Have you ever in your life heard anything like it? After I was accused of publicising Wendy Charles-Warner's name and thus putting her and her family in danger, Education Otherwise now reveal that she is their official representative in Wales:
http://www.educationotherwise.net/ndex.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=334
I do hope that those who were abusing me on here recently for drawing attention to this woman will now be bombarding the EO site with rude messages! It really does seem criminally irresponsible of Education Otherwise to do this. They even give details of the times and places where Mrs Charles-Warner may be found:
18th October (Thursday) 2012 at Royal Welsh Showground, Powys
26th October (Friday) 2012 at All Nations Centre, Cardiff
30th October (Tuesday) 2012 at Conwy Business Centre, Conwy
The fools! Do they really not know that she and her family are at risk? Suppose an assassin is waiting for her at the Conwy Business Centre on October 30th? I must say that I am stunned by this latest development. British home education, eh? You couldn't make it up. I now feel justified in quoting from the email which Wendy Charles-Warner sent me. In it, she says:
We (my family) are already having to take steps to return to total anonymity, steps that are distressing and extremely costly in many ways.
The first of these steps towards total anonymity evidently involving a series of public appearances announced well in advance on an open site on the internet...
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Most home educating parents are normal...
I was asked recently to post about the fact that the vast majority of home educating parents in this country are perfectly normal men and women who want only to provide the best possible education for their children. I am happy to do so, because of course this is perfectly true. Unfortunately, the small percentage of strange and sometimes downright loopy individuals scattered among the normal and well-balanced home educators have an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Many of these weirder types spend hours on the internet connecting with other odd people and, encouraged by a handful of high profile figures, they buy into a fantasy world of conspiracy and persecution. It goes without saying that this is not only the case with home education! That’s just what the internet is like. I am not bothered in general if a group of rock fans wish to get together and exchange mad theories about dead singers or if steam train enthusiasts want to accuse each other of heresy; these are harmless enough matters. I am concerned though when it is happening with home education, because I care about home education and worked for many years with vulnerable children. This is something about which I feel strongly.
Those relatively small number of home educating parents who sit up until four or five in the morning communicating with other like-minded nuts, often become vociferous members or founders of home educating support groups. They pick up a lot of nonsense from the internet and then become evangelical about spreading the news and explaining to other parents why they should not accept visits from their local authority or teach their children to read. Yes, really. I had an email from a mother at a home educating group who was secretly teaching her child to read, because she was too embarrassed to let anybody at her local group know about it. They was a strong ethos there about the virtues of the spontaneous acquisition of literacy and anybody who actually taught their child was regarded as a pushy parent. Imagine that; a home educating support group where parents were made to feel uneasy and ashamed about educating their children!
At another group, two of the main members were bitterly opposed to the MMR vaccine. Again, this was largely as a result of hanging round crank sites on the net. One of them had a child on the autistic spectrum and was so anti-MMR that one of the other parents felt that she had to keep secret the fact that she had had her own child vaccinated. In other groups dominated by people whom one could describe as disciples of various home educating gurus, parents allowed visits from their local authority, but kept that secret as well, for fear of being ostracised.
So, yes it is absolutely true that the overwhelming majority of home educating parents in this country are normal people who are interested only in educating their children. But that small number who are a bit mad have quite an influence and because they are so vociferous, they manage to dominate many groups, forums and lists. It is this which worries me.
Those relatively small number of home educating parents who sit up until four or five in the morning communicating with other like-minded nuts, often become vociferous members or founders of home educating support groups. They pick up a lot of nonsense from the internet and then become evangelical about spreading the news and explaining to other parents why they should not accept visits from their local authority or teach their children to read. Yes, really. I had an email from a mother at a home educating group who was secretly teaching her child to read, because she was too embarrassed to let anybody at her local group know about it. They was a strong ethos there about the virtues of the spontaneous acquisition of literacy and anybody who actually taught their child was regarded as a pushy parent. Imagine that; a home educating support group where parents were made to feel uneasy and ashamed about educating their children!
