Carol and Peter Williams live in Alton, Hampshire, with their son, also called Peter, who is a chess champion. Which was how the trouble started. The Williams family is now locked in battle with their Local Education Authority (LEA) about whether Peter should be allowed to pursue his education at home, or should instead be forced to attend school.
I heard about this via Daryl Cobranchi (such are the ways of the Internet), and emailed first Daryl, and then Carol Williams, who emailed me thus this morning
I would not say that education (I hate that word) is the subject. It is about freedom of choice and the desire to encourage your children in the subjects they enjoy and/or are good at.
I will now give a potted history so you can see how we got where we are today with the LEA.
Peter started playing chess when he was 5 years old. The rapid progress he made showed us this was way above the expected level of the average 5 year old. When Peter became 6, for a period of around 6 months, he had one day a week off school to study chess more in depth. Every week we had to write a letter to the school asking permission for this, after this period we decided to request that this was made a permanent arrangement, this is where it all started to go wrong. The school granted us a maximum of 15 days per year, stating that Peters’ education would suffer otherwise. As he had just taken his SATS tests and achieve above average marks in all bar one subject, this argument did not hold water. We wrote back stating that this was not acceptable to us. We subsequently received a letter from the LEA’s Barrister stating that the offer had to be withdrawn as it was illegal to allow children time off from school. This is absolutely incorrect as Hampshire LEA’s website states that discretionary leave is entirely at the discretion of the Head . At this point we made the decision to withdraw Peter from state school and teach him at home. The first letter we received from the LEA regarding Peters’ home education, without quoting verbatim went along the following lines:
We understand you wish to educate your son at home.
This is not a wish, it is a right.
What exams will he be taking?
How can you answer this when the child involved is 6? What relevance is it at this age? Furthermore you do not have to take any exams.
What are the qualifications of all those who will be involved in his education?
Home educators do not need to have any formal qualifications.
The whole approach of this letter was very authoritarian .
Further letters followed from the LEA’s various departments, advising us that they would be coming to our home.
The culmination of events was the issuing of the Notice of Failure to give an Education by the LEA. At this point we decided enough was enough, the LEA had not responded to any of our questions or complaints satisfactorily, yet continued to pursue us in their dogmatic way. We entered a complaint to the Ombudsman who is currently investigating the situation, it took him 4 months to get a response from them.
Other LEA’s appear to be more flexible and helpful when it comes to both flexi-schooling and home education but Hampshire LEA appears to be particularly behind the times. Their website states “school is where children should be for most if not all of the time”. Home Education is located in the Welfare Department and there is no help or assistance on their website for home educators.
From our experience there is a lot of ignorance surrounding home education. People seem to think there is something strange about home educators. I sometimes think people expect us to have at least 2 heads. We have spoken with people who were under the impression that LEA’s provide tutors, materials, financial assistance etc to home educators, whilst we cannot speak for other LEA’s it is certainly not the case with Hampshire. I believe that this assistance should be available to home educators if they wish to make use of it. To date the only response we have had as to why they give no assistance is that’s the way it is, yet there is no legal reason why they cannot offer assistance. For each pupil registered a state school receives in the region of £4500 per annum and in the case of special needs children the sum is in the region of £10,000 pa. What happens to this money for a home educated child? Answer: nothing. From this stance it is clear that Hampshire LEA do not believe home education is a suitable learning environment so how can they have the audacity to insist on inspecting the work, surely they would be basing their assessment on a biased opinion. The very people who profess to care so much about our children only do so if on their terms.
It’s funny really, until all this blew up as a family we had never thought about home education (like most of the population), now we believe that we have done Peter a great disservice by inflicting the state school system on him at all. Peter now enjoys so much freedom in studying the subjects he enjoys for the length of time he wishes. Some days he will work all day on science a particular favorite of his, another day painting or chess. It is his life and providing no laws are being broken and no-one is being hurt he has the right to make his own choices. Although we made the initial decision to home educate Peter does not want to return to school.
I give below a couple of websites which you may find of interest:
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/educate/leaguide.htm
http://www.hants.gov.uk/education/schoolsadmissions
Sorry if I have gone on a bit but this is a subject we are passionate about. Although I have written this email, both Peters have been reading it as I type and added their comments.
If there is anything you can or want to do to help Peter it would be appreciated.
