This Telegraph story is good news indeed. Here's how the subheading goes:
The state won't help parents who want to teach their children at home, so parents have pooled resources to help themselves.
The state regarding something as rather bad, but not bad enough to be actually illegal, is the ideal arrangement to ensure that this something flourishes. Government "help" is the kiss of death to any activity. It means that eyes are taken off the ball (in the form of doing it yourself with likeminded collaborators) and fixed instead on politics (in the form of trying to get hold of government money). Just think how much better school schooling would be if the government stopped trying to help with that also.
Home schooling is not easy, but it is expanding all the time, with more and more resources and advice, both legal and educational, being made available to help it along, and I mean really help it along. The article is full of information about that, and it even has a link to Education Otherwise. Although, this bit will not be universally liked in these parts:
"People get a false impression of the type of family that educates at home – they imagine they allow their children to loll around all day, doing nothing apart from the occasional piece of arts or crafts work. In fact, many families work to a rigid timetable, geared to academic success. Some, particularly in London, withdraw their children for extended periods to give a quick spurt to learning because they are progressing so slowly at school."
Personally, I still think that even this sort of home school is an improvement over children being just dumped unthinkingly at school school. This is my favourite bit:
But isn't it a huge risk to meddle with your child's education in this way?
Don't you just love that? Meddle. But I shouldn't mock. The Telegraph is doing its best. I don't know how much encouragement it has given to home schooling over the years, but this piece will definitely help.
(From an NPR interview): _The Two Income Trap_ by Warren and Tyagi argues that American families are being driven bankrupt by the cost of educating their children. Most people aren't noticably more extravagant than they were 50 years ago--they just spend the money differently (frex, on high-end casual clothing rather than dress clothes). What's deadly is that either parents spend a lot on private school or they spend at least as much on a house in a district with a good public school.
Unfortunately, the interview didn't address home schooling as a possible way out, and generally assumed that the solution is more government help and centralization.
Imho, part of the problem (and why Holt spent the last part of his life promoting home schooling) is the regulations which make it impossible for people to start private schools. This serverely limits the alternatives for people who are unable or unwilling to teach their children themselves.
Something that I am sure you would have suggested had space permitted:
At least one of the problems with government help is that even if it doesn't at first come with strings attached it soon will do. You'll have to set exams and then the teachers will have to be government approved and then the buildings will have to be subject to government inspection and before you know it you're just like any other school.
