“Children brought up to be ignorant”

The following is a letter that was sent to the Independent in response to a rather unpleasant letter from Helena Cox  published in today’s newspaper. Ms Cox’s letter claimed that home educating ‘fundamentalist christian families’  were brainwashing their children and she claimed that this was tantamount to child abuse.

Dear Sir

Re Helena Cox’s letter – Children brought up to be ignorant

I was astounded to read Helena Cox’s letter of the 18th March and, I must confess, somewhat disappointed that the Independent felt able to publish something so filled with prejudice and discrimination.

Based upon some part time work as a home tutor Ms Cox feels qualified to write in such intolerant terms about families who are undertaking their moral responsibilities as parents so seriously that they are prepared to sacrifice in all manner of ways to raise their children to be effective and useful members of society. There is a growing body of research both from UK and American academics that clearly demonstrate that home educated children – even those from Christian families – out-perform their peers in academic, maturational and social measures. Maybe Mx Cox needs to read more widely.

It seems, according to Ms Cox, that  all children should be taught, ideally by people like herself, in order to ensure that  they grow up to be as tolerant as she is towards minorities now living in Britain.

Having sent twenty years mixing with home educated children and their parents, I simply do not recognise the picture that Ms Cox paints. ‘Brainwashing’,   ‘child abuse’ as well as the wonderfully pejorative use of ‘fundamentalist’ betray Ms Cox for what she really is – an illiberal, intolerant statist who would have all children, in schools being taught the same government approved curriculum to ensure that they could exercise free will, as adults! Even the Dark Ages were not as dark as that!

Steve Richards, B.Ed., M.A. (Educ), M.Ed.

Educational Director, NorthStarUK

Home Page News 2 March 2009

The subject of home education continues to attract a fair amount of media interest. There was a fascinating article in last week’s Independent newspaper which was in the main pretty balanced – you read the article in full by clicking here.

I received an email from a member of staff at the Department for Children, Schools and Families last week expressing some dismay that I was not embracing the most recent consultation mor enthusiastically and that I was being critical of the DCSF’s behaviour in the area of home education. You may be interested to read the reasons that I gave for my mis-givings over the current consulation -

1. The re-visiting of this matter less than 18 months after a successful consultation that resulted in the publication of very good guidelines to LAs on the topic of elective home education;
2. The short time period of the consultation;
3. The decision to undertake academic review after the consultation, rather than before, which would have made far more sense, because this would have allowed the academic review to feed into and affect the consultation;
4. The wording of a number of the questions in the current consultation – notably “Do you think that home educated children are able to achieve the following five Every Child Matters outcomes?” Leaving aside any discussion about the appropriateness of applying the ECM’s outcomes to individual families, this separates home educated children in a way that is, in my opinion, discriminatory.
5. The wording of the final question – “Some people have expressed concern that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. What do you think Government should do to ensure this does not happen?” is flawed in so many ways. Without defining who the ‘some people’ are, the question is almost worthless and is profoundly discriminatory – the vast majority of children who are abused, neglected, experience domestic servitude, and are forced into unwelcome marriages, actually attend school. If LAs cannot protect even these children, then the application of the ECMs agenda to home educators is not only entirely inappropriate but it actually smacks of hypocrisy.
6. If the DCSF was serious about supporting home educators they would ensure that their policies in this area were research driven. The DCSF has never funded serious longitudinal research into elective home education or even as far as I know commissioned a comprehensive literature search in this area. In the absence of these, the DCSF leaves itself open to accusations of prejudice, discrimination and simply being nobbled by LAs, certain children’s charities, some of those in the educational media and certain politicians all of whom were unhappy with the outcome of the last consultation.

Home Page News – 23 February 2009

All educational systems are underpinned by a belief system or worldview. This is inevitable and unavoidable. In schools and colleges around the world – whether it is governments or individual teachers – decision-makers choose to teach children what is most important to them. And what is most important is actually shaped by our worldview. That is why a growing number of Christians are increasingly uncomfortable with the English National Curriculum; although it claims to be religiously neutral it leaves God out of every subject (except for Religious Studies, of course) – no mention of God in history, biology, geography, English – the list could go on! This is not neutrality but a form of practical atheism. In NorthStarUK we do not make our worldview conspicuous – in the end much of our subject matter is the same as that taught in secular schools. However, a Christian view of the world underpins all that we do and it is this that sets us apart. 

Some months ago I was commissioned to produce a series of short videos introducing home education to a wider Christian audience. We have almost completed the first episode and have put it on YouTube to find out what people think. It deals with the issue of neutrality in education and challenges Christians to think deeply about these matters. If you would like to watch the video, simply here.

NorthStarUK Home Page News

Every week, as Educational Director I post a message on our online learning environment home page. For fairly obvious reasons, this has come to be known as the Home Page News. Sometimes this message deals entirely with parochial matters – information that our parents and students need to know about; often, however, the Home Page News deals with matters of a more general nature. These latter posting swill now also be made available on our blog so that those with an interest in Christian online learning, home education, or NorthStarUK can read them as well.