Have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Best Regards
Carol, Peter and Peter
If you want to join in this argument, Daryl Cobranchi has posted a couple of addresses you can write to. I have done another posting about this at my Education Blog, with pictures (of Peter jnr. and of that Notice of Failure that Carol refers to above), and with further linkage and reportage.
This is insane. England appears to have become a completely authoritarian country.
I wish you the best of luck with your fight for your rights. Demanding that parents turn their children over to the state for whatever indoctrination the state feels is good does not sound like a democratic society to me.
Property rights are gone – what the state doesn’t take, burglars are welcome to take. The right to self-defence is restricted to the point of being useless. Soon you will have to “show your papers” to do anything – though I fear we will get that soon enough too. Now the right of parents to oversea the education of their family is under attack. Where will this end?
“Demanding that parents turn their children over to the state for whatever indoctrination the state feels is good does not sound like a democratic society to me”
It’s got nothing to do with democracy. The people of this country have got together and agreed democratically to force people to send their children to schools. It may be authoritarian, but it’s not undemocratic.
Compulsory education is about protecting children. Think of it along the lines of compulsory medical care. You may have your own wacko educational idea that 5 hours a day of Ayn Rand or whatever is all your kid needs to know, but it’s unfair to inflict that on a child that can’t choose for themselves. Likewise, you may think that chanting ‘om’ and eating mushrooms is the best way to fix a broken arm, but your child deserves a shot at actually getting cured.
Top Tip: By wearing a tinfoil hat in school, your child will be less affected by Government propaganda waves!
Paranoid hysteria notwithstanding, it is in fact not illegal to educate your child at home in the UK. There is a legal obligation to provide an education, however, and the Education Act 1996 frames it thusly:
“The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable –
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”
EG
I agree with one of the points J makes regarding democracy. Who was it that described democracy as a ‘hurrah!’ word? Many often forget that it can easily be an extremely oppressive form of government.
This sort of rubbish is incredibly authoritarian and typically statist. In order to prevent some parents from keeping their children out of school to work, they have made a law that prevents people home-schooling (or makes it really hard). I am sure about the UK, but in the US the biggest opponents of home-school are the teachers unions. You can’t really blame them as the increase in home-schooling means fewer of them are needed.
The fact that home-schooled children routinely out-perform their state schooled fellows does not seem to impress opponents one bit (or rather infuriates).
Riiiight… and of course no one ever pushed wacko ideas in a state school, eh J? What a credulous fool.
If school is meant to be a preparation for lige, then surely it involves learning some discipline.
Most jobs will not give you the day of to “pursue your own interests” so why should schools train a child to believe that it can study when and how he wishes.
It seems to me that home schooling is good trainig for self employment but not if you want to fit in to a firm where everyone else went to school.
Secondly, is “chess” really worth prusing? I mean how likely is he to make a living as a chess player? Is it worth restrucutring his life around chess when the chance of success is so uncertain?
I’m afraid this looks like pushy parent syndrome and I’m with the council on this one. If he was being home schooled because of a precosious talent in computing I’d take a different view but “Chess”. Fark na
A bit of googling reveals that there are upwards of 50,000 children being educated at home in Britain quite successfully. The legal position would appear to be of crystal clarity – you can do it; if your child is already registered at a state school you may have to inform the authorities you are withdrawing him (but they can’t stop you); you have an obligation in law to provide an efficient and appropriate education. The LEA and equivalent bodies in Scotland don’t appear to have any problem whatsoever with parents educating their children at home, and it seems in general that they consider it in much the same way as they consider private schools, which is to say there are rules and requirements which need to be met & as long as they are being met it’s up to you what you do.
It seems that the authorities only get involved where they have reason to believe the education being given is, to use the terms in the Act, not efficient or suitable. They have a right to do this under the law, which to me seems not unreasonable, and if the parents are not educating the child properly they can compel attendance at a school.
It would appear there is rather more to this case than meets the eye, especially given the large number of parents successfully and quite easily doing what these people say they are trying to do. I don’t know, but I strongly suspect that the parents in question have distinctly idiosyncratic ideas about what constitutes an education, which the LEA might consider don’t meet the requirements of the law. An education in chess is somewhat eccentric, but if the boy is good at it then why not? However, if there is a focus on chess to the detriment of rather more useful subjects such as English, mathematics and basic science then it seems the LEA might have a valid point.
