6/19/2008 8:24:00 AM
Independent 19 June
Emotions can run high in education. Lately my in-tray has been enlivened by some passionate dissent. One email said: "Many of us are shocked at your fascist-like attitudes - do you even know what fascism means?" Another sent an article implying I was guilty of "a kind of treason". Perhaps the mildest of them read: "I have to confess that I thought you were a self-styled professor, because a real one could not possibly hold such unbalanced views."Was it reaction to the highly critical report that we published recently on the diploma? No - this in fact has attracted widespread support. It is only the government that seems so steamed-up about it as to want to play the man rather than the ball. The outcry was in response to some remarks I had made about home education.When asked about it, I offered a few thoughts on the point of school. Some compulsory education is necessary, I averred, to ensure that all young people have every opportunity to engage with the learning essential to give them a good start in life. If we require children to be in education we need to set out what they should do and check their progress. In schools, children can also learn to rub along with others and draw support from them when what they have to do is not fun but difficult or repetitive. While recognising that parents who wanted take on the enormous commitment of providing the education themselves should have the right to do so, I believe they are not necessarily always the best judges of what is good, educationally speaking, for their children.The counter-arguments rained in. One parent who had educated his three children at home and was on the committee of a home education support charity wrote: "Home educated children are, by and large, better educated, more socially competent and more confident than their schooled contemporaries. The UK's schools, as a result of a long period of state interference, are an educational disaster area." An issue of the Journal of Personalised Education Now arrived with 30 statements on what's wrong with schools, ranging from destroying the enjoyment of learning, causing stress and disillusionment, to indoctrination into pecking orders and conformity. Many famous people who had been educated at home were cited, including Theodore Roosevelt, Bertrand Russell, Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Yehudi Menuhin and Patrick Moore. The Queen was among them, hence the contrived link in which apparent disrespect for home education becomes treason. Independentl
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