Educational Heretics Press
and Education Now
Educational Heretics Press is a not-for-personal-gain,
research, writing and publishing company.and any
profits are donated to the Centre for Personalised Education
Trust.
Educational Heretics Press and Education Now
promoted a more flexible approach to education:
“Alternatives for everybody, all the time”
Education Now Publishing co-operative
has ceased to trade and has merged
with the
Centre for Personalised
Education Trust Ltd
(which
now trades as Personalised Education Now)
Education Now books are still available from Educational Heretics Press, acting as agents.
Educational Heretics Press
Telephone 0115 925 7261
Educational Heretics Press
incorporating Education Now Books
Books in Print
2011
Educational Heretics
Press is a
not-for-personal gain, research, writing and publishing company. Any profits are donated to Personalised Education Now, (the trading name of The Center for Personalised
Education Trust).
We are a small press that exists to question the
dogmas and superstitions of mass, coercive schooling with a view to developing
the next modern, humane, flexible, personalised and more effective
public learning system.
Our team of radical educational
writers includes:
Glen Buglass, Clive Harber, Tony Jeffs, Clive Erricker,
Jan Fortune-Wood, Roland Meighan, Bryn Purdy, Mark Smith, Ann Sherman, Chris Shute, Anthony
Swift, Bernard Trafford, Julie Webb, Mark Webster and James Whitehead.
Best selling titles include:
Natural Learning and the Natural Curriculum, With Consent, Finding Voices Making
Choices, Compulsory Schooling
Disease, John Holt, Henry Morris,
Alice Miller, Edmond Holmes, Bertrand Russell, A.S.Neill, Robert Owen,
Charlotte Mason, Damage
Limitation, Participation, Power-sharing
and School Improvement, Rules Routines
and Regimentation, Doing It Their
Way, Children for Social Change, Theory and Practice of Regressive Education,
Those Unschooled Minds, and Comparing Learning Systems.
"I am a fan of the Education Heretics Press
because it asks necessary questions about the fundamental processes of
schooling."
(Gerald Haigh of the Times
Educational Supplement)
Toxic Schooling:
How Schools Became
Worse
by Clive Harber
Unease
with schooling is not new. Bertrand
Russell writing in 1926 noted that, “We
are faced by the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief
obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought”. (From On Education P.28) In the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a variety of those concerned with
education – Edmond Holmes, A.S.Neill, Rudolf Steiner,
Margaret McMillan, Charlotte Mason, Susan Isaacs and Bertrand Russell were
critical of schooling and went on to suggest more personalised,
democratic and humane forms of education as alternatives.
However,
in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of social and cultural upheaval in the West
and political change caused by decolonisation in many
developing countries, a number of writers again began to question and critique
the relevance and benevolence of schooling. This book examines the main ideas
in a dozen or so key texts on schooling produced roughly during the period 1960
to 1980. For reasons of space, a selection had to be but there were other
important books produced during the period that are not considered here. No
doubt my own history and preferences have played a role in this selection as I
was a pupil, student teacher, teacher and teacher educator during this period
and read most of the texts at the time. The writers selected are Edward Blishen, Paulo Freire, Paul
Goodman, James Hemming, John Holt, Ivan Illich,
Philip Jackson, George Leonard, Soren Hansen and
Jasper Jensen, Julius Nyerere, Neil Postman and
Charles Weingartner, Everett Reimer, and Carl Rogers.
This
book then examines the extent, if any, to which these critiques had an effect
on changing and improving the nature of schooling provided today and how in
many ways the situation is now actually worse because their insights were
ignored or dismissed. All schools of the
compulsion model are toxic, but some are more toxic than others? The book
concludes with what needs to be done to reverse the toxic effects of schooling.
Dr. Clive Harber is Professor of International
Education at the
ISBN
978 1-900219-37-2 Price £16-00
Isn’t That
Dangerous?
African Travels Among Academics and Other Wild Animals
by Clive Harber
Clive
Harber spent over twenty years working, researching
and teaching in
Details
of
What
do Bob Geldorf, Bono and Clive
Harber have in common? Not much really, except that
they’ve all shown more than a passing interest in
The
appeal of the book lies not just in its use of humour
but in its engagement with many of the issues facing contemporary
Arthur Smith, TV and radio comedian wrote:
Clive Harber’s book caused me pain. Not because I didn’t like it but because I split me sides laughing out loud. This affectionate portrait of a continent is full of hilarious stories and fascinating detail. He will rightly be called the Bill Bryson of Africa.
