At primary level perhaps this does not matter so much because it is believed that children at this level are not able to master the material at such complex levels as, say, secondary children are

Well this is where school is wrong for so many children, children like mine are very able to but they are not able to write it down till secondary level, or not sufficiently to demonstrate the sophistication of their understanding. They have problems transposing numbers so make mistakes in simple maths but later go on to understand complex proofs and logic with relative ease. Primary school especially is abusive as performance is all that matters, performance and stats. School tells these children that they are unintelligent and a failure and how many never learn different, I had no idea of how very wrong they were about me until well into my 50s. Home ed lets the child learn and teach through conversation, hard to imagine how school could match it. Perhaps if it became a resource to help children answer their many questions rather that shut up sit down keep still stop talking. Due to my own dire and abusive education where I was blamed and shamed for having a different brain not a plodding sequential one but a leaps and spurts and make odd connections one I have protected my children from the damage schools do to people like us. We are the wrong shape for mass teaching, but I have learnt a lot about learning and child psychology and development in the process. Good luck with your Phd, it would be wonderful if a change that protected neurodiverse kids from plodding repetitive curricula and being profoundly misunderstood could could be instigated but you must know that government usually go in exactly the opposite direction of what quality research suggests would be efficacious.

Thing is children who are home educated can play through the primary years and pick up everything that is taught so laboriously to the children trapped in the classroom for so many hours, so many years, as a bi product of play and curiosity.

The LTTL Conference

Would have loved to go to this conference but sadly not well enough yet.

Second best is reading blogs from those who did:

Outside the box

Uncaged family.

Will add more as I find them.

Right to Learn

A blog I wrote as part of a series called Right to Learn on the Human Rights in Ireland blog.

Autonomous education is a form of education which respects the child’s right to determine its own learning journey.  Autonomous educators believe that learning is as natural to humans as breathing and children do not need to be forced to engage in it in the way they traditionally are.  Without coercion learning just continues throughout life and a child picks up ideas and skills which are significant in their culture in the same way as they learn to walk and talk.  For most children this endeavour is interrupted by school where the child has to follow someone else’s agenda whether they like (or can take advantage of it) or not, which can lead to a loss of enthusiasm for learning that can last for life. 

For autonomous educators such coercive education is not only wrong, it is far less effective because over a childhood the autodidactic child will, as a side effect of following their own interests, cover everything they will need to become a well functioning citizen in the society to which they belong.  But a parent doesn’t just stand back; providing a rich and stimulating environment, together with outings and resources is an essential part of the package.

These ideas grew out of, and have been informed by, the writings of radical educational thinkers such as Ivan Illich in his book Deschooling Society and from the States writers such as John Holt and John Taylor Gatto.  Sandra Dodd is currently one of the most influential thinkers and writers on unschooling with her book Moving a Puddle and other Essays and her website on Radical Unschooling which applies the principles of the child’s autonomy to the whole lifecourse.  Jan Fortune Wood who has written an introduction to autonomous learning, Doing it Their Way and Roland Meighan promote the principles of natural learning in Britain.

There are examples of autonomously educated children going to university sometimes on the basis of an interview alone, although if a child wishes they can take GCSEs, iGCSE’s, A levels or Open University courses often at a young age.  But traditional academic outcomes are not the holy grail, those lucky enough to have been enabled to learn in this way from the start have not only had the opportunity to thoroughly explore their interests, but have been living in the real world and experiencing the consequences of their choices all their lives.

However here in England we have recently weathered the severest threat to autonomous education for some time.  At the moment local authorities have no monitoring role and home educators known to them are free to provide an education in line with their own philosophical beliefs as long as there is no evidence that an education is not being provided. 

If a child doesn’t start school there is no obligation to let the local authority know that you are home educating any more than there is an obligation to inform some authority that you have adopted a vegetarian diet  However some local authorities have difficulty understanding their legal position and because of this, and lobbying from the Directors of Children’s Services who fear the consequences to themselves if something were to happen to a child on their watch; plus a desire on the part of the DCSF to find a scapegoat for the death of poor Khyra Ishaq - a devastating failure of Birmingham Social Services - a review of home education was commissioned from former Managing Director of the Children, Families and Education Directorate for Kent County Council Graham Badman in January 2009. 

