May 20, 2010
Right to Learn: Stafford on Autonomous Education
HRinI is proud to include this piece on the Badman Report by Maire Stafford an autonomous educator. Her family was referenced in the House of Lords debates regarding the right of local authorities to meet with children who were being home educated without their parents, a proposal of the Badman Report.
Autonomous education is a form of education which respects the child’s right to determine its own learning journey. Autonomous educators believe that learning is as natural to humans as breathing and children do not need to be forced to engage in it in the way they traditionally are. Without coercion learning just continues throughout life and a child picks up ideas and skills which are significant in their culture in the same way as they learn to walk and talk. For most children this endeavour is interrupted by school where the child has to follow someone else’s agenda whether they like (or can take advantage of it) or not, which can lead to a loss of enthusiasm for learning that can last for life. For autonomous educators such coercive education is not only wrong, it is far less effective because over a childhood the autodidactic child will, as a side effect of following their own interests, cover everything they will need to become a well functioning citizen in the society to which they belong. But a parent doesn’t just stand back; providing a rich and stimulating environment, together with outings and resources is an essential part of the package.
These ideas grew out of, and have been informed by, the writings of radical educational thinkers such as Ivan Illich in his book Deschooling Society and from the States writers such as John Holt and John Taylor Gatto. Sandra Dodd is currently one of the most influential thinkers and writers on unschooling with her book Moving a Puddle and other Essays and her website on Radical Unschooling which applies the principles of the child’s autonomy to the whole lifecourse. Jan Fortune Wood who has written an introduction to autonomous learning, Doing it Their Way and Roland Meighan promote the principles of natural learning in Britain.
There are examples of autonomously educated children going to university sometimes on the basis of an interview alone, although if a child wishes they can take GCSEs, iGCSE’s, A levels or Open University courses often at a young age. But traditional academic outcomes are not holy grail, those lucky enough to have been enabled to learn in this way from the start have not only had the opportunity to thoroughly explore their interests, but have been living in the real world and experiencing the consequences of their choices all their lives.
However here in England we have recently weathered the severest threat to autonomous education for some time. At the moment local authorities have no monitoring role and home educators known to them are free to provide an education in line with their own philosophical beliefs as long as there is no evidence that an education is not being provided. If a child doesn’t start school there is no obligation to let the local authority know that you are home educating any more than there is an obligation to inform some authority that you have adopted a vegetarian diet However some local authorities have difficulty understanding their legal position and because of this, and lobbying from the Directors of Children’s Services who fear the consequences to themselves if something were to happen to a child on their watch; plus a desire on the part of the DCSF to find a scapegoat for the death of poor Khyra Ishaq – a devastating failure of Birmingham Social Services – a review of home education commissioned from former Managing Director of the Children, Families and Education Directorate for Kent County Council Graham Badman in January 2009. Despite an overwhelming response from stakeholders against any change Badman recommended a draconian regime of registration and monitoring which included a plan of education for the year ahead. This in itself would have put an end to truly autonomous education which depends on the educator responding to the child’s interests of the moment and can change course at any time.
Maire Stafford’s account here is interesting. However, when she claims that a child:
“picks up ideas and skills which are significant in their culture in the same way as they learn to walk”
One starts to ponder a little. I have seen this strange statement so often, that I think we may safely take it that this is pretty standard for those who follow this pedagogical system. This faulty analogy lies at the very heart of autonomous education. Let us look at the idea that a child ‘learns’ to walk.
Within twenty minutes of the birth of a foal it will be standing up. In no time at all it will be walking about. It has not ‘learned’ to do this; its doing so is simply a consequence of being born a quadruped. It has neither been taught to do so, nor has it had to learn by imitation or example. this is simply what this particular organism does. Similarly, the weaver bird of Africa will tie knots in order to fasten a nest to a branch. It does not have to do so; this ability is coded in the genes. Hatch a weaver bird egg in the laboratory and then raise the bird in isolation and it will tie knots if given grass. It does not ‘learn’ to do this.
In precisely the same way, the human baby, a biped, will stand up at a certain age and then start walking. It does this in stages; rolling, bottom shuffling, hanging onto furniture and so on. The process is slower than in a foal, taking months rather than minutes, but it is essentially the same. The baby does this because it is a biped, not because it has ‘learned’ to do so. Obviously, the baby has never seen anybody bottom shuffling or staggering round the room hanging onto the furniture; It is not learning from example! Because the whole thing takes so much longer than in deer and foals, we have the illusion that the baby has ‘learned’ to walk. One might as well say that an oak tree has ‘learned’ to carry out photosynthesis! All living things have certain things that they will do, whether it is converting CO2 and water into sugars , walking on four legs or walking on two. these things are a natural feature of the organism, not something which has to be learned.
How different is the case of something like place value in Western mathematics. Here is an idea which has only been around for a few centuries. Looking at a string of digits such as 7237, we realise at once that the 7pick up ideas on the left is actually worth a thousand times as much as the 7 on the right. This is a very strange idea which certainly does have to be learned. It is very different therefore from standing up and walking.