At another group, two of the main members were bitterly opposed to the MMR vaccine. Again, this was largely as a result of hanging round crank sites on the net. One of them had a child on the autistic spectrum and was so anti-MMR that one of the other parents felt that she had to keep secret the fact that she had had her own child vaccinated. In other groups dominated by people whom one could describe as disciples of various home educating gurus, parents allowed visits from their local authority, but kept that secret as well, for fear of being ostracised.
So, yes it is absolutely true that the overwhelming majority of home educating parents in this country are normal people who are interested only in educating their children. But that small number who are a bit mad have quite an influence and because they are so vociferous, they manage to dominate many groups, forums and lists. It is this which worries me.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Why should the state monitor home education if they don’t check on children’s nutrition in the same way?
The new Welsh attempt to regulate home education has caused the reappearance of an old and feeble argument by home educators. Why, they say, should the state be entitled to check the educational provision of children at home and not enquire into other, equally important, things such as diet and nutrition? It is an absurd gambit, so foolish in fact that most education professionals simply ignore it. This is a mistake, because it gives the wilder kind of home educating parent the opportunity to claim that the argument must be unassailable; look, they say, those professionals have not responded and so must be lost for an answer!
Mammals feed their young. Except in very rare cases, it may be assumed that the mammals of our own species will do the same, without the need for any compulsion. This has been the case since humans emerged as a species. The same is not true of academic education, which has only been around for a few thousand years. For a good deal of that time, especially in recent centuries; formal education has been the province of professionals, to whom parents entrust their children. Because of this, there is no reason at all to suppose that parents will undertake this function, even if they have withdrawn their children from school. It makes sense to see if they are in fact doing so.
The effects of poor childhood nutrition in this country are seldom severe or life-threatening. We have no kwashiorkor or beri-beri. The worst one might expect are things like rickets. As far as childhood education is concerned, on the other hand, the effects of a deficit can be severe, long lasting and even life-threatening. A lack of qualifications can lead to things such as depression, unemployment and even suicide. We often see the supposed sixteen suicides a year which are caused by bullying cited by home educators, but they do not seem to have noticed the hundreds of extra suicides caused by the recession. These are linked to unemployment and there is a strong association between unemployment and lack of academic qualifications.
The ill effects resulting from inadequate childhood nutrition are essentially a private matter which affects only the individual. Of course, some medical problems in adulthood might cost the NHS something, but in general the individual is the one who suffers from this sort of thing. This is not at all the case with inadequate education, which is a public matter. This is because the illiterate, those with no GCSEs and so on, make up a very large proportion of people in prison, psychiatric hospitals and are wholly reliant on state benefits for much of their life. This means that those who are poorly educated often end up a burden on society as a whole. This is not often the case with those who were not fed a perfectly balanced diet in childhood.
To sum up:
There is an assumption, based upon strong evidence, that mammals, including humans will feed their young. There is no reason to suppose that this is also the case with academic education.
The ill effects of poor childhood nutrition tend to be mild; those of inadequate education, by contrast, are frequently severe and even life-threatening.
One is a private matter and the other a matter of public concern which causes great problems for society as a whole.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Closing down the debate
Earlier this month, a ‘briefing paper’ was written about the proposed changes in the law in Wales touching upon home education. This document has been widely disseminated by the author and is freely available on public sites such as the one run by Mike Fortune-Wood, which may be found here:
http://www.home-education.org.uk/wales.htm
This document was written by a woman called Wendy Charles-Warner; her name may found below the introduction to the ‘briefing paper’ on page 3. So far there is, I suppose, nothing to which any normal person could object. Anybody who wished to find out where the author lives and what she looks like would only need to google her name; it is distinctive enough. The suggestion is being made that googling her name in this way could cause danger to her and put her family at risk. This sounds a little far - fetched, but was being claimed back in August by Alison Sauer in an email to a home educating parent who had used Mrs Charles-Warner’s name on a website. She was in danger in August then, if identified, but has since then appeared in four newspapers and published the document mentioned above, to which she was happy to put her name. She also did not object to her full address being printed in one newspaper and her photograph in another.
