Childrens Liberation Front against Graham Badman's report

A protest song and video by the Childrens Liberation Front against Graham Badman's report and the prospect of enforced schooling

these are the lyrics (for the hard of hearing)

We don't need your registration
We don't need your yearly goals
No right of entry to our houses
Badman leave home ed alone
Hey Badman leave us kids alone
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another pawn for Ed Balls

A Response to the Report on the Review of Elective Home Education in England

Created by Education Otherwise

Homeschooling in England; Under Attack

In North America, we enjoy the right to educate our children outside of school with little or no interference from the State. In England, home education has always been seen as an acceptable route to go- up until now.


Kelly Green is a Canadian monitoring the situation closely. She reports that a few days ago the "independent expert" stirring up all the trouble gave evidence before a Parliamentary Select Committee. This individual is the same one wrote the report recommending that all home educators should have to supply a complete educational plan a year in advance for each child, force their children to display "evidence" to Local Authorities that the plan had been followed, and allow their children to be interviewed, alone, with no trusted adult present, to ensure that they were "voluntarily" being home educated.

In her email message Green notes that home educators in England are living a nightmare; they are being accused of child abuse by this man, the Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Children, Schools and Families and many of the nation's biggest newspapers.

Green writes that many home educators are now planning to flee the country, but others intend to stay and fight, or have no choice to leave. They are now working out their next steps, and there may be things we can help with.

She urges us to read the following blogs to find out more about what is happening to them;
http://threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com/2009/10/childrens-right-to-speak.html?showComment=1255447798276#c5185852642476695258


http://www.renegadeparent.net/post/Wave-goodbye-to-home-education.aspx#top


http://www.patchofpuddles.co.uk/archives/2886/again-with-the-numeracy-lessons-for-people-who-should-know-better

This organization is one of the ones leading the fight:

http://ahed.pbworks.com/

A blog about what kids themselves have to say:

https://heyc.org.uk/

Meanwhile, an email to Ed Balls, the Minister of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, letting him know that this is becoming an international issue of civil and human rights, would be a worthy act of support and solidarity. info@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk Also, you can email the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee, Barry Sheerman, through his web site: http://www.barrysheerman.org.uk/

Check back at Freedom and Choice in Education--BC for updates. http://facebc.pbworks.com/

350 Hamilton: World Climate Change Day of Action

John Holt on Alternative Schools

Periodically, I like to refer to John Holt's writing to keep me on track as to what authentic learning is really about. In an essay he wrote for Growing Without School (#17) he said he wanted to do away with the idea of compulsory learning, and the idea that learning should be separate from the rest of life. "Above all, I want to break down the barriers that separate children from adults and their work and concerns."
"It's okay to have special places for kids, since they have certain needs that in some respect are different from the needs of adults....But they should not have to spend all their time in those special places. The adult world should be as far as possible open to them,and they should not have to go to special places unless they want to.

"People say to me quite often,"I want to work with kids." What they really mean is that they want to work on kids, to do things to them or for them, usually without their consent,which they think will do them good. I often say to these well meaning people,"Why not find some work worth doing and then try to find ways to make it possible for young people to join you in this work?"

"This is very different from starting an alternative school. Children (and youth especially -my words) should be able to have contact with many adults who are outside their families, and whose work is not taking care of them. They should be able,if they wish, to make friends with adults who may or may not be friends of or even known to their parents. They should be able to see adults at work and to share in that work according to their energy and skill.
If we want to call the place where this work is done a 'school," I suppose we can. But I would prefer something new, and in our time this is new, I'd rather think of a new name for it than bend an old name out of shape to fit it."

Holt felt uneasy about the relationship between adults and children in alternative schools claiming that in regular school the "relationship is stark and clear."
Wrote Holt, "School is the Army for kids. Adults make them go there..tell them what to do, bribe and threaten them.. When the teachers in an alternative school try to give up this bad relationship, it is very unclear what they put in its place. If they are not there to tell the children what to do, what are they there for? To "help" the children? Did the children ask for this help? Can they get away from it?...Are they the students' servants or their bosses, or if neither, then what? Is the task of adults in alternative schools to think up interesting things for the students to do and then try to seduce or cajole them into doing them? Is their task to be available if students want their help, but otherwise to stay out of the way? Neither of these seems to me like good life-work for serious adults.
"I personally would hate to be in the position of having to think up things for children to do and to find ways to get them to do them. If and when they ask me, I often show them how to do things i like to do, so that we can do them together. But I am not going to do thins that bore me in the hope that they many interest or be good for them. Thus I am glad to play my cello with the children around,and to offer them a chance to play if they want. But if they don't want, that's fine with me; I am not trying it "get them interested" in playing cello. I am not going to take up painting in the hope that, seeing me, children will get interested in painting. Let people who already like to paint, paint where children can see them.
"When adults come into our office with children, if we are doing anything which children can do, we ask them if they want to help, and they almost always say Yes. They work hard and well, and are a real help. I think children could and would like to help adults much sooner and in more ways than most adults give them a chance to."

