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One thing that has struck me over the past two years is that when Lin and I have spoken to members of the press or to teachers, they often seem surprised to hear that the choices we have made for our children's education have been guided by whether or not our children are happy.
In my turn, I was surprised to discover  that something that I assumed to be completely natural should appear to them to be a slightly strange and unusual educational philosophy.  To me, both as a teacher and as a parent, the happiness of the children under my care has always seemed to be the only guiding principle upon which I can  safely rely - if children are happy, then everything is OK, if they are not, then something has to be changed. Abandoning this principle would be akin to cutting oneself adrift in a stormy ocean, on a dark night, with no charts, no rudder, and no light to see by, and yet this appears to be precisely what the modern education system has done.

My experience relates principally to the UK, and although other countries probably have similar problems, I recognise that I am not qualified to pass judgement on their systems of education. As regards to the UK, however, it is clear that almost everyone involved in the world of education has forgotten that children have a basic right to be happy. Instead of being guided by whether or not children are leading fulfilled lives, adults have allowed themselves to be deluded into believing that it is acceptable to put children through a certain amount of trauma in the present, if, in the future, it might mean that they can get a qualification or a job.

This is a sure recipe for disaster: for who is to say how much trauma is acceptable? Everyone knows that it is wrong to mistreat children, but once it has been accepted that they can be mistreated providing that it is for their own eventual good, then all sense of direction is lost and, over the course of time, just about anything can happen - and can be justified. This is what is now happening in the school system; in any other place, or in any other time everyone would accept that a mother is the person who knows their child best, who loves their child, and who can be relied upon to do what is best for their child, but we now have mothers being sent to prison, simply because they will not force their children to go to school; repeated surveys show that children are experiencing stress and anxiety in their lives and that it is caused principally by school, exams, and school 'friendships', but instead of seeing this as something that has to be changed, it is regarded as being an unfortunate side effect of the necessity of going to school; schools are such miserable institutions that they share the same problems as prisons - bullying, drug abuse, violence, and intimidation - but instead of getting children out of such places, government ministers suggest introducing random drug testing of children. The situation continues to get worse, but because it does so incrementally, no one involved realises the extent to which they have become detached from reality. We are moving towards a situation in which schools may one day be patrolled by armed guards - the frightening thing is that if they are, and if then the staff start shooting the pupils, they will probably still think that it is the children who are to blame.

The ongoing revue of school qualifications makes it clear that nothing has been gained by hardening our hearts to the well being of children. Universities and employers have made it clear that at as  far as they are concerned, standards in both literacy and numeracy have been in decline for years; GCSEs and A levels are having to be abandoned; and schools have failed the 'non-academic' students so badly that it has had to be acknowledged that they would be better off if they were allowed to go to work.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the only principle that parents can safely allow themselves to be guided by is whether or not their children are happy. Every parent knows that ensuring the happiness of their children is not an easy or straightforward task - there are many unforeseen circumstances that can disrupt the best laid plans - but it is an ideal to which we can always aspire and which keeps us more or less on the right course.

By definition, happy children have a fulfilled childhood, and a fulfilled childhood is bound to be the best preparation for later life.

The education system as a whole is unlikely to be able to absorb the significance of this simple truth overnight and it is unrealistic for parents to imagine that one day government-backed reforms will be introduced that suddenly transform schools into civilised places. It is clearly parents themselves who will have to take the initiative if a change for the better is ever to take place.

With this in mind, we are in the process of re-organising the freedom-in-education website, with a view to making it a more a useful resource for parents and children who want help and support in the field of education. In particular I would like to feature more groups, activities, events, etc. that would give people a sense that they are not alone in taking responsibility for their own children's education.
Any contributions from subscribers to the newsletter would be gratefully received...

Please send comments and suggestions to:
gareth.lewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk

Education: An Historical Perspective

The way in which a parent chooses to educate their child is one of the most important decisions that they have to make in their lives, and it is, therefore, surprising that they are given so little opportunity to reflect upon what would really constitute a good education.