My problem with the so-called briefing paper lie with the claim made in the introduction, that:
‘Outcomes for children will be shown to be considerably better when
electively home educated than educated at school’
There is no evidence for such a claim and I have tried to discuss why this is so. A couple of days ago, I posted on a home educating list, drawing attention to what I saw as problems with the evidence that was cited in the paper. I did not identify the author's address at all, but merely mentioned that she lived in Snowdonia; a vague enough location. Alison Sauer then contacted the list owner and told her that Mrs Charles-Warner, who is a well-known and successful hotel owner who advertises her address commercially in a hundred different places, was put in danger by my post. It was removed. Over the last few days, I put up two posts here, going into a little detail about some of the difficulties of the author’s claim that home educated children do better academically at than those at school.
Alison Sauer organised a campaign via private messages on face book which was designed to stop people debating this aspect of the ‘briefing paper’. The result was that people were posting pornographic fantasies about the experiences of me and my penis in a massage parlour, to give one notable example. This made rational debate impossible and so I deleted the posts.
This sort of thing, attempting to prevent discussion of unwelcome ideas by means of threats, abuse and made-up stories, is something of a leitmotif in British home education. It is not the first time that it has happened to me and it has been used with varying degrees of success against others who question the more extravagant claims of home educators in this country. There are a handful of people who orchestrate such activity. Alison Sauer is one, Mike Fortune-Wood is another. Both are, incidentally, involved with the document I have been talking about. Mike Fortune-Wood has gone so far as to engage in a conspiracy to try and have me arrested. Alison Sauer is currently trying to get Mrs Charles-Warner to take legal action against me for posting links on this blog to recent newspaper articles which featured her!
I must apologise to those who actually are interested in home education, but this sort of tactic does make it very hard to discuss things in a reasonable way. That is of course the whole aim; to close down the debate and make anybody who wishes to ask questions shut up and go away. I shall be out today and so unable to reply to any comments. Might I ask those who wish to speculate on the size of my penis to email me directly at simon.webb14@btinternet.com. ? I have had a few emails from both home educators and education professionals who were horrified at some of the comments on the posts which I deleted. I do not think that they really showed home education at its best!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
How well do home educated children do academically?
We looked yesterday at a ‘briefing paper’ about the proposed Welsh law on home education. This was designed to bamboozle education professionals into believing that there is good evidence that home education in this country is likely to lead to strong academic outcomes. One of the ways that this was done was to talk of a page on a website intended specifically for home educated children’s examination results and then pretend that these were the achievements of members of one home educating support group. We also saw evidence from the USA which apparently tended to suggest that home educated children did well academically and were more likely to go to college and university than schooled children. This is also implausible and for much the same reason.
The research quoted in the ‘briefing paper’ yesterday was that conducted by Larry Rudner and Brian Ray. Although extensive, it suffered from the same disadvantage as the statistics from the British website; that is to say, it was all self-selected. One sees at once the problem. Those volunteering to take part in such research are those for whom home education has been a success. Those who remain semi-literate after ten years of home education are unlikely in the extreme to offer to take part in any project looking at academic achievement. What is needed is a large group of young people, some of whom have been to school and others of whom have been home educated, so that we may compare their academic levels. Such a study has in fact been running in America for over ten years and the data from this provides a far more realistic and objective measure of the educational quality of home education than anything produced by Rudner or Ray.
Those wishing to attend college or university in the United States sit either the American College Testing assessment or the Scholastic Aptitude Test; the ACT or SAT. These measure such things as English, including reading ability, science and mathematics. Since the late 1990s, those taking these tests have been asked if they were educated at home. Of course, in a sense, this too is a self selected sample consisting only of those wishing to attend college, but that too reveals interesting information, as we shall see.
