the system, and received awards for doing so, for thirty before that. 'Weapons of Mass Instructions' is his latest offering, and though he has a tendency to circle around and around the same arguments he does present them in a very informal and readable way. They are all arguments I am familiar with so you'll have to excuse the slightly haphazard collection of quotes that I will use to sum them up. Many years ago he sent me a preview copy of his weighty tome The Underground History of American Education (that can now be downloaded in full here), not that we were on first name terms or anything, I was just actively involved in Education Otherwise at the time and he probably pulled my contact details from the newsletter. It was a detailed history of the education system enmeshed with his own life history and experiences. This one has much the same style, skirting around some of his own teaching experiences and giving example after example of people who go their own way and what they achieve by doing so. 

In a potted version of the earlier Underground History he begins his thesis by giving us the state of America prior to compulsory schooling :
"Long before this habit training took hold, America was, by any historical yardstick, formidably well-educated, a place of aggressively free speech and argument - dynamically entrepreneurial, dazzlingly inventive, and as egalitarian a place as human nature could tolerate." (p.17)
I found his view a little idealised (I wonder if it is his way of demonstrating he is not being un-american  in his critique of such a fundamental part of their society) but he then goes on to explain how a centralised school system was imposed on a reluctant population. He claims it's purpose:
"But in the new fashion, different goals were promulgated, goals for which self-reliance, ingenuity, courage, competence, and other frontier virtues became liabilities (because they threatened the authority of management). Under the new system, the goals of good moral values, good citizenship and good personal development were exchanged for a novel fourth purpose - becoming a human resource to be spent by businessmen and politicians." (p23)
and backs it up with this quote from Woodrow Wilson from 1909:
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." (p.23)
And thus:
"From 1880 to 1930, the term 'overproduction' was heard everywhere, in boardrooms, elite universities, gentleman's clubs and highbrow magazines. It was a demon which had to be locked in the dungeon. And rationalised pedagogy was a natural vehicle to implant habits and attitudes to accomplish that end. Under this outlook, the classroom would never be used to produce knowledge, but only to consume it; it would not encourage the confined to produce ideas, only to consume the ideas of others. The ultimate goal implanted in student minds, which replaced the earlier goal of independent livelihoods, was getting a good job." (p25)

Gatto is a big proponent of what he terms 'open source' learning, people pursuing their own ideas and fascinations and eschewing formal teaching situations. He gives example after example of people who did just that, from Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the likes, to a student of his called Stanley who ditched school in favour of learning the trades of various family members:
"A big secret of bulk-process schooling us that it doesn't teach the way children learn; a bigger secret is that it isn't supposed to teach self-direction at all. Stanley-style is verboten. School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgement of strangers, even if they are wrong; even if your enthusiasm is phoney.
School is the first impression we get of organised society and its relentless need to rank everyone on a scale of winners and losers; like most first impressions, the real things school teaches about your place in the social order last a lifetime for most of us." (p.63)

He talks about resistance from without, like the Amish community in Wisconsin fighting to preserve their way of life and values, and how little resistance there was from within:
"Once a principal in the richest secondary school in District Three asked me privately if I could help him set up a program to teach critical thinking. Of course, I replied, but if we do it right your school will become unmanageable. Why would kids taught to think critically and express themselves effectively put up with the nonsense you force down their throats? That was the end of our interview and his critical thinking project." (p.76)
John himself found many and various ways to allow his students to escape the confines of both the imposed curriculum and the school building and away also from what he saw as the enforced passivity of television consumption:
"I set out to shock my students into discovering that face to face engagement with reality was more interesting and rewarding than watching the pre-packaged world of media screens, my target was helping them jettison the lives of spectators which had been assigned to them, so they could become players. I couldn't tell anyone in the school universe what I was doing, but I made strenuous efforts to enlist parents as active participants. ...
Plunging kids into the nerve-wracking, but exhilarating waters of real life - sending them on expeditions across the state, opening the court system to their lawsuits, and the economy to their businesses, filling public forums with their speeches and political action - made them realise, without lectures, how much of their time was customarily wasted sitting in the dark." (p.93)
His own attempts at resistance and his aims to spread his ideas and understanding has on occasion been met with quite virulent opposition. He recites an incident when speaking at a prosperous high school about the realities of SAT scores, college admissions and the myths of schooling and the event was literally bought to a halt by the school superintendent calling in the police; the scene is quite surreal and yet quite believable.

