Apologies for taking so long to link you all (?) to Sean Gabb's recent piece entitled Home Schooling: A British Perspective, but better late than never. Says Sean here: "This will be published in 2005 in an American book about home schooling across the world." And if you follow that link, you can also access other writings by Sean on the related matter of truancy (and also this!)

I have read through this piece, which is quite long by the standards of internet link destinations (28 pages in my print out), and my immediate reactions are very favourable.

Sean starts with what has always been his strong suit, some history. Home schooling has a long one. (Only very recently has our Royal Family not home schooled.) And so does the kind of schooling that now causes parents to want to rescue their children from it.

There then follows a description of the legal position with regard to home schooling, both in England, and in Scotland where things are different.

He makes the point that estimating the exact number of people involved in home schooling in Britain is difficult, because these are not people who volunteer details of their child rearing arrangements with the kind of people who do research into such things. They prefer to keep things to themselves.

He itemises and expands upon the various reasons why people choose to home school, under the three headings of: discipline and safety, curriculum and quality of instruction, and religious and ideological dissent.

He describes the extremely varied home schooling methods used, many of the people he refers to, of course, preferring not to use words like "school" or "schooling" at all. He speculates that the effects of home schooling can't be that bad, and seem pretty good, certainly compared with the available alternatives.

He describes the slow build-up among the meddling classes of the desire to meddle in and evntually to expunge home schooling, which is particularly strong in Scotland, and, given that there don't seem to be many harmful educational effects from home schooling, Sean speculates about other motives for this meddlesomeness, mainly, he suggests, ideological.

If I had started at the beginning of reading this piece with copying-and-pasting bits that were especially important and particularly felicitously expressed this post would have gone on for ever. I will confine myself to reproducing here the Concluding Remarks:

There can be no doubt that - whatever may be the numbers overall - the number of children educated at home has increased and is increasing. During the next few years, it is also at least reasonable to believe that there will be a debate over whether the numbers ought to be diminished. On the one side will be the supporters of an activist state, divided as to their motivation, but united in their belief that education should be supervised by the authorities. On the other will be the home schooling parents. Most of these may be hiding, and they will continue to see safety in concealment. Those who are visible can be expected to fight all efforts at regulation with a passion not seen in British politics within living memory.

We may, then, be returning to something like the debates of the middle and late Victorian years, when education was considered more than just a matter of funding and standards.

Well, I reckon EUrope etc. rouses the odd spot of passion already. But otherwise, very good. Read it all, or at least dip in it more extensively than I have here.

That's Sean on the right, holding forth at my Last Friday of the Month Meeting in April of this year.