The first thing that one notices is that although home educated children taking these tests do tend to be slightly ahead of those who went to school, the differences are not dramatic. The ACT is scored from 1 to 36. The average schooled pupils score is 21, but home educated teenagers come in a little higher at almost 23. It gets really interesting when you break down the individual components of the scores. Home educated kids are quite a bit ahead on English, especially reading. This is not surprising really, since they spend much of their time in the company of adults; one would expect them to be more articulate and have a better vocabulary than those who spend their days in the company of other children. There is no difference at all in science and in mathematics, the home educated children lagged noticeably behind those who had been to school.
Another point to consider is that the proportion of home educated teenagers applying to go into further education seemed to be less than expected, given the numbers. In other words, it looks as though home educated children in America are less not more likely to go to university.
Of course, these figures must be treated with caution, but they are never the less intriguing. They do seem to suggest that the educational advantages of home education are not quite as pronounced as some would have us believe. The teenagers might have greater vocabularies, but they are worse at mathematics. There is no discernible advantage in science. The fact that a lower proportion of home educated children than expected is applying to go to university is also worth thinking about. This all gives a far more balanced picture of home education than one normally gains from looking at research financed by people like the HSLDA.
The research quoted in the ‘briefing paper’ yesterday was that conducted by Larry Rudner and Brian Ray. Although extensive, it suffered from the same disadvantage as the statistics from the British website; that is to say, it was all self-selected. One sees at once the problem. Those volunteering to take part in such research are those for whom home education has been a success. Those who remain semi-literate after ten years of home education are unlikely in the extreme to offer to take part in any project looking at academic achievement. What is needed is a large group of young people, some of whom have been to school and others of whom have been home educated, so that we may compare their academic levels. Such a study has in fact been running in America for over ten years and the data from this provides a far more realistic and objective measure of the educational quality of home education than anything produced by Rudner or Ray.
Those wishing to attend college or university in the United States sit either the American College Testing assessment or the Scholastic Aptitude Test; the ACT or SAT. These measure such things as English, including reading ability, science and mathematics. Since the late 1990s, those taking these tests have been asked if they were educated at home. Of course, in a sense, this too is a self selected sample consisting only of those wishing to attend college, but that too reveals interesting information, as we shall see.
The first thing that one notices is that although home educated children taking these tests do tend to be slightly ahead of those who went to school, the differences are not dramatic. The ACT is scored from 1 to 36. The average schooled pupils score is 21, but home educated teenagers come in a little higher at almost 23. It gets really interesting when you break down the individual components of the scores. Home educated kids are quite a bit ahead on English, especially reading. This is not surprising really, since they spend much of their time in the company of adults; one would expect them to be more articulate and have a better vocabulary than those who spend their days in the company of other children. There is no difference at all in science and in mathematics, the home educated children lagged noticeably behind those who had been to school.
Another point to consider is that the proportion of home educated teenagers applying to go into further education seemed to be less than expected, given the numbers. In other words, it looks as though home educated children in America are less not more likely to go to university.
Of course, these figures must be treated with caution, but they are never the less intriguing. They do seem to suggest that the educational advantages of home education are not quite as pronounced as some would have us believe. The teenagers might have greater vocabularies, but they are worse at mathematics. There is no discernible advantage in science. The fact that a lower proportion of home educated children than expected is applying to go to university is also worth thinking about. This all gives a far more balanced picture of home education than one normally gains from looking at research financed by people like the HSLDA.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
A Home Education UK 'briefing paper' on the Welsh proposals
It will have been rightly guessed by some readers that I would not long be able to stay away from the subject of the proposed Welsh legislation which will introduce compulsory monitoring of home education in the principality. I have been shocked over the last few days to read some of the arguments being put forward against this idea. If it is necessary to engage in deceit and spread falsehoods in order to oppose the plans; what does this say about the strength of the arguments being put forward?
