Home education – part 3

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If you want to check out parts 1 and 2 of this series go here… Part 1, Part 2 In this final part of a series of three, we take a look at the skills young people do not leave school with. These can be addressed more consistently and comprehensively when parent consider a home education.

What is left untaught?

• Intelligence is a measure of the ability to handle conceptual ideas, specifically a greater degree of abstractness, along with a greater number of concepts at any given time.

• Intelligence grows out of practice in using conceptual ideas. The use of conceptual ideas is the process of thinking. But sadly, developing thinking skills is not given any attention by the educational establishment. You could even say it’s implicitly discouraged! The methods of instruction and testing, of rote learning and examination, do not encourage critical thinking. Sadly, school seems to have the widespread effect of diminishing natural curiosity and of crippling the desire to know. The most important skill left untaught in school is critical thinking.

  Any education worth having must address philosophical fundamentals. It must address questions about the nature of reality and of knowledge itself, and of the basics of logic and argument. Without explicit discussion of those ‘deep’ or ‘BIG’ issues, the empty space where their own conclusions should be, gets filled with cultural downloads from the society around them. Assumptions about our understanding of reality, the nature of things, how reality works, are then filed away never to be consciously visited. These form our world-view, they become are our (often) unconsciously held philosophical convictions, and they guide our lives. If we are to raise fully conscious young people, we must encourage the conscious examination of philosophical convictions because they guide our lives.

  There are two more important lessons that are untaught in schools, yet we as parents can demonstrate them in the course of a home education:

  Be rational

• It is impossible to learn how to be functional while surrounded by irrationality. What is required is stability, consistency, predictability. Children most need to see logical rational behaviour from their care givers. I have come to understand that pretty much the only thing you have to do with children is be ruthlessly rational in all your behaviour towards them. Be logical, be consistent, be appropriate, be predictable, be sane! The rest can be left to the individual to figure out for themselves. Sure, anything that you can pass on to them may be helpful, but the problem is usually that our method of passing things on causes more problems than it any advantage it affords them. Often is cause problems with the relationship between parent and child. This is bad news because it is our relationship with our children that is the means of influencing them for the better.

1. Children can figure out the world in which they live, if they have rationality demonstrated to them by parents and primary care givers. It cannot be overstated how important this is. The extent to which people are ‘fucked up’ by their parents is the extent to which they were subject to and witnessed irrational behaviour.

Be non-coercive

1. The use of violence is as irrational as it is counter productive. It is never productive to force someone to do that which they do not wish to do. Using appropriate force in other circumstances may be required, for example preventing one child hitting another, or forced removal from the group when a child is being disruptive. Negotiation, persuasion and trade are useful tools to create win-win scenarios.
3. I hope that you found some value in these thoughts. Even if you are like most families and can’t even consider home education because two incomes are needed to run the home and pay for the chosen lifestyle. For so many these days school is the perfect child care service and the option of having children at home all day is just not on the cards. It is undoubtedly true that ‘sending the children to school’ suits the conventional lifestyle, and for some, it is difficult to see home education as even a possibility. A more rural lifestyle makes for an easier setting. I have found that our small holding activities are well suited to providing things to do as well as space to do it.It is in everyone’s interests to live in an enlightened society.

I hope you have got some benefit from these thoughts and ideas. Please join the conversation and leave a comment below.

Nigel Howitt

January 2017