British home educators and their susceptibility to propaganda

I had occasion last month to remark how awful it is to see home educators using pastor Niemoller's meditation, the one that begins ‘First they came for the communists’, to support their supposed right to educate their own children. I find it stupendously offensive to see people comparing the persecution of Jews and political opponents by the Nazis with local authority officers in this country checking that children are receiving a suitable education. Yesterday, I drew attention to two other examples of this sort of thing. One was splicing footage of Hitler into a film about home education and the other was the making of an image of Graham Badman reading Mein Kampf, which appeared on the spoof blog, the Dark Lord.


The use of such motifs is of course a form of propaganda. It tells us nothing useful, but associates certain things with negative images. In favour of regulation for home education? Gosh, you must be like the Nazis! Of course, home educators are not the only ones to use propaganda of this sort in their campaigns. One sees it in many emotional and irrational appeals; debates about euthanasia, for example. The argument basically is, ’Hitler approved of this; if you also approve of it, then that makes you like Hitler.’ There is even a term for this nonsense; Godwin’s Law.

In addition to the stick of being compared to Hitler and the Nazis, many home educators also use the carrot of being on the side of the clever and famous. I have lost track of how many lists I have seen of supposedly home educated people who achieved a lot in life. Here the irrational appeal is the opposite of the one involving Hitler. You obviously don’t want to be like Hitler, but surely you would like your children to be as clever as Einstein? Well there you go; Einstein was home educated, therefore if you home educate your kid, he might end up as clever as Einstein. (The fact that Einstein was not home educated is not really relevant here, he certainly appears in many lists of famous home educated people.)

That so many home educators and their self-appointed leaders rely so heavily upon these stereotypes is slightly alarming! There are many good reasons for educating your own child; I can think of a dozen or so offhand, without racking my brains unduly. I am curious to know though  why the Nazis crop up so regularly in British home education. Is it some residual xenophobia from the Second World War; just look at what those Krauts got up to, do you want to be like them? Or might it be that many home educators have not thought overmuch about their motives and seize cheerfully upon the first flimsy excuse that is offered. I suppose that not being like Hitler and the possibility of having a kid as brainy as Einstein are both fairly good motives, if you cannot think of anything better!

Using Hitler’s image to promote home education

I viewed recently on Youtube a short film made by home educators. I mentally counted the seconds until mention was made of Hitler. He duly made an appearance after a mere twenty seven seconds. Here is the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDDD2ob8iKE

The ancient piece of nonsense is trotted out here,  that Hitler banned home education and that Sweden has introduced a law based upon the Nazi one prohibiting home education.  I have remarked before that there is something horribly tacky about using Hitler and the Holocaust to promote some hobby or favourite cause. Perhaps a look at the facts might show us why this business about Hitler banning home education is not true.

 In 1938 the Nazis passed a law about education, the Gesetz über die Schulpflicht im Deutschen Reich. This made school compulsory, but just like the 1944 Education Act in this country, it contained an exemption clause for those who wished to have their children educated at home; (1) Zum Besuch der Volksschule sind alle Kinder verpflichtet, soweit nicht für ihre Erziehung und Unterweisung in anderer Weise ausreichend gesorgt ist. Roughly translated, this means that children had to attend school unless their education and training was otherwise provided out of school.

I hope that this will bring to an end the idea that ‘Hitler banned home education’. There was very little home education in Germany, for  historical reasons.  It was not banned under Hitler and claims that it was are just a trick by home educators to associate laws regulating home education with the Nazis. Just to recap, Hitler did not ban home education in Germany and no law was ever passed by the Nazis to do so; anybody who says that this is the case is deliberately setting out to mislead those who know nothing of German history.

The great mojecosie mystery

One of the minor pleasures of my life lies in observing the many home educators on the internet who display the signs and symptoms of Paranoid Schizophrenia. I am of course aware that these characters do not represent all home educating parents, but their mad antics are still pretty entertaining. It's a bit like the old days, when one could pay to see the loonies in Bedlam. The great thing is; this is completely free! The expression ’Conspiracy Theory’ does not even begin to cover the deluded thinking. When the old Department for Children, Schools and Families reorganised their IT system a few years ago, half the links to documents and external sites vanished for a few days. Such things are not uncommon. When a home educator found that the 2007 guidelines on home education were no longer available, she started a panic on a number of lists and forums. It was clearly a plot on the part of the government to deprive home educators of their rights. Some readers might remember this nonsense. I did what any normal person would do and rang up the DfCSF and simply asked them about it. Hopeless to try and tell internet obsessed home educators the truth; they simply wouldn’t have believed it.