Those opposing the Welsh proposals have been producing a series of so-called ‘briefing papers’. Essentially, these are no more than the opinions of various home educators who do not approve of registration and monitoring and hope to persuade others to share their views. There are two types of such papers. One kind is directed at professionals working in the field of education and is intended to show that home educated children are not at increased risk of abuse and actually do better academically than children in school. The other sort hope to work up support from other groups such as Christians, by playing to their prejudices. Today, I want to look at a typical example of the first type; that designed to deceive teachers, social workers and other professionals.
This example is taken from the Home Education UK website:
http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/wc/wc-he-outcomes.pdf
I have no idea of the author; perhaps it was Mike Fortune-Wood himself. The paper begins by suggesting that Welsh schools are not in general brilliant, which is true. Then it looks at American research which it is claimed shows that home educated children do very well; better in fact than those at school. There is much wrong with this section, but since I do not think that the American scene can really be compared with this country, we shall let that pass. It is when the author writes of British evidence that he reveals his true motives. and these are not precisely open and honest. I do not have time to go into the whole thing, but a few particularly awful instances should suffice. Here is a quotation from the thing:
Although little research is available in the UK there is no reason to believe that the
results for children here would be any different and research that has been
undertaken supports that view. A 2002 study of 419 EHE families in the UK found:
‘The results show that 64% of the home‐educated Reception aged children scored over 75% on their PIPS Baseline Assessments as opposed to 5.1% of children nationally.
Either the author has not read the actual research or is deliberately setting out to mislead. In fact the PIPS Assessments relate not to 419 families but 35. What do readers think? Has the author of this supposedly careful and pseudo-academic paper read the research which he is quoting? If not, it casts doubt upon the value of the other figures which he adduces in defence of his argument. If he has read the research, then he is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and hope that they will not spot the inflation of the figures relating to the PIPS Assessments. Neither case exactly encourages confidence!
The indications are that this was a deliberately misleading. I say this, because a few lines later, we find this claim:
A Wiltshire based home education support group has kept records of children in the group since 2002. They found that the 52 older children involved had achieved 199 formal qualifications in 50 subjects with 69% of those qualifications being GCSE or IGCSE, 13% were A levels and others in Tertiary or performance. 50% of those qualifications were taken under the age of 16 years. 33% of those students achieving performing arts qualifications were awarded distinctions and 96% of other grades
were at A* ‐C.
I think that readers here will agree that the intention is to suggest that a longitudinal study has been made of a cohort from one home education group? Note that ‘records’ have been kept of ‘children in the group’. Let us be plain about this. We are being asked to believe that the figures for examination results are all from one group of children; those who attended a home educating support group in Wiltshire. This simply cannot be a mistake; it must be a calculated falsehood, because the author gives the source for his claim. Here it is;
http://www.nwilts-he.org.uk/he_exams_wiki/index.php/Exam_results
Presumably, he banked on nobody bothering to check the references. This is an open page, where anybody from the United Kingdom may send any exam result which they claim a home educated child has achieved. Nobody checks, the things are all done anonymously and then added to the total. Far from this showing that 52 members of a single home educating support group did brilliantly academically, it merely suggests that a load of random people emailed this site from anywhere in the world and their claims were placed there without any sort of checking. Of course this group of 52 children had good academic results; only those who had gained qualifications were intended to be included on it!
There is far more wrong with this paper than just these two examples. The whole thing is an absolute horror. I am curious, for instance, about the 10 young people with 49 A levels between them. Eton only manage an average of four A levels per pupil; according to this a home educating group in Wales is averaging around five a head. More research needed here!
Those opposing the Welsh proposals have been producing a series of so-called ‘briefing papers’. Essentially, these are no more than the opinions of various home educators who do not approve of registration and monitoring and hope to persuade others to share their views. There are two types of such papers. One kind is directed at professionals working in the field of education and is intended to show that home educated children are not at increased risk of abuse and actually do better academically than children in school. The other sort hope to work up support from other groups such as Christians, by playing to their prejudices. Today, I want to look at a typical example of the first type; that designed to deceive teachers, social workers and other professionals.
