TCS
Not “Taking Children Seriously,” but “Tech Central Station”
Sean Gabb has a very interesting essay on the state of education in the UK. It’s not a pretty picture. Home education makes a cameo appearance way down at the end:
Left to themselves, it is hard to see how parents could do worse than those presently in charge of state education. How they might do better is for them to decide. Some would pay for a conventional independent education. Some would send their children to schools run by their ministers of religion, or by charitable bodies. Some would educate their children at home.
Many do this last already, by the way; and Paula Rothermel of Durham University caused a stir in 2002, when she looked at a sample of children educated at home and found they performed consistently better in standard tests than schoolchildren. Indeed, she found that the children of people like bus drivers and shop assistants were receiving a better education than those committed to the care of state-certified teachers. Home education may not always be that good. State education generally is that bad.
I’m sure Carlotta would find nothing new there, but it makes for interesting reading for us on the other side of the Atlantic.
Related Tags: homeschooling, home education
One Response to “TCS”
 Comment by Carlotta June 28th, 2006 at 12:45 pm |
Bother…have clearly been away too long! Can’t find the link, but the above does sound very familiar. Sean Gabb is probably right to query the degree of objectivity of Dr Rothermel’s research since her study subjects were a self-selecting bunch, but there are undoubtedly some very good results issuing from HE families where the educational level of the parents is not demonstrable by way of qualifications. Generally Paula’s research is a very useful bit of PR for HE in the UK, but the reason most choose to home educate is often not so much to do with the end results, being more a matter of first principles, either political or religious, or else more practical purposes, such as providing a safe place for their child. |