He quotes this lovely analogy from a young man called Andrew Hsu who he met at an award ceremony, it captures so perfectly pretty much everything the book tries to say. It concerns the training of fleas:
"If you put a flea in a shallow container they jump out. But if you put a lid on the container for just a short time, they hit the lid trying to escape and learn quickly not to jump so high. They give up their quest for freedom. After the lid is removed, the fleas remain imprisoned by their own self-policing. So it is with life. Most of us let our own fears or the impositions of others imprison us in a world of low expectations." (p.141)


The one thing I find annoying about his approach and use of 'shining' examples, young people sailing singlehanded around the globe or setting up successful businesses or making amazing scientific discoveries, is that he ends up implying that opting out of the school system is only ok if you end up doing something remarkable. It is ok to opt out and just be ordinary, to just live an ordinary life that is of your choosing. Compulsory school is not just a waste of time for geniuses and creative types, it is a waste of time for everybody, it crushes the life out of the unassuming ones too. (Also politically he is a bit of a libertarian, an admirer of free market economics and does not seem interested in political change. For me it seems logical to extend the argument into other areas of life.) It is something that the whole home education community is guilty of to a certain extent, to point vociferously to the success stories as a justification for our opinions and existence, as if we have to be better than school, that our children have to get better exam results so that we can say 'look, we should be permitted to do what we do because we achieve within the confines of your narrow definition of success'. 

While I think that 'Dumbing Us Down' is a better book (and I will get around the rereading and reviewing it some time), it dwells less on history and more on an examination of the effect of schooling on the individual, I find that what I continue to like most about Gatto is that he just pursues the ideas. He keeps pushing and repeating, hoping that in the end more and more people will finally get the message. He ends the main section of the book thus:
"I hope this has been enough to continue weapon-hunting on your own. Writing this has made me so sad and angry. I can't continue."
Sometimes I still feel sad and angry about schools, but so long as there are people out there telling it like it is there has to be hope.

(Fourth book in the TBR pile challenge 2013)

Learning Nothing

A friend on Facebook pointed me in the direction of 'Learn Nothing Day', set up by a lady called Sandra Dodd, one of those americans who seem to have made themselves a career out of home educating their children (I mean one where they earn a living rather than it being something that just occupies their time). Certainly she is a passionate proponent of 'unschooling' and someone who I read when my children were younger. Just a note about the politics of the otherwise movement: 'Unschooling' is a US term, used to distinguish themselves from the homeschoolers, who, over there, tend to follow purchased curricula. Here in the UK we tend to call it 'autonomous education', and it is characterised by following and facilitating the individual child's interests and supporting them in making their choices about what they learn and how they spend their time.

Learn Nothing Day was started to answer the 'don't you have holiday's?' question (one of many that come from random strangers who think they have the right to comment on your lifestyle choice), because, of course, since learning is a natural function of the human brain it could be quite hard to spend an entire day learning nothing. The main trouble with the school system (so many troubles so little time) is that it divides the world into two halves: the time in school when you are 'learning' stuff, and the time outside when you aren't. This is the basis for the government's draconian punishments for parents who take their children on holiday during term time, because if they are not inside the school building they cannot possibly be learning anything. Because something is only really 'learned' if you have written it down in an exercise book and had it ticked off by the teacher.

So here I am desperately trying not to learn anything and already, while blog browsing, I have followed the instructions on how to sew, and put a baby into, a baby wrap, how to do a Colonial knot and how to do a French knot.

Go on, try it for yourself, see if you can 'not learn' today.

Mina

'My Name is Mina' by David Almond is a prequel to the much loved 'Skellig' published back in 1998. I remember being so excited to find a book that had a home educated character presented so positively and my children remain very fond of the story. As soon as I heard that he had written a story specifically about Mina I ordered it for M (and myself of course). I have not read all his books but have loved all the ones we have. David Almond is a brilliant writer and I like him particularly because he doesn't patronise children when he writes for them, nor does he moralise (like Jacqueline Wilson, who I really do not like), nor does he try to be funny. 'Skellig' is a wonderful magical realist story where Michael and Mina discover an angel in his garage. 'My Name is Mina' is the story of how Mina came to be home educated and the background to her slightly strange life, right up to the moment when she meets Michael.