This example is taken from the Home Education UK website:
http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/wc/wc-he-outcomes.pdf
I have no idea of the author; perhaps it was Mike Fortune-Wood himself. The paper begins by suggesting that Welsh schools are not in general brilliant, which is true. Then it looks at American research which it is claimed shows that home educated children do very well; better in fact than those at school. There is much wrong with this section, but since I do not think that the American scene can really be compared with this country, we shall let that pass. It is when the author writes of British evidence that he reveals his true motives. and these are not precisely open and honest. I do not have time to go into the whole thing, but a few particularly awful instances should suffice. Here is a quotation from the thing:
Although little research is available in the UK there is no reason to believe that the
results for children here would be any different and research that has been
undertaken supports that view. A 2002 study of 419 EHE families in the UK found:
‘The results show that 64% of the home‐educated Reception aged children scored over 75% on their PIPS Baseline Assessments as opposed to 5.1% of children nationally.
Either the author has not read the actual research or is deliberately setting out to mislead. In fact the PIPS Assessments relate not to 419 families but 35. What do readers think? Has the author of this supposedly careful and pseudo-academic paper read the research which he is quoting? If not, it casts doubt upon the value of the other figures which he adduces in defence of his argument. If he has read the research, then he is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and hope that they will not spot the inflation of the figures relating to the PIPS Assessments. Neither case exactly encourages confidence!
The indications are that this was a deliberately misleading. I say this, because a few lines later, we find this claim:
A Wiltshire based home education support group has kept records of children in the group since 2002. They found that the 52 older children involved had achieved 199 formal qualifications in 50 subjects with 69% of those qualifications being GCSE or IGCSE, 13% were A levels and others in Tertiary or performance. 50% of those qualifications were taken under the age of 16 years. 33% of those students achieving performing arts qualifications were awarded distinctions and 96% of other grades
were at A* ‐C.
I think that readers here will agree that the intention is to suggest that a longitudinal study has been made of a cohort from one home education group? Note that ‘records’ have been kept of ‘children in the group’. Let us be plain about this. We are being asked to believe that the figures for examination results are all from one group of children; those who attended a home educating support group in Wiltshire. This simply cannot be a mistake; it must be a calculated falsehood, because the author gives the source for his claim. Here it is;
http://www.nwilts-he.org.uk/he_exams_wiki/index.php/Exam_results
Presumably, he banked on nobody bothering to check the references. This is an open page, where anybody from the United Kingdom may send any exam result which they claim a home educated child has achieved. Nobody checks, the things are all done anonymously and then added to the total. Far from this showing that 52 members of a single home educating support group did brilliantly academically, it merely suggests that a load of random people emailed this site from anywhere in the world and their claims were placed there without any sort of checking. Of course this group of 52 children had good academic results; only those who had gained qualifications were intended to be included on it!
There is far more wrong with this paper than just these two examples. The whole thing is an absolute horror. I am curious, for instance, about the 10 young people with 49 A levels between them. Eton only manage an average of four A levels per pupil; according to this a home educating group in Wales is averaging around five a head. More research needed here!
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Teaching home educated children about climate change
I absolutely adore the whole global warming/manmade climate change thing. The story has a mythic grandeur about it which is wholly lacking from most of the nonsense which one sees in the newspapers. This is essentially the tale of how Man’s wickedness and greed brings down a worldwide catastrophe upon the entire race. It is the story of the Biblical deluge, which was precipitated by the same sins, with much the same consequences; i. e. rising sea levels!