A similar thing happened on this blog yesterday. I have noticed in the last year or so that posts from here are turning up in all sorts of strange places. Perhaps because my style is so lucid, many people copy my articles here and use them for their own purposes. Here is an example:

http://friendshipessaystudentessayssynopsis.wtc.cc/175/home-education-heretic-early-childhood-experiences-and-their/

I suppose that I should be flattered. I don’t think that this sort of wholesale lifting of intellectual property is taking place with all blogs on home educating. Hard to imagine people pinching Maire Stafford’s or Niki Harper’s incoherent ramblings and trying to pass them of as their own work! I recently saw that an entire blog has turned up in Poland, consisting of nothing but posts from here;

http://mojecosie.blogspot.co.uk/

I noticed it and simply passed on and forgot it. Not so some of the sharp eyed folk who comment here! It was plain to them that this was obviously some cunning ruse of mine, for reasons that even the most demented of them seemed wholly  unable to explain. Perhaps I wanted my views to stand alone without comments? Well then, I could switch off the comments here. Perhaps the title ‘Home education’ is catchier than ‘Home Education Heretic’? Who knows? Why would I have chosen a Polish name for the blog and be promoting it only on Polish lists? Again, one can only guess. Never the less, it was clear that I was at the back of it somehow.


‘I also find it difficult to believe that someone else is responsible for this blog, http://mojecosie.blogspot.co.uk/ yet you claim to be mystified.


If it genuinely has been put up by someone else’


It makes even less sense for someone else to do it.

you might want to give someone a link to your work without comments (understandable after reading some of them), but still want to keep the comments here for your own entertainment

you've intentionally gone off on a tangent. It looks like a tactic to bring a halt to this discussion

Very strange. It would be very easy for you to set up the other account and transfer the articles and there are there are probably loads of good reasons for you to do so, but someone else would literally have to copy and paste over 500 posts individually and I can't think of a reason for it.


See what I mean? I was particularly enchanted to be accused of trying to bring the discussion of this madness to an end.  However, perhaps I was hasty.  I should I suppose give these people their opportunity.  Answers, on a postcard please, to the curious question of why I should set up a parallel blog to this one, containing only posts from here,  and instead of using my own name should pose as a Pole called Evadima. Let’s see those conspiracy theories roll, boys.

Another home educator flees the country...

When I mentioned Lianne Smith here, I pointed to her as the sort of home educator that local authorities hear about and who causes them to be needlessly anxious about other home educating families. Of course, this was the cue for people commenting to portray her as a nonentity of whom nobody had ever heard; the impression being given that in the first place she was insignificant and in the second, her case was atypical. I thought that it was worth mentioning that this sort of thing  does happen. Only last month, an appeal was made on behalf of a very well known home educator who needed money to leave the country one step ahead of the authorities. It begins;




A well-known member of the HE community and trusted friend needs our help. The

person's family is facing a possible court order and they felt the need to leave the

country very quickly in order to protect the children from unfounded interference

based on home education as a risk factor.



The letter was signed by the following people:


Alison Preuss
Barbara Stark
Elaine Kirk
Gill Kilner
Karen Gallant
Lisa Amphlett
Louisa Herbs
Maire Stafford
Michelle Beeny
Neil Taylor Moore
Raquel Toney
Sheila Struthers
Susanna Matthan
Techla Wood




I can assure readers that this is a person whose name they would recognise at once. It is useless for people commenting here to claim that there is not an atmosphere in the main home educating organisations of mistrust and hostility towards local authorities. There is and parents are actively encouraged to buy in to this idea, that cooperating with their local authority is tantamount to being a quisling.

More about why some local authorities are dubious about home education

I think that I made it clear a few days ago that I do not personally regard home education as a risk factor for the abuse of children. I tried yesterday to point out why some people, especially local authorities, do think of it in this way. It was I suppose inevitable that I should be thought to be agreeing with them!


Dreadful abuse of children is mercifully rare and no more common in home educating families than those who send their children to school. That being so and considering that over 99% of children go to school, it is obvious that the vast majority of abuse is against schooled children. So much is true. However, if you are abusing a child, it is easier to conceal it if you live in a caravan miles from the nearest neighbours and don’t send your children to school.

There was another way that the case of Lianne and Martin Smith raised suspicions among professionals. I mentioned yesterday that there has been a lot of criticism from home educating parents of Olaf Hindmarsh in Staffordshire. After his authority appointed a home educator whose children were being beaten and raped, as Head of Children’s Services in Staffordshire, it rather made many in the local authority a little dubious about home education in general. One can quite see why. Similar suspicions were being raised nationally at about the same time.

It is popularly supposed by many home educating parents that it was the Khyra Ishaq case which precipitated the Badman Enquiry. We must also look at what was going on in Education Otherwise at the same time. Lianne Smith was a regional advisor for EO. She also worked in child protection in Cumbria and was vociferous in arguing that parents were the only ones who should be responsible for the welfare of children. She was a high profile campaigner in her professional capacity against anything like compulsory visits or monitoring of home educated children. In retrospect, one can see why she felt so strongly about this. In the same year that she and her partner fled abroad with their children, Education Otherwise had a radical change of management committee. One of the new people, very prominent publicly for other reasons, ended up as Child Protection Officer for the organisation. She then turned out to have a partner with unfortunate proclivities. Despite this, she remained responsible for child protection, even though many in EO knew about the situation.

It began to look to some people as though the main home education support group in the country was harbouring a number of women with abusive and perverted partners and that this rather tainted EO. I do not say that it did; merely that that is how it appeared to some in both central and local government.