This book is written in a diary form, with Mina describing how she spends her time (mostly up a tree), her relationship with her mum (both grieving the recent death of her father) and recalling the events leading up to her leaving school (the dreaded SATs day!) but also interspersed with 'Extraordinary Activities' and little poems and thoughts about words. Although the book is partly about home education, as an alternative approach to school, it is not preaching nor particularly taking sides. Mina paints a very unsympathetic picture of her time in school, she is obviously very bright and the teacher lacks any empathy with her unconventional learning style, and Mina is not prepared to compromise or jump through the hoops that are expected of her. Almond presents a very positive image of an autonomous, child-directed education that Mina's mum provides for her, giving her time alone to just think and absorb her experiences, and spending meaningful time together talking about things that interest both of them. He then puts the (boringly predictable) negative side into the mouth of the mum when she expresses concern about Mina not having any friends and maybe she will think about going back to school later.

I have to say that although I loved the book, and I hope people will read it and be provoked by the ideas, I was not totally convinced by the way it was written. I felt a little bit like he was trying too hard. It is a very difficult thing to do for a grown man to write as a little girl, even quite a precocious one, and I am not sure he pulled it off. Some of the time she came across much older than she is meant to be, not just precocious but more seriously reflective and mature than a girl of 12 could be. Then at other times I think he pitches it just perfectly. He has a scene where she tells the story of the day she runs away from school and goes down into a tunnel under the park, believing she is going down into the underworld to bring back her father, and it felt very real. A young child grieving might have all sorts of strange notions about their loss and what has happened to their lost parent, and the need to feel they can change things, and how vividly they can imagine something.

"Sometimes I think that Heston, the place where we live, is like ancient Greece, and that the Underworld is in the earth beneath us. I think of the King of the Underworld, Pluto, sitting on his throne deep down below. I think of his queen, the kind Persephone. Sometimes I think that I really did see something down there, something deep and ancient, and I wonder what would have happened if I'd kept on going, if I'd crossed the stream, if I'd walked towards the shadow in the shape of a man, if I'd said, 'My name is Mina McKee and I'm searching for my dad.' " (p.61)

I don't read much children's or young adult fiction any more so it was lovely to enter into this story, I am going to have to re-read Skellig now. I would highly recommend any of his books to anyone with kids 8+, definitely good for reading together as there are always ideas to discuss. Almond doesn't shy away from tackling challenging subjects, but without making you feel that the book is 'tackling a challenging subject', the story is the important part, the issues are secondary.

"A good term's work"

I got a letter this morning from the Local Education Authority home education lady asking for an 'update' on my daughter's educational progress. She has now been out of school for a year. I am tempted to write her a one line reply. It would say,

"The other day my daughter M told me she was happy."

A good term's work in my book.

The Harpole Report

'The Harpole Report' by J.L. Carr.

I picked this up at the library when random browsing, mainly because I read 'A Month in the Country' about two years ago, it was the book for my first meeting with the book group in Stow.

This is an amusing anecdotal tale of George Harpole and his first term as acting Headmaster at a small rural primary school. It was published in 1972 and by the atmosphere seems to be set during the 50's or early 60's. It is told by way of extracts from the school log, Harpole's personal diary, correspondence between members of staff and the local authority officials, and from parents, so there are a huge variety of voices contributing to the story, each giving their own perspective on the running of the school. Although fictional I am guessing it is based on Carr's own experience of teaching during this period.

At the school many of the staff have obviously been very long standing and Harpole's attempts to change their ways of doing things are met with not inconsiderable resistance, while at the same time he is having to deal with interfering local councillors, obstructive officials and overly demanding parents. He heart is definitely in the right place in terms of trying to make the school a better place for his charges. We also follow his developing relationship with Emma Foxberrow, an opinionated new arrival and Cambridge graduate who has some more unconventional ideas about education. I liked the bit where Harpole decides all the classes should go on an educational outing, and asks the staff to list their proposed outing and what the purpose of the outing would be. Emma decides to take her children to "the confluence of the Elver and the Alder" (two local rivers), and defines the purpose as "to have an exciting time", so I liked her right from the start. She then proceeds to organise an extremely successful sports day that even enthuses the older staff members.