Those of us with long memories might perhaps recall the days forty years ago when the scientific journals were full of the danger of manmade global cooling. This was being caused by pollution from power stations and factories. Particles of smoke and dirt were filling the upper atmosphere and preventing the light from the sun reaching us. The evidence was compelling; global temperatures falling since the end of World War II, cold water fish moving south into temperate waters and many other things. Then we had the population explosion which would cause the end of civilisation, the exhaustion of oil and other natural resources by the year 2000, the threat of nuclear war and, best of all, the Nuclear Winter. Remember that one? It was great; a combination of nuclear war and Ice Age. Also to be brought about by our wicked and sinful nature!
Still and all, this is nothing to the purpose. Any child taking science GCSEs needs to know a little about this subject, even if it is a pack of fairy stories for credulous and gullible fools who are unable to think for themselves. Here are a few practical ways of demonstrating to children how the mechanisms of the climate work.
The easiest way to show the practical effects of the Greenhouse Effect is just to set a transparent plastic cup on a sunny lawn, trapping some air beneath it. Leave it for an hour of so and then get your child to check the temperature. It will be as hot as an oven. Explain that without this Greenhouse Effect, life on earth would be impossible. The planet would alternately bake and freeze. If not for the water vapour and carbon dioxide in the air which traps the heat, we would be in a sorry state indeed! You sometimes hear foolish people talking about the Greenhouse Effect as though it were a bad thing. Without it, life on Earth could not survive.
Now fill one transparent plastic cup with earth and another with water and set them side by side on a sunny window sill. You will find that the earth heats up very fast, but cannot retain the heat. As soon as you remove it from the sun, it cools very quickly. The water, on the other hand, heats up slowly, but retains the heat for a long time. This keeps the temperature of the planet fairly level. You could talk about heat-sinks and the Gulf Stream which keeps this country warmer than other European countries on the same latitude.
As every schoolchild knows, the Arctic ice is melting and this will not only drown a load of cute baby polar bears, it will also flood low-lying cities anywhere else in the world. Disaster! Easy enough to prove to your child that this is a lot of nonsense. There is no dispute that the ice in the Arctic might be at risk from record levels of melting. There is also little doubt that except in one or two atypical places, the Antarctic ice is growing thicker, so it’s only that pesky Arctic ice that we need to worry about. What would happen if all the ice in the Arctic melted tomorrow? It would surely have some effect upon sea levels; after all there is an awful lot of ice near the North Pole, isn’t there? Well, that’s right. There is loads of ice and no land at all; it is all floating in the water. To see what would happen if it all melted, let’s make our own Arctic Ice cap!
Take the largest clear glass bowl that you can find; the bigger the better. Fill it half full of water and then dump in as much floating ice as you can. Lots and lots of ice cubes, chunks of ice from elsewhere; just make sure that it is all floating, like the real Arctic ice. Now mark the level of the water and let the ice melt. You might expect that the water level would rise, but you would be dead wrong. Even when all the ice has melted, the water level is exactly the same as it was before. This is because ice expands when it freezes. Which is of course why it floats in water. You have now shown that if all the ice in the Arctic were to melt, it would make no difference at all to the world’s sea levels.
What might make a difference though, if the planet were to heat up, is thermal expansion. You can demonstrate this on the kitchen window-sill as well. Boil some water and then let it cool for a few seconds. Fill a clear glass jug with the very hot water and mark the level on the side. Now cover the top of the jug with tin foil or clingfilm, to prevent evaporation. You will find that as the water cools, the level goes down. In other words, hot water takes up more room than cold. If the oceans were to warm up, then sea levels would indeed rise. Not by very much of course, you can easily do the sums for this, but warming would cause a slight rise in sea levels.
The great advantage of home education is that you are free both to spend the day in experiments of this sort and also to avoid the majority views of society if you should wish to do so. This is very valuable, because it means that you and your child can learn to think for yourselves, without being browbeaten by the prevailing ideologies of the day. No wonder some people don’t like home education and feel that it is liable to produce dangerous mavericks and freethinkers! Not really all that good for society in general, perhaps.
