Liddle Britain

Who is right about home schooling?

21 September 2006

Rod Liddle says that we should leave teaching to the professionals, however much they annoy us, and stop pretending that children benefit from learning obscure languages or how to paint like Cézanne at home

We will never agree with the teachers. They will always have it wrong, one way or another. They will never quite match up to how we expect them to be, the sort of people we could reasonably entrust to educate our precious, brilliant children. Inevitably the teachers will, as James asserts, suggest that capitalism has been iniquitous; it is not enough that we should be able to explore this analysis with our kids at home, over tea (or high tea, whichever). We should instead excise it from our children’s experience altogether; as brilliant as they are, they should not be expected to retain an open mind. Teach them at home — tell ’em capitalism’s great. The empire was unequivocally great, too. So is Biggles, C.S. Lewis before he drifted leftwards, ‘The Lark Ascending’ and the Goon Show. Italy — especially that nice bit in the mid-north with the golden hills and the vineyards and the sluggish rivers and the tough, pungent cheeses — is great. This is a particular view of education which would accord with the likes of Chesterton and Belloc. It is not a wholly ludicrous view of the world, I admit — but it is at best a mere margin of the world. There is much more of which we do not know.

I am not immune to the sort of worries, the irritations, the outrage about which James Bartholomew writes. My kids come home from school and report to me that a friend of theirs, who cruelly slighted a child from an ethnic minority, had ‘done a racist’. I am not sure what annoys me most on such occasions: the parlous grammar, the reflex political correctness, or the fact that my kids have a racist for a friend. But I have also listened to a heated — and, in the end, extremely violent — debate between my two boys, aged eight and seven — about who were the better, the Tudors or the Romans, which revealed a depth of knowledge I either never had or had forgotten. It doesn’t matter that it ended with Tyler saying, ‘It was the Tudors, you spastic’ and punching his younger brother in the kidneys. It matters that they were so enthused.

My kids go to a state school; I am in awe of their teachers’ ability to convey knowledge and get them enthused about such a vast array of subjects. I attempt to add to that knowledge, by telling them that Valletta is the capital of Malta, and stuff like that. But I would not for a second suppose that I could replace the people who teach them professionally — and who know what they’re doing.

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Mrs H Mulholland

May 10th, 2008 10:12pm Report this comment

Whilst, as a teacher in a state secondary school, I appreciate Ron Liddle's support for state education, as a home educator I find many of his comments insulting. I do not home educate my children in some pretentious manner, nor do I allow them to watch TV all day. I teach them myself because I believe that the curriculum has been dumbed-down and I want to teach them to think for themselves and be self-motivated.

Arabella

May 1st, 2009 12:22am Report this comment

It is unfortunate that such home schooling is associated with vegans and evangelicals. It is even more unfortunate that your children will have no friends and learn little outside the textbooks.

Dan C

June 30th, 2009 11:57pm Report this comment

It is indeed unfortunate that Arabella believes that a home-educated child "will have no friends and learn little outside the textbooks" - though to an extent the definition is a little misleading, and thus it is a common misconception. Home schooling can be a more rounded form of education than the 'status quo' of school as as much time is spent outside the home as in. In the ten years we have been educating our daughter and her younger brother we have developed a network of friends in National and local organisations in people who have made the same choice (for a variety of reasons: most often because their children have been bullied and the schools did not have the time or motivation to sort it out). These kids' ages range from 2 to 18, and when together they mix far better than you see in school, as their instincts for helping and encouraging each other are not subdued by the competitiveness that is often encouraged there by the suspicions that come from the unnatural dividing of different age groups. We go on many different trips and outings and have regular meets for social and sporting activities. These children have at least as many friends as they would have in a school; they may see less every day, but how many of those you would see at school were really your friends, and the others just those that you chose to ignore?

As for subjects covered and understood the range is at least as great, as we are not restricted to what is in the National Curriculum or the syllabus. We can study whatever we like - using books, newspapers, magazines, current affairs and special TV programmes, the internet, PC-ROMs - and spend as long on it as we choose, not having to break off "just when things are getting interesting" at the end of a single or double lesson, and join the jostling throng on the way to the next lesson or the playground.

Some home-educators no doubt have niche religious or dietary convictions, but no more than the general population. We are no different from all other parents, except that we see that the state is markedly failing the young people in its care - both academically (one in six leave secondary school unable to read and write effectively) and morally (they are abandoning them on the altar of iniquitous correct socialist educational ideals). And we have taken into our hands the responsibility that is ours in law: to decide on the education of our children "either by regular attendance at school or otherwise" [Education Act 1996, Section 7].

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