Dr. Clive Harber is Professor of International
Education at the
ISBN
978 1-900219-38-9 Price £16-00
Community –
Creativity – Choice – Change
This series has been created to give a platform to new ideas
in Community Education, Life-long Learning and Community Arts. All the titles in the series aim to give
voice to alternative perspectives in contemporary practice.
The series editor is
Mark Webster.
Finding Voices, Making Choices (new edition)
is the
lead book in this series
We are all bombarded with images and ideas created by
other people. The Community Arts movement developed as a response to the closed
doors of elitist art and the increasing saturation by, and commercialisation
of, popular culture. Community Arts offers people a voice in the development of
culture.
This book sets out to re-state the values that underpin
the movement and to explain some of its key themes such as access,
participation and ownership. It explores Community Arts work in a number of
contexts; from Youth Arts to housing estates, and a number of art forms; from
community pantomimes to interactive computers.
This book is for cultural heretics everywhere and will be
of interest to anyone who thinks that art is for everybody and that it really
can apply to everyday life.
Mark Webster is Senior Lecturer
at the
ISBN 978-1-900219-22-0 price
£10-00
Informal Education (new edition)
is
the second book in this series
Of late there has been a major growth of interest in
informal education. But what is it? Who does it?
How is it to be developed? This
book provides a unique and practical introduction to the area. The writers focus on the central features of
the work. They examine engaging in
conversations; encouraging learning; fostering democracy; attending to product,
process and education; thinking about ethics; and planning the work.
ISBN 978-1-900219-29-8 price £12-00
Comparing Learning Systems:
the good, the bad, the ugly and the counter-productive
and why home-based educating families
have found one fit for a democracy
(the
third book in this series)
by Roland
Meighan
Thank
you, thank you for your lovely level-headed book! It’s a model of clarity and good sense.
John Taylor Gatto,
in a postcard to the author
A fine review of why current schooling does not work and an indication
of better alternatives.
Professor Ian Cunningham in ‘Self
managing, learning and democracy’.
The great
value of Meighan’s book, of his life’s work, in fact,
as an academic, a publisher and a writer, is that it tells us, quite simply,
that education does not have to be the way it is.
Gerald Haigh,
review in Times Educational Supplement
The book
concludes with consideration of the principles to guide the next learning
system that needs to offer ‘alternatives for everybody, all of the time’. …When
you emerge from this book you will see a different educational world … of ‘what
is and what might be’.
Alan Wilkins in Personalised Education No 3, Summer 2005
“It was a Swedish colleague who identified the central
focus of my work as a sustained analysis of learning systems. He pointed out
that my pattern of research into consulting learners about learning in schools,
later followed by developing democratic learning co-operatives in teacher
education and then switching to the study of home-based education, looked
eclectic, but actually they were studies of the logistics of different learning
systems.
Which learning system is best? The answer depends on your purpose. The current learning systems in use in UK,
schools and universities alike, draw most of their inspiration from
totalitarian-style thinking on education, with the emphasis on mass schooling
heavy with coercion and domination. The book ends with a consideration of the
principles of a learning system fit for a democracy.
This book replaces an earlier volume, The Next Learning System: and why home-schoolers
are trailblazers.”
Dr. Roland Meighan now works as a writer and publisher.
Previously he was Senior Lecturer in Education at the
ISBN 978-1-900219-28-X price
£12-50
The fourth is:
Personalised Learning:
Taking Choice Seriously
edited by Mark Webster
What happens if you start to take choice in education seriously?
This was the theme of a challenging one day conference at
Personalised learning is
an idea which puts the learner in the driving seat. It challenges the shallow version of learning
with learners as mere receivers as promoted within the present education
system, and proposes a different approach where learners themselves make
informed choices about their learning. ‘Taking choice seriously’ addresses
issues of key importance to all learners and educators: from schools to
home-based settings, from community and adult learning through to youth work
Contributors include
Leslie Barson from 'The Otherwise Club, a home-based
education invitational learning community',
Professor Ian
Cunningham from
the Centre for Self-Managed Learning,
Terri Dowty, from Action on Rights for Children,
Peter Humphreys from the Centre for Personalised Education Trust,
Tony Jeffs of
Dr.
Roland Meighan, former Special Professor of Education at
Dr Tim Rudd from Futurelab,
Mark Webster, from Staffordshire
University’s Creative Communities Unit,
Alan
Wilkins
consultant on Co-operative Learning,
and members of the Bridge International Youth Project.