Those of us with long memories might perhaps recall the days forty years ago when the scientific journals were full of the danger of manmade global cooling. This was being caused by pollution from power stations and factories. Particles of smoke and dirt were filling the upper atmosphere and preventing the light from the sun reaching us. The evidence was compelling; global temperatures falling since the end of World War II, cold water fish moving south into temperate waters and many other things. Then we had the population explosion which would cause the end of civilisation, the exhaustion of oil and other natural resources by the year 2000, the threat of nuclear war and, best of all, the Nuclear Winter. Remember that one? It was great; a combination of nuclear war and Ice Age. Also to be brought about by our wicked and sinful nature!
Still and all, this is nothing to the purpose. Any child taking science GCSEs needs to know a little about this subject, even if it is a pack of fairy stories for credulous and gullible fools who are unable to think for themselves. Here are a few practical ways of demonstrating to children how the mechanisms of the climate work.
The easiest way to show the practical effects of the Greenhouse Effect is just to set a transparent plastic cup on a sunny lawn, trapping some air beneath it. Leave it for an hour of so and then get your child to check the temperature. It will be as hot as an oven. Explain that without this Greenhouse Effect, life on earth would be impossible. The planet would alternately bake and freeze. If not for the water vapour and carbon dioxide in the air which traps the heat, we would be in a sorry state indeed! You sometimes hear foolish people talking about the Greenhouse Effect as though it were a bad thing. Without it, life on Earth could not survive.
Now fill one transparent plastic cup with earth and another with water and set them side by side on a sunny window sill. You will find that the earth heats up very fast, but cannot retain the heat. As soon as you remove it from the sun, it cools very quickly. The water, on the other hand, heats up slowly, but retains the heat for a long time. This keeps the temperature of the planet fairly level. You could talk about heat-sinks and the Gulf Stream which keeps this country warmer than other European countries on the same latitude.
As every schoolchild knows, the Arctic ice is melting and this will not only drown a load of cute baby polar bears, it will also flood low-lying cities anywhere else in the world. Disaster! Easy enough to prove to your child that this is a lot of nonsense. There is no dispute that the ice in the Arctic might be at risk from record levels of melting. There is also little doubt that except in one or two atypical places, the Antarctic ice is growing thicker, so it’s only that pesky Arctic ice that we need to worry about. What would happen if all the ice in the Arctic melted tomorrow? It would surely have some effect upon sea levels; after all there is an awful lot of ice near the North Pole, isn’t there? Well, that’s right. There is loads of ice and no land at all; it is all floating in the water. To see what would happen if it all melted, let’s make our own Arctic Ice cap!
Take the largest clear glass bowl that you can find; the bigger the better. Fill it half full of water and then dump in as much floating ice as you can. Lots and lots of ice cubes, chunks of ice from elsewhere; just make sure that it is all floating, like the real Arctic ice. Now mark the level of the water and let the ice melt. You might expect that the water level would rise, but you would be dead wrong. Even when all the ice has melted, the water level is exactly the same as it was before. This is because ice expands when it freezes. Which is of course why it floats in water. You have now shown that if all the ice in the Arctic were to melt, it would make no difference at all to the world’s sea levels.
What might make a difference though, if the planet were to heat up, is thermal expansion. You can demonstrate this on the kitchen window-sill as well. Boil some water and then let it cool for a few seconds. Fill a clear glass jug with the very hot water and mark the level on the side. Now cover the top of the jug with tin foil or clingfilm, to prevent evaporation. You will find that as the water cools, the level goes down. In other words, hot water takes up more room than cold. If the oceans were to warm up, then sea levels would indeed rise. Not by very much of course, you can easily do the sums for this, but warming would cause a slight rise in sea levels.
The great advantage of home education is that you are free both to spend the day in experiments of this sort and also to avoid the majority views of society if you should wish to do so. This is very valuable, because it means that you and your child can learn to think for yourselves, without being browbeaten by the prevailing ideologies of the day. No wonder some people don’t like home education and feel that it is liable to produce dangerous mavericks and freethinkers! Not really all that good for society in general, perhaps.
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