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Freedom-in-Education Newsletter
February 2006
The subject of this month's newsletter is educational
materials. It is an interesting topic, because every home educating family is
faced with the same task of having to find books to read and work from. As you
will see in the article below, it is the older books which my family and I have
come to value most, and tend to recommend, and it is the modern school books
which come bottom of our list!
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Quote of the Month: "Any sort of training which aims at acquiring wealth or bodily strength is not worthy to be called education at all." -Socrates- |
I have been disappointed again and again, by buying a book intended for school use which looked outwardly interesting with illustrations and full colour printing, but turned out to be the dullest, most patronising, over-simplified collection of dates and sanitized facts, which could be found on the subject. Often, the book is so boring, that it put me off the subject altogether, and for this reason it is important to remember when reading such books that it is not the fault of the subject at all.
But it is not surprising, I suppose, that this should be the case. School books are specifically written for schools, not for the genuine scholar. The people who write those books would never read their own work; they go to the sources, the real classics which have been around for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, and these are the books you should go for too. They are never patronising, never dull (if they had been they would never have withstood the test of time), and are full of the really juicy facts and fascinating anecdotes, which are never printed elsewhere.
The internet has proved to be a marvellous tool in obtaining these books. It can either be used to get hold of an obscure copy somewhere, or to download a book free from a website. It is fortunately the old classics which tend to be put on-line, because they are so well-loved and also way out of copyright!
There are plenty of new updates to the Jamboree this month, with a recipe for Cornish pasties in Bethan's cookbook, and a guide to making wooden spoons in my craft corner. There is also a new update to the Home University section of the Jamboree: Studying the History of Ancient Rome. Samuel provided this excellent article, and if you are new to the subject you will find it particularly interesting, as there is a short summary, and all the best books and websites are recommended.
There were many new additions to the Contact List in January, so you can always take a look at them too.
Wishing you a happy February,
Wendy
Educational Materials
Why you don’t have to feel guilty about not using school books.
There is one subject that we often talk about in our house but which does not seem to get much attention in the wider world – the uselessness of modern books in general, and of school text books in particular.
When I first started teaching I thought that my inability to find suitable teaching materials somehow reflected my own lack of knowledge. Twenty-eight years later, and after having taught in almost every conceivable situation, I am now convinced that the reason why it is difficult to find good educational materials is because they are not being produced.
This assertion may be difficult to accept, especially in view of the billions of pounds spent every year on producing school books – not to mention the whole new industry which has grown up for making educational software and interactive CDs etc. – but in a sense it is the very fact that so much material is produced that has helped to obscure the fact that none of it is what children really need.
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The scale of the problem was brought home to me when we started to write One-to-One: our children were then in their teens – young enough to still have vivid memories of their early years of education, and old enough to be objective about what they had found useful and what they had not. The book lists and recommended reading included in One-to-One are based upon their comments: they consist primarily of books that had been written fifty to a hundred years ago, plus books of fairy stories and mythological tales that are even older: none of the modern books that we read had stood the test of time, and hardly any of the non-fiction or reference books that we had used were deemed worthy of a mention.
When we checked for the availability of the books that we had recommended, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that most of them were widely stocked by book shops; this is probably because family and friends still play a large role in the education of young children (even though they may be going to school): people who read to children, quickly find out which books they enjoy, and this helps to maintain a market for good books.
Unfortunately people’s involvement with their children’s education falls off after a few years of school attendance, and I am sure that this has contributed to the fact that by the time children are of secondary-school age, there are almost no readily-available books that are of much interest or relevance to them.
When we drew up a list of recommended reading for our book for older children – Unqualified Education – we found that we were recommending books that in previous times had been classics, read by every educated person, but which were now becoming more and more difficult to find. When one reads these old books, one realises that this is where most of the material comes from which is found in newer books: perhaps authors and publishers are not fully aware of what they are doing but, essentially, most modern books do not contain anything new, they are simply recycling old ideas and beliefs with the addition of copious illustrations and sophisticated page design. Unfortunately, somewhere in the process, the essence of the original material is lost and the reader no longer feels that they are being spoken to by a real person who has something to say, or that the author even understands what they are writing about. Of all modern books, school books are undoubtedly the worst: not only are they unoriginal but they are also patronising and, to make matters even worse, limit themselves exclusively to the material that is on the school curriculum. Anyone who is really interested in a subject is left with more questions after reading one of these books than when they started. It would not be an exaggeration to say that school books are simply a cynical money-making exercise on the part of book publishers who are cashing in on the huge amount of money that governments pour into education: they have no interest whatsoever in the material that they are producing, and have no commitment to making their books special.
Like many home-educating families, we were short of money for most of the time that our children were young, and it was quite a big event for us to be able to buy a new book. We were always disappointed when we spent any of our precious funds on a text book that had been designed for school use, and even now if we see any of these books around the house they still evoke expressions of bitterness and disgust.
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For many years the main reference book that we used was an old copy of Arthur Mee’s encyclopaedia for children that we had bought from a jumble sale. We were aware of its shortcomings in terms of its rather out of date historical perspective, but this was more than made up for by the fact that the author clearly liked children and respected both their judgement and their ability to understand complex ideas provided they were presented clearly.
Fortunately for us, the internet started to make its appearance at just about the time that we had exhausted the possibilities of Arthur Mee’s encyclopaedia and gave us access to a much broader range of material, allowing us to research into the books that we needed and to track them down without having to travel too far afield.
Thanks to this development in technology, a committed student is now able to pursue whatever line of study that takes their interest simply providing that they have a computer and an internet connection – making the home a better-equipped learning environment than even the universities of the past.
The internet also opens up the possibility for a regeneration of the book trade: in theory the fact that books can be mass-produced at a very low cost ought to be a good thing. The problem seems to be – at least in the world of education – that book producers have lost sight of what their readers want; they produce the books which suit schools but which do not capture the interest or imagination of their young readers. Modern technology has now reached a point, however, where it is quite possible for an individual to print a book that they think deserves a wider audience and to offer it for sale via the internet to a worldwide audience, at a price that is competitive with commercially-produced books sold through the book trade.
This is something that we have started to do ourselves – over the past few weeks we have purchased a desktop ring-binding machine, a paper-cutter and a laminator, for a total outlay of just a few hundred pounds. Combined with our existing computer and printers this has allowed us to reprint our sums books at home, meaning that we can meet the small but steady demand without incurring a large printing bill.
As with most aspects of education, the majority of the population is looking at the question of educational materials from the wrong perspective. Home-educating families are often asked what course books they are following: if the people who ask this question studied the matter more carefully, they would realise that using no books is better than using school books, and that, given a little support and encouragement, home educating families are likely to be the very people who restore the tradition of producing educational materials that are of genuine interest.
Gareth Lewis
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"It was the taking up of Roman history that caused one of the most significant changes in my life; and took me from being an uneducated person, to someone with an education. . ."
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Your letters and comments are welcome. You can send them to Gareth
Lewis at the following address, or to me at the address beneath:
gareth.lewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk
wendy@freedom-in-education.co.uk