Despite an overwhelming response from stakeholders against any change Badman recommended a draconian regime of registration and monitoring which included a plan of education for the year ahead.  This in itself would have put an end to truly autonomous education which depends on the educator responding to the child’s interests of the moment and can change course at any time.

These recommendations caused vigorous protest amongst home educators in, England and elsewhere, carrying out their duty to provide an education for their children ‘either by regular attendance at school or otherwise’, as required by the Section7, Education Act 1996.  Registration for carrying out a legal duty together with the right of access to the home with no cause to suspect harm was an assault on our civil liberties and a reversion of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

 Thankfully due to very effective communication from home educators Schedule 1 of the Children Schools and Families Bill which included these recommendations was opposed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat parties and was thrown out when the recent general election was called.

Yet there is forever a threat from those who, like Graham Badman, think they know what education should look like and feel it is their duty to impose their model on all in the name of the rights of a child to an education.  There is much discussion amongst home educators at the moment as to how best limit this threat and ensure that home education including autonomous education becomes an accepted alternative to school.

Blogged at 

http://www.humanrights.ie/index.php/2010/05/20/right-to-learn-stafford-on-autonomous-education/#more-7305

Home education

Beth and I have been home educating for 15 and a half months now and she is a lot more relaxed and beginning to be self motivated.

When Beth was at school her special needs teacher always told us to play games with her to help her improve her number skills, but what works in general and in theory does not always work in practice. Previously Beth would have found the possibility of not winning too upsetting (we are still wobbling on a knife edge here but she is much better than before); you might say well a child has to learn to lose well and be a good sport, but what about games are meant to be fun and children learn well when having fun. Beth also had acute confusion between numbers especially 8 and 9 together with impulsive counting on which led to her getting her position on the board wrong. She does not take well to even the slightest hint of criticism perhaps because in the school system she has been wrong from the start just for being who she is, perhaps because she has a highly sensitive nature and is easily shamed.

Playing this game of Monopoly with her I watched her understanding of simple counting and number labels accelerate, it was fascinating and reminded me of Montessori’s “windows of opportunity”. She learnt more in that game than in the whole of the previous year and I think this was because the game happened at just the right moment and this is what makes autonomous learning and unschooling so effective.



This level of confusion in basic number skills does not mean however that Beth does not understand number concepts. Here she is with her brother (supposed to be revising for A level maths) learning basic algebra, and picking it up straight away.



We both love stories and I try to make sure that Beth’s dyslexia doesn’t mean that she misses out on children’s literature, both by reading to her and by supplying her with audio cds of her favourites which means she can listen to a book as many times as she wants too. I have also recently found a great organization called Calibre which loans tapes and CDs to the blind and dyslexic and this helps cut down the cost and provides variety.

The book we are reading at the moment is Physik by Angie Sage, the third part of a gripping and inventive magical trillogy.



Despite being unable to read fluently yet Beth has amazing comprehension and is always ahead of me in guessing what will happen next and very rarely has to ask for clarification of the plot. Being literate really has nothing to do with the act of reading, to my mind it is much more to do with an understanding of the way language can be used to entertain and entrance, to terrify and to bring one to the edge of one’s seat with anticipation. Beth has had these pleasures from a very young age and yet at school she was labeled as having literacy problems because she will be a late developer of clerical skills. I feel this is a dangerous and fundamental misunderstanding that pervades our education system. Taking her out of that system has limited the damage, but four years of being seen as defective will take some time to undo and emotionally she is still very fragile about her weaknesses.

She also has plenty of time to just play with no peer group telling her that she is too young to play like this or that she is being babyish. Nonsense I know as many adults love dolls houses but still the sort of taunt used by kids trying to maintain their status in the playground culture.





And this week she has started a totally autonomous project, exploring the textures that can be found about the house and making rubbings of them and has also begun to combine the textures to make art, and best of all has organized them herself into a ring binder. Of course the offcuts, scraps and rejects are still left for me to tidy up, but there is hope on the horizon!

Maybe she will let me take a picture of some of them to share soon.