This confusion between on the one hand a natural feature of the human organism which is transmitted by DNA and is inherent in the creature, and on the other the cultural inheritance which is transmitted by external means is a very common one in those who follow autonomous education. It is the root cause of many of the problems which I have with this system. If those who profess to follow it can begin with such a simple and fundamental error, what hope for the edifice erected upon such a foundation? Because if the basis for the whole method is that children, pick up ideas….in the same way that they learn to walk, then clearly, the whole thing is based upon a nonsense. Walking is something natural which comes from within the child; reading and mathematics are something artificial come from outside. The two cases are wholly different.
Yada yada yada, here we go again Simon. The proof is in the pudding, autonomous education works and people ticking boxes will not make any difference.
Simon Webb wilfully misunderstanding again. Haven’t you anything better to do?
@ Simone Webb
Radio 4 had a woman on this morning, who was talking about songbirds, and how they don’t inherently sing if raised in isolation. Do humans raised in the absence of other humans develop the same? It is very simplistic to argue that nature and nurture are completely separate. Our DNA hardwires us to do certain things, but those things can get set off course depending up on our environment. So it isn’t as simplistic as you make out. In fact, the things we are hardwired for may be less likely to happen in an environment which is the most unnatural to us. How natural is enforcing learning on someone? Most creatures learn by example, not by force. Even place value can be learnt through simple observation, be it consciously or subconsciously. When people say that autonomous learning is simply an extension of learning to eat, walk, talk etc. They mean that it may be done as effortlessly and naturally as that. They mean that the similarities lie in the lack of coercion, the subconscious ease, the unconscious learning by example, etc.
If humans were as simple as you make out, then we would all have to consciously learn how to be bigots or biased or cruel, and we all know that this doesn’t happen consciously necessarily and these are not inherent traits which would happen in isolation. The person who can pick up bad ideas, is also capable of picking up good ones. They can also absorb vast amounts of knowledge without consciously learning it or being specifically taught. There are no classes in autonomous education, yet you seem to have declared yourself an authority on it. Now either you went to autonomous education lessons, or you came up with your ideas all on your own. Now are we to dismiss your ideas because you have no actual formal training? If your answer to that is “No”, then I fear your argument does not stand up.
That is right Simon. Human beings learn all the time from birth until their end and from everything around them. As you so rightly say, it is “simply what this particular organism does.”
(You are just a bit confused about anything more advanced than the process of learning to walk. Or perhaps more fundamentally flawed, since it seems you think the development of this skill is not a learned activity motivated by our biological imperatives.)
Simon wrote,
“This faulty analogy lies at the very heart of autonomous education.”
No analogy is perfect and I think you are taking this example too literally. I read the phrase, “a child picks up ideas and skills which are significant in their culture in the same way as they learn to walk and talk”, as suggesting that children learn through experimentation and perseverance when they have freedom to do so, that it would in fact be very difficult to stop them learning – we would have to actively prevent them learning to walk, talk, read, write, do maths, by preventing them from moving around, not talking to them, not providing stimulating materials and experiences, etc.
The walking and talking analogy was a favourite of my very wise tutor’s when I was doing my teaching course in the late 70′s. He used to say that if we taught children to walk and talk in the same way as we teach them to read and write, there would be many children with walking and talking problems. The implication, of course, was that it may be the teaching methods that cause the problems. Maire has already said it:
“Without coercion learning just continues throughout life and a child picks up ideas and skills which are significant in their culture in the same way as they learn to walk and talk. For most children this endeavour is interrupted by school where the child has to follow someone else’s agenda whether they like (or can take advantage of it) or not, which can lead to a loss of enthusiasm for learning that can last for life.”
Children are not foals. Humans evolved to give birth at a much earlier stage of development than horses, and to carry their offspring rather than to expect them to run alongside. Quadrupeds in the wild would die out if they were not born knowing how to run. Human infants are born with the potential for running and for speech, and according to the society in which they grow up, these potentials are realised in different ways. The language they learn to speak is the one they hear around them, whereas a neigh is a neigh in any language. A hand-reared sheep kept alone as a pet still bleats, a dog barks, a cat meows. Deaf children do not speak unless they are taught, although they do vocalise, because the usual stimulus for learning is not available to them; they do however “pick up” sign language like hearing children pick up spoken language. So they must be learning it. As for walking, I’m reasonably sure that if a child (with, granted, an innate imperative to get around somehow) was brought up surrounded by people who always walked backwards, the child would learn to walk backwards as well.
Actually, I’m not sure it’s as simple as humans being born with the potential for speech. I think they are born with the potential for communication through symbols. Speech, and sign language, after all, are symbolic. As are the written word, maths both oral and written, visual art, drama, music, etc etc. So if they can master a complex system of symbols such as a language autonomously, why on earth shouldn’t they master others? In fact they can, and do. My son understood fractions at 3, and not because I wanted him to.
Autonomously does not, of course, mean alone and without help. It doesn’t mean without teaching. My autonomous children asked to be taught all sorts of things, including place value and reading. My son asked for help to learn to pronounce “r”; my daughter, who has cerebral palsy, needed to be taught to jump. I have a very early memory of asking my mum to help me say “hospital” because I saw an ambulance and I knew where it was going, but I couldn’t say the word. She taught me. But only when I needed to know. She did not waste her time and mine giving me hospital lessons on the offchance that one day I would want to tell her where an ambulance was going.
i was home schooled too but i would still prefer regular schools.,.:
i was home schooled and it is quite satisfactory when providing basic education.~’
excellent post Here’s some thing to make you smile: Thought for the day? : Who’s General Failure and why’s he reading my disk?