Educating Otherwise

Xavier, our son, will be five years old this November. His experience of formal education thus far has been attendance at a local playgroup for three mornings a week. In England, the next step for a five year old is school, but not in Xavier’s case. The Education Act 1996 defines the parents duty as "... to cause (the child) to receive efficient full-time education suitable to his (or her) age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he (or she) may have either by regular attendance at school or 'otherwise.” So in Xavier’s case, I guess the operative word there is ‘otherwise’, because we are not planning to send him to school, at least not right now.

Our decision to educate our son out of school is something of a conversational minefield. We have many wonderfully understanding and supportive friends, but outside this circle I become rather uncomfortable talking about it. There are all sorts of reasons for this social discomfort: For one I don’t want our decision to be taken as a criticism of parents who choose to send their children to school; secondly, I really haven’t taken to the look that passes over some people’s faces when you tell them; and thirdly this invites the question of ‘why’ and I haven’t figured out the simple way to answer that with integrity.

It is not the radical decision some may think and there is a growing trend towards educating children away from school in this country. With some things we have a habit of thinking that they are the same the world over; it’s difficult to imagine them being any different to what we know. For example, if I asked you all to show me your wedding ring, you might think all married men and women pointed to the same digit on the left hand, the magical ring finger once believed to connect directly to the heart by the vena amoris and thus be a symbol of one's love. However, in a few European countries a Greek Orthodox bride will wear her wedding ring on the left hand before the marriage ceremony and transfer it to the right hand after the wedding. Likewise, children the world over do not all start compulsory schooling at the same age.

Whilst the journey through a fixed curriculum starts as young as four in England, children in sixteen other European countries (including France, Germany and Italy) are still at play, where the school age is six onwards. Perhaps more surprisingly - in Finland, a country regarded as having the highest educational standards in Europe, children start their compulsory education aged seven, and spend much fewer hours in the classroom than their English counterparts over their educational lives. So at this point in Xavier’s life, one could hardly justify raising an eyebrow at educating him out of school.

But this is England, and the shape of our modern day education system has risen up from the antiquated politics of the industrial revolution. Only two hundred years ago England argued virulently against the education of the poor for fear it would teach them to despise their lot in life and make them idle. One hundred and fifty years ago privileged girls who were lucky enough to be receiving an education had to make do with a curriculum aimed at preparing them for social display and companionship. Mean while, the Protestant work ethic of industrialized England set its poorer children to work under the strict regimes of the factory system, and to uncertain futures in the bowels of our coal mines. English children were a cheap source of labour for the industrialists and factory owners.

The demand for a more capable, ‘useful’ child worker; the demonization of the poor; warped religious attitudes to work and pleasure; an established upper class education reluctant to modernise its curriculum and purpose; an educational curriculum for the masses tempered by a fear of educating the poor; a narrow view of intellect conceived by our university system of educating; an era in which all that was to be learnt existed between the covers of books, in the head of a teacher, in a building called a school house; all of this is the mould from which today’s English education has been cast… and all this is what is wrong with education in England today.

All these tensions are evident in the way we organise our schools like factories and our children into batches of products grouped by age. Evident in the way our politicians still battle between an education for the masses or the preserve of an elite. Evident in the hierarchical way schools value and compartmentalise their subjects. Evident in the way each institution sees its purpose to be a stepping stone to the next institution. Evident in the way young people are directed towards futures that are perceived to be useful for our economy. Evident in the way the childhood joy we have for creativity, drawing, singing, dancing and music is quickly extinguished by a pressing timetable of more ‘important’ pursuits. Evident in the balance of power between educational institutions and children. Evident in the way the process of academic inflation has made a masters necessary where once a degree would do. Evident in the way we medicate our children to be like other children.

I’ve met many talented teachers in my life, but this is what they are up against and this is no criticism of them. Education, as an institution in this country, is dancing out of tune to the music. Anyone who is really interested in learning, would not choose to start with a model of schooling as we know it. And thankfully, English law permits that we don’t have to.