ISBN 978-1-900219-36-5 Price £12-50
The Face of Home-based Education
1:
Who, Why and How?
by Mike
Fortune-Wood
Everyone agrees that home-based education is growing both
in numbers and in scope, but despite some excellent pieces of research,
particularly from the
This book is the first in a series
of publications following the life of an extensive programme
of research into home-based education initiated by the Centre for Personalised Education Trust. Home-based
educating families provide the context in which personalised
learning is most likey to be found, so the Trust has
made this a top priority in its research programme.
The research covered here is just
the beginning. In 2002, after commissioning a feasibility study into research
on home-based education, the Trust,
which trades as Personalised Education Now, decided to commission a
full research project over a number of years. The first set of results are
contained in this book and cover three major questionnaires dealing with who
home educates, why families choose home education and how home-based education
is conducted in practice.
The Trust is grateful to the Ernest Cook Trust and the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust
for substantial financial support, along with donations from various
individuals and other organisations.
Mike Fortune-Wood is Research Officer for the Centre for Personalised Education
Trust and a consultant on home-based education
ISBN 978-1-900219-30-1 price
£10-00
“This slim book is a massively important first step in drawing
together what so many people are learning from home-based education and which,
if spread and understood more widely, could change the face of the formal
education structures in our country. Now
wouldn’t that be something?”
from
a review by Bernard and Katherine Trafford.
The Face of Home-based Education 2: Numbers, Support,
Special Needs
by Mike
Fortune-Wood
In the second book in this ground breaking series from the
Centre for Personalised
Education Trust, research into the face of home education considers questions
that have previously gone unanswered. The key question of the numbers of home
educators has always been a vexed issue. Here, Mike Fortune-Wood takes an
innovative look at numbers research using evidence from a series of enquiries
to LEAs using the Freedom of Information Act in
conjunction with evidence from the home education community to arrive at an
estimate.
Bu this is not research concerned only with quantitative
evidence. In this book Fortune-Wood moves into new territory in the field of
home education research, examining the support networks, both voluntary and
statutory, and how they serve or fail the needs of home educators, focusing
particularly on the continuing problems that home educators routinely encounter
in dealing with statutory authorities that persist in acting beyond the remit
of their legal duties.
A chapter from Jan Fortune-Wood extends the theme of
support for or obstruction of home education, that arises with a consideration
of how university admissions officers respond to home educators across a sample
range of arts and science disciplines.
Finally, a group continually overlooked
in research are given detailed attention. Home educators with special
needs children face distinctive challenges in providing a suitable education,
challenges which can be significantly eased or added to by both the home
education community and a range of statutory agencies. Why do parents choose
home education for their special needs children? What are the effects on
parents of taking on this particular type of education at home? How are home
educating families of special needs children supported or failed by informal
and voluntary networks and professionals?
Anyone concerned with educational provision in the 21st
century should be reading this invaluable source of new research.
CPE (trading as Personalised Education Now) are grateful for the support of
the Esmee Fairburn Trust, Educational Heretics Press
and the many individuals who have made this research possible.
Mike Fortune-Wood is Research Officer for the Centre for Personalised Education Trust and a consultant on home-based
education
ISBN 978-1-900219-32-8 price
£10-00
Damage Limitation:
trying to reduce the harm schools do to
children
by Roland Meighan
with contributions by: Linda Brown,
Hazel Clawley, Charlie Cooper, Jane Dent, Clive Erricker, Kim Evans,
Michael Foot, Derry Hannam, Clive
Harber, Ben Koralek, and
Philip Toogood
This book is primarily for parents and grandparents. It
answers one need – that of home-based educators who say they do not know what
to say to friends who, by force of circumstances, have to use schools. This book offers some advice and
suggestions. It answers a second need –
those who understand what Bertrand Russell was saying when he wrote: “There must be in the world many parents
who, like the present author, have young children whom they are anxious to
educate as well as possible, but reluctant to expose to the evils of existing
educational institutions”.
It will appeal to those who adopt the position of Mark
Twain when he declared that he never allowed schooling to interfere with his
education. But the book is of no help to those who are happy to hand their
children over to a bunch of complete strangers, and then hope for the
best. Nor will it appeal to those who
think that the devotion of schools to the message of relentless competition of
modern capitalism for its dubious prizes, is to be
preferred to any ideas of co-operation or community. It will also be rejected by those who are
content that the primitive form of democracy we have, whereby we get a chance
to elect a new set of ‘dictators’ every four years, using a rigged voting
system, who can default on their promises at will, is the best we can do, and
that we need domination-riddled schooling to get us used to the idea.
