Home Education
I’ve just read this letter on the BBC News Monitor pages:
I’m currently doing a science project with one of my home-educated boys and need some information. If you know the answer to the following question or a place I can find it, let me know. A thermos flask works by using a vacuum to prevent heat leaving the liquid. But, if heat can’t travel across a vacuum, how does the sun heat Earth?
There are, I have been told, countless reasons for choosing home education. And as a person who pays handsomely for the privilege of not submitting my children to Local Education Authority schooling, I agree with all of the negative reasons for the choice. But none of the positive reasons. I also agree with the pastoral reasons, but not the academic ones.
Yes, one of the results of twenty years of brainless government interference in education is that local authority schools are now utterly incapable of caring for the individual pastoral needs of children – they are only now capable of caring for the collective needs of clones.
But another one of the results is that the academic efficiency of these schools, when the children fit the pastoral profile, is absolutely staggering. When the system works children are taught in stimulating lessons that have been structured according to accepted and demonstrated theories of learning, monitored with systems that can spot the earliest possible signs of underperformance, aptitude and ability, and given knowledge that has been refined to be the best possible compromise between marketable and functional on the one hand, and personally enriching on the other.
And home schooling parents think they can match this? The father in the above letter has clearly not even heard of ‘Conduction, Convection and Radiation,’ and has isolated himself from the support network that exists to help.
Home education is a very expensive activity – and the parents don’t pay for it.
home education is a very expensive activity – and the parents don’t pay for it.
can you explain what you mean by this please, i really would be very interested on your take on home ed.
Comment by minny — December 2, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
Very simple – as the example from the BBC News Monitor makes clear: the parent who wrote in with the question has proved himself to be utterly incompetent to teach.
As a direct result of this man’s vanity, his child in this situation is going to receive an appalling education.
There are, like I said, many good reasons for withdrawing a child from state education. However, when the provision that replaces it is inferior, then the child suffers.
What all home educators should ask themselves honestly is not whether state education is good enough for their child, but whether they are good enough. Being a parent does not make you the best person to educate your child.
Comment by grumpyoldman — December 3, 2007 @ 3:02 am
hi and thanks for the reply,
could it not be, that this parent is sourcing the answers to his childs interest, which could make him be seen as competent, do you think, alot of teachers would have the answer so readily, maybe they too would have to source the information.
sometimes being a good teacher, is not maybe telling children what to learn, but allowing them to follow what really interests them(who knows where it could lead), and then sourcing information for them.
thanks again for the reply.
minny
Comment by minny — December 3, 2007 @ 10:08 am
Well, yes – anyone can “source” information (although this parent couldn’t. He had access to the internet, and it would have taken less than a minute of competent research using Google to find out how heat travels through a vacuum. Instead, he asked the BBC News Monitor.)
My point is that all teachers have two specific areas of expertise: their academic subject and their profession – teaching.
On any question that is central to the subject, a teacher must have the answers. It is a minimum professional requirement, and it is one of the most fundamental criticisms that people have of teachers (eg “they can’t spell/add up” and “they don’t know their subject.”)
Would you submit your child to amateur dentistry? Would you be happy for them to be operated on by someone who was not qualified in surgery? The result of these would be physical pain and suffering – perhaps even death.
The result of incompetent teaching isn’t so obvious to spot, but being invisible isn’t the same as being non-existent.
Comment by grumpyoldman — December 3, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
hi again,
yes, i get what you mean,but parents aren’t amateur,they
are the first and foremost educators of there children,they choose to hand over the academic stuff to professionals, who teach what the goverment decide children should know,and at what age they should know it.(and this can lead to alot of damage)
as you say, anyone can source information, but not every teacher has the time to spend on one childs interests, to promote one individual, but parents do.
kind regards and wishes
minny.
Comment by minny — December 3, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
Again, granted.
However, parents are also the primary health carers of their children. Does that mean that they are better than doctors?
Why else would parents “choose to hand over the academic stuff to professionals?”
Teachers who do not meet every child’s individual needs are failing in the first duty of their job – all children now have ILPs (Individual Learning Plans) and that is why the average teacher gets paid more than twice the average UK wage.
I stand by what I have said elsewhere in this blog: even though I do not want my children to be educated in a state school, what the state provides is a fantastically efficient education. I may disagree with the aims and objectives of state education (and that is why I pay for public school places for my non-disabled children) but in the classroom, state schools are not bettered.
And an untrained parent, no matter how good their intentions, can never EVER match a trained, monitored, supported professional teacher.
Comment by grumpyoldman — December 3, 2007 @ 4:57 pm
once again thankyou, you have gave me much to think about.
regards
minny.
Comment by minny — December 3, 2007 @ 5:37 pm