You have a right to educate your child at home, broadly in line with your wishes. You also have a duty, both in law and, I would argue, in basic human decency, to ensure that if you do exercise this right you provide a useful and appropriate education. With rights come obligations, remember.
I think I’ve mentioned this here before, and it’s not strictly germane to this thread, but it has been postulated that the inadequate education provided by the British laissez-faire system in the 19th century was a significant factor in Britain’s economic decline from about 1850 onwards, especially compared with the much more rigorous and technically-minded planend system imposed in Germany. For decades, British schools churned out millions of under-educated workers with a bare minimum of literacy and numeracy. This is a subject where, although the market might be more efficient at actually providing the education, it is bloody hopeless at deciding what the education should actually be.
EG
And you totally miss the point. It should not be your decision to make what that child does, nor the council in your name (which is much the same thing). Why should you or your force backed political representatives get a say in what is best for someone elses children unless it is clearly a case of criminal behaviour being inflicted on a child? If ‘sensible majority opinion’ decides that requiring students to dress up in brown uniforms and sing the Horst Wessel song is ‘for the best best’… is that okay too? Or is force imposed ‘education’ only okay if it agrees with what youthink is best?
And how would that explain the large number of state educated functional illiterates that I meet almost daily in Britain, then… people incapable of putting a logical proposation together?
No, snide, I think you are the one missing the point.
There is no legal impediment to teaching your child at home. Nothing in the Education Acts *requires* anyone to send a child to school. What the Acts *do* require is that an efficient and suitable education be provided to children of school age (basically 5 to 16 years). How this is done is (broadly) up to the parents. There isn’t even any need to follow a set curriculum or to sit examinations, although in practical terms both these are a good idea.
As I said just above, I strongly suspect these particular parents have a somewhat novel interpretation of what efficient and suitable mean. Carol Williams’ ‘education (I hate that word)’ is a bit of a giveaway here. Since the various education authorities are happy to have thousands of British children educated at home with no problems whatsoever, one has to ask what it is about this specific case that excites their interest. Indeed, the Williams’ own education authority went on record in 2003 as stating they were ready and willing to help the Williams educate their boy at home with any support they might need.
Reading between the lines, I suspect:
they want to take advantage of state education for personal financial or convenience reasons;
at the same time, they want the boy out of school one day a week, every week, to practice chess;
they object to the LEA’s legally competent decision that this should not happen (it’s discretionary);
when they start teaching the boy at home, the LEA checks to see if the education is efficient and suitable, as it is empowered to do, and decides that it is not;
they object to the subsequent LEA decision, again a perfectly legal one, to compel attendance at a school.
It appears, unless there are multiple sets of chess playing Williams families with the same forenames, that the boy, his father and his grandfather are all chess enthusiasts, and I strongly suspect there is a degree of obsession here. I would be preapred to bet that the LEA considers the home education – which remember they were quite happy to support in principle – concentrates on chess to the detriment of other things (quite possibly all other things). I think it’s pushy parents too – again, thousands of other parents educate their children at home with no problems, which strongly suggests there is something distinctly odd about this case.
Do yourself a favour and read the relevant law. It is the Education Act 1996, available to read online from HMSO. In particular, you might wish to read the sections on political education. The law is not the statist propaganda facilitator you might think it is.
EG
Er, because the state isn’t so good at providing the education?
You did actually read what I’d written, didn’t you?
EG
It should not be your decision to make what that child does”
I don’t think parents have the right to give their child an education that only qualifies him to be a chess champion.
Question carrying on from Euan’s
Why was story first sent to a pro home schooling american blog – who was probably less aware of the intracacies of the british system. Would’nt it have been more sensible to approach a british one first. Unless of course you didnt want anyone to ask any searching questions about your “Rather” suspicious story.
I think you’re on to something here. There’s something decidedly fishy about this whole case, and I suspect the Williams clan is not being entirely open and honest about either the facts of the matter or their motives and intentions.
EG
“The people of this country have got together and agreed democratically to force people to send their children to schools.”
Bullshit. Could you tell us when the referendum on CE was held?
CE was pushed by a minority of social “progressives” who believed that the easiest way to change society for the “better” was to enforce compulsory state education. The people never “got together” to decide this, it was decided for them.
“Compulsory education is about protecting children. ”
Also bullshit, not to mention enexcusably naive.
