In fact, Freedom in Education was not our first choice of name when we decided to launch a website – our original idea had been to focus on home education, but as we researched what was available for parents who were seeking independent advice about education, our horizons broadened. My personal commitment (and I suspect that this is true for most other parents as well) has never been to home education itself but rather to trying to ensure that my children, and all other children, have the best education possible.

We therefore wanted to be free to recommend what we perceived to be the best in education, whatever it might be, and when we hit upon the name ‘Freedom in Education’, it felt right and we went ahead without giving too much thought to why we liked it and what it implied.

After having worked with the idea of Freedom in Education for a year, I realise that it no longer means exactly the same thing to me as when I first started. I suppose that at first the term implied that parents should be free to choose the education that they felt most appropriate for their children, or that children should be free to choose for themselves what sort of education they wanted. However, as time has gone on, I have realised that, although these things are important, they are secondary to the need for freedom itself in education. This is a difficult concept to grasp because education has become synonymous with a loss of freedom and with adults forcing children to do particular things at particular times; perhaps this is best illustrated by the following points:

· Freedom to be at Home. The home is tremendously important to a child. They can cope with leaving home from time to time if they are with their parents but if they are not free to be at home when they want to be, they will be in a state of constant stress. This does not just apply to young children, it applies to older people as well.

 

"School children are being subjected to a harsher regime than many prisoners, but they have done nothing wrong, they have broken no laws, and they have harmed no one."

· Freedom to Play. Playing is more important than studying – and if children are always being told what to do, and are away from their own homes for much of the time, then they do not have a chance to play.

· Freedom to Learn to Read When They Want To. It is simply not possible for one person to know when another person is ready to learn to read. The evidence from home-educating parents is that many children, and especially many boys, do not want to learn to read until they are ten or eleven years old, or maybe even older. The damage that is done by forcing someone to read when they do not want to is immeasurable. It can transform the brightest of children into someone who hates the sight of a book, and who remains traumatised by the experience for the rest of their life.

· Freedom to do What They Want to Do. Those of us who have home-educated our children have been able to watch them slowly evolve into responsible adults through making their own decisions. Consequently, when we see the situation that exists in school classrooms we cannot help but be deeply shocked. It is hard for us to believe that millions of children are still being told when they can talk, and when they can’t talk, when they can stand up, when they can walk around, when they can go outside, when they can play, when they should read, what they should read, etc., etc. School children are being subjected to a harsher regime than many prisoners, but they have done nothing wrong, they have broken no laws, and they have harmed no one. This is a fundamental infringement of personal freedom. Children who are being treated in this way know that it is wrong, and, in their hearts, teachers who treat children in this way also know that it is wrong. As well as being wrong, it is counterproductive – real education requires the willing participation of the student.

· Freedom to Select their Own Curriculum. Just as you cannot tell when someone is ready to learn to read, you cannot tell what they want to learn and when they will want to learn it. Difficult though it may be for some traditional teachers to accept, the experience of the past fifty years has clearly demonstrated that trying to force people to learn particular things leads to a rapid decline in educational standards. If you want people to receive an education, you have no choice but to give them freedom to study what they want, when they want.

· Freedom from Exams. Children have many strengths, but they are still young, and impressionable. An education system that offers children rewards on the basis of how well they do in tests and exams, is essentially aiming to corrupt them. Children who do well in exams get praise and receive better treatment. It is too much to expect that they should be able to resist this potent form of bribery and it is not surprising that millions of children are persuaded to abandon everything that they are interested in simply in order to learn things that they promptly forget the day after their exams are over.

 

"Difficult though it may be for some traditional teachers to accept, the experience of the past fifty years has clearly demonstrated that trying to force people to learn particular things leads to a rapid decline in educational standards."

Why Don’t People Respect Children’s Rights?

The education system, as it stands today, appears to be based on a fundamental lack of trust in human nature, and is consequently built around the following assumptions:

· If you don’t teach children how to behave, they will behave badly.

· If you don’t make children work, they will do nothing.

· If you don’t dictate a curriculum, children will grow up ignorant.

While it is easy to see how this view could have become established – it is always tempting to believe that one can achieve one’s aims by force – a moment’s reflection would show that, the best that such an approach could achieve would be that each generation fell just short of the previous one in knowledge and understanding; however, it was more likely to lead to young people rejecting everything that do at school, and thus give rise to a rapid decline in educational standards – which is what we are seeing today.

The alternative approach requires some faith in human nature, and a belief that:

· If you treat children with respect, they will behave impeccably.

· If you give children a chance to organise their own time, they achieve more than you can imagine.

· If you give children a say in what they want to learn, they will soon outstrip you in learning.

Given the fact that most of us have been subjected to the first form of education – in which people tried to bully us into learning things – it is often difficult for us to trust in a process in which children are free to learn in their own way. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that a system involving a fixed curriculum, compulsory schooling, exams, and qualifications, is so contrary to human nature that it is unsustainable.

The alternative may appear to be more fraught with difficulties – we are all inexperienced in treating children with respect so it is inevitable that we will make mistakes – but it does at least offer the possibility of success, and gives hope back to a situation that otherwise seems irredeemable.

Over the course of the past year, I have realised that Freedom is the missing ingredient in the education system, and that when it is added, things can only get better.

www.freedom-in-education.co.uk

The freedom in education website itself was set up just over a year and a half ago. It features articles and information about education. From a modest beginning it now averages over twelve thousand hits per month. Since it is a non-commercial site, not tied to any organisation, its popularity has grown by word of mouth.
The free freedom-in-education e-newsletter now has over nine hundred subscribers, which probably makes it the biggest circulation UK-based e-newsletter focussing on alternative educational issues.
News, comments, links, information and articles are gratefully received and included in the newsletter whenever possible

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Info…Info…Info…

ActivEO
Local Home Educating group for Hampshire and West Sussex in the south of England now has a web site: www.activeo.co.uk.
Masses of information about local events and contact details.

International Democratic Education Conference – IDEC2003
July 16-24 2003
Russell Sage College, New York
With only 6 weeks until IDEC 2003 starts, everything is moving into high gear.  There are now attendees coming from 25 countries as well as 55 schools from the US and around the world...
For more information           www.idec2003.com

Windmill workshops
'Build a robot in a weekend'
Also the Electronics Wizards
Apprentice starting in Sept.
Postal projects !
For more info: www.kidstuff.co.uk

Australasian Home Education Magazine
New, free, quarterly, e-magazine for home educators produced by Home Education Association Inc.
Downloadable from: www.hea.asn.au

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 Freedom in Education Magazine

·         articles

·         original cartoons

·         recipes, gardening, and history

·         The Brother’s Grimm story, Allerleirauh

·         Code, puzzles and a dot-to-dot

·         Euclid’s mathematics.

Essential reading for everyone interested in education.

UK and Europe:   £12 for twelve issues.
USA and Rest of the World:  $25 for twelve issues.
All prices include postage and packing

For more information:
http://www.freedom-in-education.co.uk/current_newsletter.htm

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 This newsletter is edited by Gareth Lewis, author of One-to-One, A Practical Guide to Learning at Home

Questions and comments: garethlewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk

© 2003 freedom-in-education     http://www.freedom-in-education.co.uk