Along with the everyday stuff you have some interesting politicking going on in the background. Firstly Harpole's abandonment of the class entitled 'The backwards' (they were not so subtle in those days), after an acknowledgement that once a child was in this class they were there for the duration. Following the 'Eleven Plus' results Harpole tries to take on the education authority over what he sees as unfair access to the grammar school when he discovers that 'borderline' children from his school have a negligible chance of gaining access compared to children from more 'middle class' areas. He struggles to avoid accepting a known 'troublesome' (and very large) family of kids when they move into his catchment area, but then when he admits defeat he takes them on wholeheartedly, tackling their literacy problems with determination and then forthrightly tackling their feckless parents. There is also some not so subtle criticism of old style teaching (Emma Foxberrow, letter to her sister, Felicity):

"For instance, my door happening to be ajar I heard him going on at Mrs G-J in the corridor. 'Now,' he was saying furiously 'I've had enough of this. I want these children treated a children not as Victorian scullery maids. They are not here on sufferance to provide the Grindle-Jones's with a double pension - they are your raison d'être, between 9 and 4.'

'I've never been spoken to like this before in all my thirty years experience,' she wails.

'You have not had thirty years experience, Mrs Grindle-Jones,' he says witheringly, 'You have had one year's experience 30 times.' " (p.128)

All in all an interesting and enlightening picture of schooling of a certain era. It can almost make you feel nostalgic when you look at the level of government interference that happens now. The book is lent and edge of authenticity by a lovely selection of period photographs scattered throughout. In the end Harpole rejects the offer of another headship and he and Emma run away together to Africa to start a teacher training college, though she refuses to marry him. An amusing diversion from current reading.

New Room and New Life

Jacob has been gone for just over a week (we haven't heard from him so I assume he hasn't come to blows with Lewis) and M has now taken over his space. The bunk beds found a taker on the Freecycle very quickly and I dropped them off on Saturday afternoon. It took quite some time this morning to wash down all the walls and the mouldy window frame but now it is looking lovely. We shifted the big unit that had divided the room, and then put her high bed in the opposite corner, bought up the old chest of drawers from Tish's room and ... voila!

And she's all ready for her new life of being in charge of her own education. I am feeling slightly disconcerted, it being now seven years since they were obliged to return to school, I'm not sure I remember what I should be doing. Tomorrow I am writing the deregistration letter to the Head, and then will be awaiting with some trepidation some kind of contact with the Local Authority.

For any visitors unsure of how this all works, here's the basics:

Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act states that "the parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude and any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."

The presence of the 'otherwise' clause in the original 1944 Act was reputedly insisted upon by Winston Churchill, who apparently hated school, but don't quote me on that one.

If you have never sent your child to school you are under no particular requirement to inform anyone of your plans. To remove a child from school however you are obliged to deregister (this applies to England and Wales, check the EO website), as follows:

Dear Mrs F

r.e. my fabulous daughter

From today, 3rd September 2009, I am withdrawing my daughter from ***** ***** school in order to take personal responsibility for her education. I would be grateful if you would remove her name from the register in accordance with Education (Pupil Registration) Regulation 8(1)(d) 2006 as she will now be receiving her education otherwise than by schooling. Please would you confirm in writing that this has been done.

Yours sincerely .... etc etc.

Although the children were home educated for most of the first 12 years of family life, since the divorce I never thought I was going to have a 'home ed' teenager (thought technically Lewis never made it back into real school, he was not living with me then) so it is going to be a new experience all round. M claims to remember being at home, she was seven, but so much water has flowed under the bridge since, I think it is going to take her a while to adjust too.

Scary stuff!

Spot the Difference

So here are two nearly identical photographs ... the question is, can you spot the difference? They both look quite smart presentable uniforms, just the way most young people are obliged to dress these days while they attend school. In spite of the fact that the rest of Europe and the United States don't seem to think that young people need to wear identical clothing in order to learn efficiently, our country seems to have made quite an issue of the whole uniform thing with younger and younger children being obliged to dress like their peers when they pop along to playgroup. Many positive claims are made about the wearing of school uniform, such as creating a feeling of being part of a community and avoiding the perils of being marked out as a 'loser' if you wear the wrong clothes ... so I was not really surprised when we find the claims becoming more and more outrageous.

Believe it or not it seems that the girl in this second photograph is definitely going to be a better learner .... all because of those few extra inches of fabric in her skirt. Oh yes, the Head Teacher and Board of Governors decided in their wisdom that from September all skirts must be knee length. We all know how hard it is to learn properly with a bit of your thighs showing.

But we are celebrating in our house because it was not an hour after we went to the new uniform event at school and purchased this skirt (and paid for the blazer that they are also re-introducing) when M's dad phoned to say he will agree to her leaving school and return to being "educated otherwise than by schooling". So now she can learn in her jeans and in her pyjamas and in her short skirts and in her long skirts and in her bikini and in her shorts and in her hoodies and in her hats (of which she is very fond) and with nail varnish on and with electric blue hair and at midnight and 6am and in the garden and up a tree and anywhere and anyhow she choses.