The left wing idiots who run the educational system in New Zealand recently introduced a new curriculum. This curriculum is based on postmodern ideas that there is no Truth or Reality, only cultural opinion. Thus in science classes, children are encouraged to sit in circles and decide by consensus what is true and factual. Because this is decided by group consenses the kids are told that whatever they decide is “true” for them, regardless of the actual facts of the case.
Could you please explain how children are being protected by having this kind of mindless drivel stuffed into their minds?
Compulsory education was enacted in Britain in the latter part of the 19th century. However, note that it is NOT and never has been compulsory STATE education. Without any compulsion, just how far would people have educated their children?
You’re right to denigrate this statement, It’s actually about making your economy work.
You might want to read a little on the industrial and economic history of Britain. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were numerous and repeated inquiries into why British industrial performance, innovation, etc., was consistently dropping behind that of our competitors, and the major factor identified time and again was the inadequacy of the educational system. Any level of education beyond sufficient literacy, numeracy and manual skill needed to work in a factory was pretty much optional (laissez-faire approach to education as to much else in the country), and as a result tended not to happen to any great extent.
Contrast this with the planned system of technical high schools put in place in Germany at about the same time. These produced the engineers, scientists and innovators who enabled German industry to easily take and maintain the former British lead in technology. By the outbreak of WW1, German firms dominated in chemical, electrical and optical engineering and the successful British companies in these emerging fields were generally either subsidiaries of foreign companies or were started by foreign immigrants.
Private sector and charitable schools are better than the state at physically providing the education – they can do it more efficiently and without the burdensome regulation the state imposes on itself and others. However, the private sector is not good and looking ahead in anything other than the very shortest term, not least because companies on the average don’t last long, and they certainly don’t look as far ahead as the 15 years it takes to turn an infant into a graduate engineer. This presents a problem, because the private sector will simply not look ahead far enough, not so much to provide such an education (it can do this no problem) but to see that such a thing is actually desirable. If it’s all private all the way, such educations will not be offered widely and relatively few parents will stump up the cash to pay for something very few people think is necessary. This is not dry theory, it is what actually happened in Britain when the level of compulsory education was extremely low, and to a slightly reduced extent it still happens.
It would appear, then, that as a general principle the state might mandate a rather higher degree of minimum basic education, specify what this should cover, and encourage the creation of technical schools to implement it, doing all this with the longer term outlook that a populace of relatively highly educated people with a sound technological background is beneficial to the nation, its economy and the private companies who make that economy do things. The state does not need to own and run schools to promote this, of course. Now again, this is not theory – it’s what happened in Germany in the 19th century, and it worked a damn sight better than the British laissez-faire approach. It’s not “state control” either, it’s providing a push that the private market will simply not do on its own.
EG
EG:
Yes, the bit where you said…
Well ‘the market’ can already provide education, but the alternative to ‘the market’ (which in this case actually means ‘the parents’) deciding what that education should be is… the state. So how exactly did I misunderstand what you wrote?
Giles:
But the state has the right to give other people’s children an education which only qualified them for digging ditches and flipping burgers?
You see, I have no problem with you disapproving of the choices made for Peter Williams, just so long as you do not think your view of what is best for him is so objectively better than the choices made by his parents that you approve of using the force of law to make them do what YOU think is best.
It is important that the boy is educated to be a mediocrity so that he will fit in with the rest of the poor benighted products of the State system.Why be a chess champion when he can hold his head down with pride,as a Deputy Assistant Outreach Co-ordinator.
Be realistic, anybody who has a talent has, nowadays, got to establish themselves at an early age otherwise they are left at the starting post.
Why not let the boy have a chance,he can always train to be a nobody later.
What do you think children think when they see teachers wearing cheap tatty clothes,with second hand cars and dead end jobs. “Work hard kid and you too can be like me”
To quote the late Al Shanker,founding member and long time president of the American Federation of Teachers
“I’ll start caring about kids when kids start paying union dues”.
Perry
I can easily retort why do YOU think you know whats best for him. I yes I think the state has a right to compell a child to recive a minimum amount of education since without it they are robbed of having choices in life.
The question then is, what is the minimum. I’d say just english and maths – the rest can be decided by the parents.
Um, he is already a chess champion. What else do you want to educate him to be? A football player? A social worker? A street sweeper?
(disgusted noise)
Then you completely miss the point. I have not stated what my opinion is as to what is best for the boy and as *I* do not want my view to be imposed by force, it does not actually matter if I think chess is a good use of educational time or not.