Instead of being encouraged to decide for themselves what would be in the best interests of their child, parents are given the impression that anyone who does not  commit themselves to the current system runs the risk of doing their child irreparable harm. Almost as soon as a baby is born, parents feel as though they are under pressure to reach certain targets, beginning with making sure that their baby learns to crawl, walk, talk, and read according to a specific timetable, and this process does not stop once a child clears these initial hurdles. If anything, it becomes even more intense, and parents feel obliged to conform to the latest beliefs about nursery schooling, when children should start school, how many hours children should spend in school, and what they should study in school. Furthermore, they are expected to encourage their children to compete with other children in an attempt to get the ‘best grades’, get into the ‘best’ schools, get the ‘best’ examination results, get into the ‘best’ universities, and eventually get the ‘best’ jobs.

Throughout all of this there is an underlying assumption that the current school system is a tried and tested method of education that has a proven track record built up over many generations, and that it is the few people who choose not to participate in it who are taking a risk with their child’s future.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Compulsory mass schooling is, in fact, a very radical experiment which is little more than fifty years old – it was introduced after the second world war as a hurried and disorganised response to both changes in the workplace, and the greater aspirations amongst ordinary people for a fair share of the wealth and prosperity that they had fought to preserve over the course of two world wars.

Fifty years is not long enough for any system of education to prove itself, but this particular system, in the UK at least, has been overhauled every few years in response to public criticisms of elitism, poor standards, and its irrelevance to life in the outside world, with the result that the schools to which parents are being asked to send their children, now have virtually no track record, and parents really have no guarantee that the 'education' that their children receive will be of any use in later life.

How Were People Educated in the Past?

In most Western countries, prior to the 1940s, schools represented only one small element in a complex network of social institutions responsible for preparing a child for life in the adult world. Children appear to have been involved in almost every aspect of community life, and therefore to have had almost unlimited opportunities to come to terms with, and understand, the world around them. Most children learnt the vast majority of what they needed to know from family members, either in the home or by working alongside their parents or close relations; in other cases, apprenticeships and jobs were arranged for them by their parents, according to their understanding of what was in the best interest of their own children. If children did go to school it was often only for a few months or a few years – sufficient to learn how to read and write – and it was not seen as the major part of their preparation for life. The exception to this was provided by wealthy families who sometimes sent their sons to school from as young as six or seven-years-old until they were in their mid to late teens – but even amongst the privileged classes, schools were not always the preferred educational choice. Families who had sufficient resources often employed private tutors and governesses; girls were seldom sent to full-time school for long periods of time; and home education was a well-respected tradition right up until the early part of the twentieth century.

The best way to gain an understanding of how this system worked is to ask older people how they themselves were educated, and what sort of education their parents and grandparents received; or, indeed, to try to trace the nature of the education that your own parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents received. It can be surprising to discover that even lawyers, accountants, and other professional people who trained in the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s left school in their teens and gained their qualifications, and much of their education, through work-based training and their own efforts.

This was a highly flexible system, which – although no doubt far from perfect – ensured that each child received an education tailored to their own individual needs, overseen by the people who cared for them and loved them. The disadvantage that we would perhaps see today is that this tended to result in children following more or less the same course in life as their mothers and fathers – whereas we have become accustomed to the idea that children have the right to aspire to a higher standard of living and more prestigious employment than their parents.

For this to be possible, however, it has always been understood that children would need to be better educated than their parents, and it is far from clear that this is something that a school can achieve on its own.

Education, Training and Literacy

Some of the problems inherent in the current education system could be due to the fact that, when compulsory schooling was first introduced, not enough care was taken to understand the difference between education and training. The drawback with the established system of work-based training was that it resulted in many people being left only semi-literate;  if a person’s job did not call for them to use the written word, it was possible for them to pass their whole lives being unable to read. It was perceived that educated people could read and it was accepted that a higher standard of educa­tion was desirable and somehow the assumption was made that the way to improve educational standards was to ensure that everyone learnt to read. However, a more considered analysis would lead most people to recognise that although the ability to read is an impor­tant component of education, it does not follow that, simply because someone can read, they are truly educated.