When we criticise local authorities, as I do myself, we must always try and bear in mind just why they are feeling this way about home education. Their fears are rooted not so much in prejudice, but in a perhaps exaggerated reaction to real events.

What can happen as a result of home education

I shall return to the theme of my last post in a couple of days time. I want first to examine the kind of thing which can happen with home education and about which local authorities are anxious. This is the enforced isolation of a child from all other adults under circumstances that make abuse easy to carry out. I am not suggesting for a moment that this is common; only that it can and does happen in home educating families.

My own daughter, like many home educated children was actually more visible in the community than children at school. They saw us all the time in the library, shopkeepers knew us and we were familiar figures in the local streets, a tall irritable looking middle aged man with a little girl in tow. I dare say that this is usual in most of the home educating parents who comment here; their children are anything but invisible. This is fine, but let us now see how things can work in such a setup.

Sarah Richardson was four in 1993 and living with her mother and young brother in the north of England, when her mother’s boyfriend moved in. From the beginning, he was unkind to the two children. Two years later, when she was six, the family moved to a caravan in a remote location with no neighbours. Sarah was withdrawn from school at the same time, supposedly in order to be home educated. Shortly afterwards, her mother’s boyfriend began to sexually abuse and then rape her. The family kept on the move, always to out of the way places. This continued until Sarah was sixteen, when she left. What is interesting about this case is that the mother, who was also allegedly working part-time as a prostitute, was not some feckless traveller who was out of touch with ordinary society. In fact she was heavily involved with Education Otherwise. Her name was of course Lianne Smith.

As I said at the beginning, there is no reason to suppose that this sort of thing is common with home educators; only that it can and does happen. Keeping the children out of school and moving frequently from place to place in order to avoid prying neighbours or the possibility of the children making friends, is much easier when you are home educating. There are without doubt other families of this sort and it is this kind of thing which makes many local authorities anxious. Here were two people, one wicked and the other psychologically abnormal, who used home education as part of a lifestyle which facilitated abuse, both sexual and physical. The mother went on to have two children by her boyfriend, both of whom she killed.

Perhaps the next time that home educating parents ridicule the idea that home education could be used as a cover for abuse, they might pause and remember cases like this. Local authorities do not need to invent such scenarios; they are already happening. They may be uncommon, we have no way of knowing how frequently this sort of thing goes on, but wicked home educators do exist; even ones who are working in a voluntary capacity for Education Otherwise!

How strange are home educating parents?

A few days ago, I expressed my irritation at the fact that some health workers evidently believe home education to be a risk factor for abuse. I want to think about this idea a little.


If you wished to inflict certain kinds of abuse on a child, it would certainly be easier to do if you kept the kid away from school. We know that a small number of parents with children at school are cruel to their children and abuse them sexually and it would be strange if a few home educating parents did not do likewise. Preventing the child from speaking freely to others would be a good first step in concealing the mistreatment. That this has happened in the past is not in question; look at Eunice Spry. Could we prevent cases like Spry by limiting or even banning home education? It is unlikely. Such people are very cunning and Eunice Spry managed to deceive various social workers and other staff from the local authority. For every case like this of  wicked home educating parents, we can find many more where the children were at school and the abuse was still concealed.

My own feeling is that there are risks to home educated children, but that these are not risks of serious injury or death. Rather, there is a danger that children raised by home educators might grow up a bit weird. This in itself is not of course a disaster. Many weird people lead perfectly normal lives, nor were most weird people educated at home. Most of them went to school. I would guess though that the chance of a child growing into a strange adult are probably higher for the home educated than for those sent to school.

One thing that is noticeable about home educators is that not sending their children to school is seldom the only out of the ordinary thing about their lives. It is not the case that the typical home educating parent is a perfectly normal and average person who just happens to decide to educate her own child. Almost invariably, there is a constellation of unusual beliefs, remarkable previous experiences and strange attitudes, particularly to authority. In a sense, it could hardly be otherwise. The pressure to conform with the mores of twenty first century, British society and pack your kid off to school is immense. Most parents cave in to it, even if they have doubts about the wisdom or efficacy of compulsory schooling. Those who resist the system must, by definition, be odd.

There may not be such a thing as a typical home educator, but themes emerge if you listen to enough parents. There is often hostility towards or at the very least, mistrust of authority. These parents frequently had bad experiences at school themselves. This mistrust of authority extends from teachers to the medical profession; many home educating parents are fans of alternative medicine. There is often a tendency to believe in conspiracies. These can range from vaccines to the Royal family, from the motives of local authorities to the war in Iraq. This seems to be the case even among those who have no dealings with other home educators and do not hang out with the loonies on the HE-UK list. Home education just seems to be associated with strange parents.

I suppose that even if it we could be sure that home educated children had an increased risk of growing up to be strange adults, we might not be justified in taking action about it. For one thing of course, if they have strange parents, then making the kids go to school will still leave them in the company of these people for a large chunk of time. I want to explore this topic at greater length over the next few days, as I feel that it is not a field that many people seem to have looked at before.