You on the other hand want to see force used to prevent the parents from doing what they think is best, so our positions cannot be compared at all.
“But the state has the right to give other people’s children an education which only qualified them for digging ditches and flipping burgers? ”
I have MAJOR problems with the state education system, and the whole theory that runs through it. But I think the underlying sentiment to this comment is indicative of the problems with the education system in this country. We believe that if you get the right education, or a better one than you had, you can rise above a certain station. And I’m not sure that’s right. Of course, the problem with the state system is that the 1902 Education Act was introduced by a civil servant with an obseesive belief in the universal benefits of a liberal education. Since then, we’ve never caught up with other countries in the provision of vocational qualification.
Would voluntary education help this significantly? I doubt it; it would require a culture change imploring us to think outside of how we currently conceive education in terms of what it should achieve (hence the ignorance regarding many comments about vocational training). Indeed, the early British system bent over backwards on a regular basis to accommodate voluntary schools despite STRONG evidence that they were failing their kids; didn’t have enough money, shoddy buildings, poor teachers etc.
Is our state system too regulated? Yes. But is voluntary education the way forward? No.
No perry YOU are saying the child must be forced to comply with the parents education ideals. And are the parents using any more force than the authority. Seems to me that both sides here are playing hard – so I do think that two points of view are comparable.
Re GILES’s Why was story first sent to a pro home schooling american blog […]
Answering as the head of a statewide homeschooling organization and one of the contributors to the blog in question, I’d say it’s most likely because American homeschoolers have been fighting and winning battles against overweening bureaucrats and legislators for some three decades. It seems reasonable to assume that the mother was simply casting about for support and advice in a place in which her motives and parenting views wouldn’t be subject to immediate suspicion, as they have been here.
I must say however that I disagree with one plank of her views: “I believe that this [financial and academic] assistance should be available to home educators if they wish to make use of it.” State money always comes with ever-tightening strings, as we’ve found out in states that offer “hybrid” programs. Such overtures must be firmly rejected, and taxes that support schools but return no benefit tp home educators must be seen as the price of freedom.
Essentially you’ve missed the point. It is this:
The market is better at providing the education, in that it is susceptible to commercial pressures (assuming there is meaningful competition) and thus can run schools more efficiently and at a lower per capita cost than the state. Furthermore, the choice available between competing privtae schools results in different methods being available to achieve this, in contrast to the uniform method imposed by a monolithic state system.
History suggests, however, that leaving the choice of what is taught, or indeed whether anything should be taught, to the parents or to the free market is not such a good idea. In general, a minimum level of education mandated at a national level – but not necessarily provided by state schools – tends to result in a more useful education to a recognised standard and provides the children with a set of tools which enables them to get the most out of their lives. I contrasted the minimalistic British system of the 19th century with the more comprehensive, technically literate system imposed in Germany at the same time as a handy and well-known illustration of the principle. The relative performances of the two economies and the disparity in innovation and technical ability between them is striking and it is perhaps the most accessible example of the difference in the two philosophies.
There is nothing wrong with children being edcuated in either state or private schools, or at home by private tutors, or by their own parents. This is not the issue. The point is that a suitable degree of education should be given, such that the child is able to make its way in the world to the best of its ability and to have the widest range of choice available in its life.
Voluntary systems don’t provide this, or rather provide it only to very few – those whose parents can see far enough ahead, for example. Left to the market, education will be the minimum necessary to function in the market at that time – anything more is unnecessary expense and will be in general (although not in every case) avoided. Note that this refers to what level of education the market will provide IN GENERAL in the absence of any compulsion, not how well it provides it or what greater education some individual schools may offer.
For better or worse, we do not live in a simple world where only a minimal degree of education is sufficient. Basic literacy and numeracy is not enough any more, and it has not been for many years. To achieve the most in life, the individual needs the greatest possible understanding (consistent with his ability) of language, mathematics, sciences, etc., and needs to specialise in things for which he has a talent. This is more than the minimum needed to work in a factory, which is what the non-state system in 19th C. Britain was basically providing. It costs quite a lot of money, and takes a long time to achieve this. Left to themselves, an uncompelled market and uncompelled parents will not in general make this happen, although a small number of parents will and a corresponding small number of private schools will arise to meet this demand.