One of the main reasons why education is regarded as a valuable and worthwhile goal is because, over the course of history, it is the better-educated people who have provided the impetus for the growth and development of countries and societies: it is they who have led the way in scientific and technological innovations and it is also they who have set the standards for creative and cultural activities and the social institutions that improve the quality of life for society as a whole. However, this originality and creativity has never been thought to arise automatically out of their ability to read: rather, the desire to learn to read represents just one facet of what could be said to make up an educated person, it has to be combined with a lively interest in every aspect of life, a willingness to explore new ideas, an enthusiasm for new challenges, and, hopefully, as a child grows up, it will be combined with such qualities as a care for others, a respect for truth and honesty, and a desire to use their knowledge for the benefit of soci­ety as a whole. Therefore, although learning to read and write is important because it opens up a doorway into the world of knowledge, if it is taught in such a way as to alienate a young person from wanting to explore that world, then it loses its educational value.

From this point of view, few people would argue that schools have ever pro­vided a good educational environment: they do not stimulate personal creativity, freedom of action, freedom of thought, independence, or a sense of personal responsibility. In the past, their strength was not really in education, in providing a specialised form of training: boys who went to school attained some learning, but at the same time were taught to do what they were told without question. This made them fit for administrative work in such institutions as the government, the legal profession, the established Church, the army, banking, etc. but in many ways it could be seen as the opposite of education – which is presumably why such a high proportion of the inventors, writers, scientists, and innovators who have changed and enriched our society over the past few hundred years did not go to school.

Even standards of literacy may have been higher amongst some of the people who did not go to school than amongst those who did; this is demonstrated by a study of letters, journals, and books that survive from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At that time, boys from wealthy families were often sent to school and girls were not, but when reading the surviving material, it soon becomes apparent that many women had attained a very high level of education and that, in fact, the quality of their writing is far superior to anything that one is likely to find anywhere today.

This clearly demonstrates that school is not necessary for education, and suggests that the reason why it was adopted so readily as the standard educational institution, is not because it was seen as the best way of educating children, but rather, because people had become envious of the wealth and privileges that were enjoyed by the boys who had been to school, and wanted the same advantages for their own children.

Understandable though this motivation might be, logic would suggest that a system built on such principles has no chance of sustained success: if everyone is trained to compete for jobs that have traditionally been highly paid but which are, in themselves, of little or no practical value, while at the same time, real work and real skills are neglected, then it will not be long before graduates of such a system find themselves unwanted and more or less unemployable.

It does not follow from this, however, that the desire to improve standards of education is misguided. A study of the long course of human history shows that there has always been an ongoing and irrepressible drive amongst people everywhere, and at all times, to improve their condition and to broaden their horizons through a process of education, whenever the opportunity has presented itself.

The current problems in the education system are not caused by the fact that fifty years ago people aspired to higher levels of education; rather, they are the result of parents, since then, having lost sight of the ideal of really ensuring that their children are given an opportunity to attain higher educational standards than themselves. In order for this to be achieved, a much more imaginative, committed and enjoyable approach is required than simply sending children to school: everything that was good about the old, pre-1940s, system should be retained – involvement of the family, children being part of the wider community, work-based and home-based training, etc.; new technology could be exploited; schools could play their part; and, perhaps most importantly of all, parents could inspire their children by themselves being committed to a process of life-long learning.

At present too many parents are asking themselves, ‘How can I make sure that my child gets the best grades?’, ‘How can I make sure that my child gets into the best school?’, and ‘How can I make sure that my child gets the best job?’, but, in the long run, it is the parents who asked questions such as ‘How can I inspire my child to love books?, ‘How can I help my child to fulfil their potential?’, and ‘How can I support my child to do what they want to do?’ who will be able to tell themselves that they have made a good job of their children's education.

Gareth Lewis

What Do You Think of Our Websites?

As mentioned above, I am in the process of rewriting the freedom-in-education website - with a view to making it more useful to people searching the internet for help and support.
I have started work on the home page and, over the next few weeks, hope to reorganise the whole site. Feedback and comments, would, as always, be most useful.
www.freedom-in-education.co.uk 

The Jamboree website is now in the hands of  Samuel, Wendy and Bethan and they have succeeded in giving it a unique character that appears to appeal to children and to reassure parents. Please feel free to visit the site and to let us know what you think of it.
www.jamboree.freedom-in-education.co.uk

Please note that I have changed my e-mail address ( I was starting to get rather too much junk mail):
gareth.lewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk

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