Rowan Tree and Sophie's World

A variety of thoughts presented themselves this morning and they seemed somewhat linked. I had a moment on Friday when I wanted to have a rant because they had a discussion on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 talking about yet another proposal by Ed Balls to reduce the school starting age. It got me so irate ... but then that programme always does because it brings out all the bigots and intolerant people (ok sometimes intelligent, reasonable ones too if I am honest). And then I started re-reading Sophie's World last night. I read about half of this book many years ago when it was new out but never finished it, it was probably a bit demanding for someone too taken up with small children. I found it in a charity shop recently so thought I would give it another go. It is so packed with ideas I thought I might write stuff about it as I go along. In the first chapter Sophie is presented with a few of the 'big questions' which immediately grab her interest. It is as if no one has ever talked to her seriously before or challenged her to think about anything real or important. Her immediate reaction to these ideas is that "at school she had trouble concentrating on what the teachers said. They seemed to talk only about unimportant things" and that they are "only concerned with trivialities". "Sophie felt that thinking about them (the questions) was more important than memorizing irregular verbs." You find comments like these scattered through life, literature and politics, and I find it unfathomable that people seem to remain convinced that school has something relevant to do with real growth and understanding and finding meaning.

So here you have this question; who are you? and in reality it is the thing that should concern people, particularly as they are growing their own sense of identity and place in the world. By coincidence I was sent the Rowan Tree newsletter (this comes from an online shop called Beneath the Rowan Tree that sells beautiful stuff for children) and it tells a lovely story about a little girl who thinks she is a fish, and how so often grownups desperately want children to basically 'not be children', often, I think, because it makes them too uncomfortable. But this kind of imagination is so important a part of thinking about 'who are you?'. She then quotes the lyrics of a song, and it is so heartbreaking (sorry, being mawkish) because it encapsulates what children lose in growing up (and it is killed stone dead when they go to school), it comes apparently from Trout Fishing in America:

Back When I Could Fly

I used to be invisible, a shape changing magic kid.
I could move at the speed of thought and frequently I did,
But my greatest accomplishment was a slow and looping glide.
I saw the tops of everything,
back when I could fly.

I'd take my daily nap on the highest leafy branch,
And follow shooting stars on a comet's fiery lance.
I was quite the prodigy, when I owned the sky.
I never thought I'd have to walk,
back when I could fly.

Keep your eye on the ball, your feet on solid ground.
Always sit up straight and tall and never make a sound.
In just a few short years, I learned not to be a child,
And I forgot the things I had when I was wild.

Now, my child, you'll learn arithmetic, coloring and sports.
You'll have a flair for nouns and verbs, and be late with book reports.
But in spite of all the rules that bind your wings so tight,
I hope you won't forget about the days when you could fly.

I'd take my daily nap on the highest leafy branch,
And follow shooting stars on a comet's fiery lance.
I was quite the prodigy, when I owned the sky.
I never thought I'd have to walk,
I never had to try,
Back when I could fly.

They have no idea...

... quite how boring it really is. I had conclusive proof when at Chipping Campden school parent's evening on Thursday. On the whole I don't mind parent's evenings, the teachers mainly say nice things and it tends to be a bit of a 'keep up the good work' exercise. But then M and I stood in the foyer on the way out and watched the little ten minute film of 'what goes on in our school' (that wasn't the title, just my interpretation of it's purpose) .... and it was excruciatingly dull. Shot after shot of children sitting at desks. If it was supposed to inspire parents as to the quality and variety of the educational experience that their children were receiving it was a singular failure. The highlights of the film were M skipping and M in drama class, and not just because it was her, but because they were the only interesting incidents in a sea of tedious bookwork. Since I have no doubt it was quite an accurate picture of the average student's average day on school I wonder that in both making it and watching it the teachers do not seem to notice. I could feel the life being sucked out of me just watching it. It seems to remain a mystery to them why vast numbers of 'school days' are lost every year to truancy, when it is screamingly obvious to me.

After the horrific events in Germany a fortnight ago when a former pupil killed students and staff at his school I am left wondering (as usual it seems, for this is not such a rare occurrence) why the question never seems to be asked, what is it about school that creates in the minds of these people such negative feelings that it drives them to go out and murder. People search for the answer anywhere except the school environment that has such a dominating influence on the lives of our society's adolescents.