There is a place for a state-mandated minimum educational requirement, and in my view it should be rather higher than currently exists. This does not mean the state needs to own and run schools, of course. Looking at the record, nations which do enourage and require a higher degree of basic education, and which prize education as a personal value, do tend to have more prosperous economies and produce a greater proportion of innovators than those who do not.
EG
YOU are saying the child must be forced to comply with the parents education ideals. And are the parents using any more force than the authority
Oh, so sorry, apologist for the state, but unless you can, prior to taking any action, provide sufficient evidence that the actions of the parents represent clear, immediate, and declarative harm to the child, then the right of the parents to make decisions for their child supersedes the involvment of the state.
RDale – as we’ve been saying the fact that this one child out of 50,000 home schoolers is prima facie evidence that the intervention probalby is justified.
2. Unfortunately the parents arent asking for the state not to be involved – read the letter and you’ll see that they’re asking the state to pay to pay for the deficiencies in their kids home schooling.
So while I’d agree with you that parents ahve the right to choose how to educate their children (above some certain de minimis level), this is not the issue at stake.
What we have here is parents asking the state to subsidise their kids education in a fashion they see fit.
Without any compulsion, just how far would people have educated their children?
*******
Does a law have to be passed to compulse people to put their trash out for pick up?
Any parent who wouldn’t want to be bothered with doing a better job than the public school system would leave their child in the public system for the shear convenience.
There are so many computer programs, videos, audios, books, educational toys, and activities available in the USA for purchase or to borrow from the library that public school is obsolete.
A big problem is when one subject is chosen for a class, it eliminates the other billions of possible learning opportunities, many of which might attract an individual child’s attention. So instead of the child paying attention because they are interested, they daydream and valuable learning time is lost…day after day….year after year. You may say, a school can’t do that for each child….yes, but a parent can. A child can learn much faster paying attention to an activity they like instead of staring at a clock waiting for time to pass. I got A’s and B’s but rarely paid attention. I spent the best part of 13 years of my youth staring at the clock. What a waste.
Gene
I’m with the parents on this one.
My wife and I had our own run-in with Hampshire and one of their schools over our daughter’s education a couple of years ago.
Hampshire are highly bureaucratic, and quite happy to use their position to play oppressive games with people: you may be in the right, but it can be very stressful and expensive to challenge them.
They will avoid at all costs admitting any failure on their part – even when it is blindingly obvious. And they really hate it if you challenge their received wisdom or authority – they were incensed when the headteacher of another school broke ranks to support us.
They are intimidating in the USA too. They use a “consensus” tool to intimidate at every level. The strategy they use is called the “Delphi Technique” … (used by educators all over the USA)
If there is ever a grievance or conflict between a teacher and some students or parents and it won’t go away, educators use the “Delphi Technique”. With this technique, the school will hold a mock “meeting” with the parents present (the parents will think it is a real meeting), and the outcome will be decided before it ever takes place. The seemingly unbiased moderator will go around the room and politely ask each parent to state their case. They will identify the group leader, then they will publicly humiliate the leader with wording such as “stop wasting these good people’s time”.
Google on: “Delphi technique”… You can also find strategy to recognise and overcome the Delphi Technique when it is being used on you.
Gene
The notion that state schooling enabled Germany and the US to overtake Britain economically is absurd. In Prussia and the US (and France, for that matter) education was, for the most part, compulsory from the 18th century or even earlier. In 17th C New England, most townships had ordinances compelling school attendance.
Yet where did the industrial revolution start? If you don’t know the answer to this one, you have no business commenting on any issue involving education. Britain had a head start of almost 100 years on the rest of the world. It dominated the world commercially, technologically and industrially despite having a population a fraction the size of France or the new German Reich. It managed this remarkable feat without any state involvement in running schools, and without any form of compulsory education.
It is true that Britain’s relative decline was one of the stated reasons for the Forster act. However, to attribute this decline to Britain’s informal education arrangements is to mistake correlation with causation. How are we to take Japan’s relative decline now? Are their schools lacking in efficiency? To posit such a complex phenomena as economic decline with only one input is sheer ignorance.
If anyone is interested in an article written by myself and Prof Dennis O’Keeffe which covers most of the points raised in this discussion, I will be happy to post it. Beware– it is 8,000 words. It will be appearing this spring in an American book on homeschooling.
Tom, I would love to read your article.
Gene
Gene,
Just send an e-mail to me at burkard@tiscali.co.uk, and I will reply with a Word attachment.