Raffi: Kids for Saving the Earth -Promise Song

A poem

Something new is upon us, and yet nothing is ever new. ... We are alive in a fearsome time, and we have been given new things to fear. We've been delivered huge blows but also huge opportunities to reinforce or reinvent our will, depending on where we look for honor and how we name our enemies. The easiest thing is to think of returning the blows. But there are other things we must think about as well, other dangers we face. A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world's best juices for ourselves—these may also be our enemies. The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

small wonder - barbara kingsolver - 2002

One of the favourite things I've always loved about being a parent is reading to my kids. Sadly as they grow older there are fewer opportunities to do so-and the kids prefer to go off and read their own books by then. Still, i am lucky to have the attention of my youngest kid yet and I just finished reading a most wonderful book called Skellig by David Almond. How surprising it was and exciting to discover a girl (Mina) living the unschooled life; who moves in the world and learns following her natural curiosity so thoroughly and whose experience, contrasted against the schooled life really brings forth the 'rightness' of what authentic learning is about. It is now school that is portrayed as un-natural, a curiosity to wonder about (rather than self directed learning). When Michael (the protagonist) is working on his school work (after missing school due to the distress he is in because of his very sick baby sister), Mina looks at the worksheets; It is thought that Man is d-----------------from the apes. This is the Theory of E--------------This theory was developed by Charles D--------------. There was sentence after sentence like that. Mina read the sentences out loud. She said, "Blank blank blank," in a singsong voice when she came to the dashes. She stopped after the first three sentences and just looked at me.
"Is this really the kind of thing you do all day?" she said.
When she flicks through the book that Michael and his class are reading she asks about the red sticker.
"It's for confident readers," I said. "It's to do with reading age."
And what if other readers want to read it?"
"And where would William Blake fit in?" said Mina. "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night." Is that for the best reader of the worst readers? Does that need a good reading age?"..."and if it were for the worst readers would the best readers not bother with it because it would be too stupid for them?"she said.
If you're looking to get inspired about life, beauty, the extraordinariness of things get ye a copy of this book!

Creativity and Conformity Don't Mix

Is it possible to be socialized and creative at the same time? Unlikely, according to Robert Epstein (The Case against Adolescence) who argues that in order to make people 'civil,' "we need them to learn to conform to a wide variety of rules and practices, a practise scientists call 'socialization.' The process starts at birth and it shifts into high gear when we start school."
I intuitively knew this since before my daughters were born and so I didn't put them in school. I wanted to preserve their creativity and I am delighted to say that it worked. My oldest girl recently complained about how with drawing she was "a terrible artist because she had no guidelines, she had no one to copy from, no one showed me how. I just muddled along." When she started school in grade 8 she says she her work was so different from everyone else's; that now with learning techniques at school she is "actually really good" and is contemplating a career in the arts. I had to point out to her that it is because she was not influenced by rules and how to dos all those years of not going to school that she preserved her creativity and so that now that she is older she is able to make use of technique without compromising creativity.
As Epstein writes,"children are constantly imagining and playing and sculpting and building and drawing, and they seldom 'copy'; copying in fact is a skill they need to be taught...no one needs to teach a young child to think outside boxes. By first grade however, when elementary schools-now competing nationwide to get high 'academic performance indices'-dramatically increase the academic load, the frequency of creative expression declines."
Epstein goes on to ask the question,"with powerful social forces bearing down, how to any of us end up being 'creative?'
"Generally speaking, the children and adults who continue to express creativity at a high rate are the misfits-the risk takers and the authority-defyers who resist socialization."
Which brings us to teens again (remember-this series of posts was supposed to focus on youth). Since teens as a group are made misfits in todays society-"teens should express more creativity on the average than adults do, because the less one conforms to society's rules, the more likely one is to live up to one's creative potential. When we look at teen creativity, that's exactly what we find."

Unschooling 101

My friend, Betsy Agar teaches a course at McMaster University and invited me to speak to her 'Engineering in Society' class of third year students. What a great bunch of kids! They were really interested in the topic-Unschooling/Open source learning and asked good questions, and gave thoughtful comments.
I introduced the idea of unschooling by reading a chapter from Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking. What a hoot! 'Pippi goes to school' was the chapter I read to the class. Why did I choose Pippi? Well, she is really the quintessential unschooler. Yes,she displays great ignorance and even rudeness.But she is also truthful; "Well now, really my dear little woman," said Pippi,"that is carrying things too far. You just said that seven and five are twelve. There should be some rhyme and reason to things even in school. Furthermore, if you are so childishly interested in that foolishness, why don't you sit down in a corner by yourself and do arithmetic and leave us alone so we can play tag?"
So the spirit behind what she says and does is what an honest experience of unschooling would entail.
She tries to create meaning in the questions the teacher asks the students, attempting to contextualize an otherwise vague inquiry;"If Lisa has seven apples and Axel has nine apples, how many apples do they have together?"
"Yes, you tell Tommy," Pippi interrupted."And tell me too, if Lisa gets a stomach ache and Axel gets more stomach ache, whose fault is it...?"
This is not a smart alec talking but someone who is actually reflecting on the question as well as the outcome!
When it comes to drawing the "snip of paper" that the teacher gives the kids is far too small for her and she has already filled it up and is moving onto the floor to complete her picture of a horse;"Just now I'm working on his front legs,but when I get to this tail I guess I'll have to go out in the hall."
The non confirming, exuberant, joyful child is open to the world and refuses a type of 'learning' that takes space in the confines of a school room; "There's altogether too many apples and ibexes and snakes and things like that. It makes me dizzy in the head. I hope that you, Teacher won't be sorry." And not too long after, she gaily leaves on her horse. With a 'ringing laugh Pippi rode out through the gate so wildly that the pebbles whirled around the horse's hoofs and the windowpanes rattled in the schoolhouse.' Awesome!