The answer to the question of what is wrong with mass,
coercive schooling is 291. That is the
number of separate criticisms logged by Nigel Wright in his Ph.D. research,
even before the advent of the second National Curriculum, league tables and
obsessive testing. The 15,000 hours (minimum) sentence served in schools often
just grows into low-level misery alleviated by ‘having a laugh’, although Clive Harber, in his contribution
to the book, shows how this escalates into psychological and physical violence.
The learner-hostile nature of our current school system is indicated in
the classic anthropological study of classrooms, Life in Classrooms, by Philip Jackson when he concluded that, for all the children some of the time, and for some of
the children all of the time, the classroom resembles a cage from which there
is no escape. It is echoed in Colin
Ward’s comment that our
expenditure on teachers and plant is mostly wasted by attempting to teach
people what they do not want to learn in a situation that they would rather not
be involved in.
ISBN 978 1-900219-27-1 price
£10-00
Learner-Managed Learning and Home Education:
A European Perspective
Edited by Leslie Safran Barson
In association with Learning Unlimited www.learning-unlimited.org
Learner-managed education is a philosophy that has many
supporters but little official recognition in this increasingly centralized and
bureaucratized
The book is based on lectures
given at the Learning Unlimited conference in 2005. The articles have been translated into
English, French and German, and each copy of the book contains all three
versions.
The Foreword is by Dr Robert Bell,
vice-president of of the European Forum for Freedom in Education. There are accounts of keynote lectures by Dr.
Roland Meighan and Dr. Alan Thomas followed by repots of home-based education
in
ISBN 978 1-900219-31-X price £10-00
One of our best
selling titles is:
Natural Learning and the Natural Curriculum
by Roland Meighan
Parents soon find out that young children are natural
learners. They are like explorers or research scientists busily gathering
information and making meaning out of the world. Most of this learning is not
the result of teaching, but rather a universal researching activity, as natural
as breathing. Our brains are programmed to learn unless discouraged. A healthy
brain interacts with what it finds interesting or challenging in the world
around it.
We parents achieve the amazing feats of helping our
children to talk, walk and make sense of the home and the environment in which
it is set, by responding to this natural learning process. All this is
achieved, with varying degrees of success, by so-called amateurs – those of us
who are parents, along with other care-givers such as grandparents.
But, this process of natural learning can be hindered or
halted by insensitive adult interference.
Sadly, the schools available to us, whether state or private, are
usually based on an impositional model which, sooner
or later, causes children to lose confidence in their natural learning and its
self-correcting features, and instead, learn to be dependent on others to
'school' their minds. This trains children to be obedient to a script written
by remote strangers rather than one of their own, using the help of people who
love or care about them.
The consequence is that parents wanting an effective and
morally healthy education for their children based on natural learning principles, have a dilemma. The system is not in the habit
of providing any of these things, and often has a vested interest in providing
the opposite. So, like the vegetarian pioneers, the non-smoking rights movement
and the environmental protection groups, parents wanting education that
respects natural learning principles, will have to argue and organise to try to get it.
Dr. Roland Meighan was formerly Special Professor of
Education at the
Based on articles published in Natural Parent magazine
ISBN 978-1-900219-19-0 price
£10-00
With Consent: parenting for all to
win
by Jan Fortune-Wood
With Consent is the
second edition of the book Without
Boundaries, which argued that, both in theory and in practice, coercion is
not only destructive of personal autonomy, but inimical to learning and the
growth of knowledge. In With
Consent this theory is re-visited; with a new chapter exploring the
role of memes (ideas that reproduce) and entrenched
ideas in parenting, new scenarios to illustrate common preference finding and
clear summaries to help parents make the shift to the radical parenting
paradigm of ‘taking children seriously’.
The book falls into two sections, with a concluding chapter
drawing the themes together. The first part sets out a theory of non-coercion
as it relates to parenting and learning. It sets out a clear understanding of
the terminology (with new easy reference summaries), looks at how changing our
ideas can help us to change how we parent, examines the role of parents in the
lives of autonomous children and explores the growth of knowledge that can take
place when autonomy is respected and nurtured.
The second
section takes a practical, in depth look at the issues that arise when we begin
to take children seriously. Using illustrative scenarios, the chapters focus on
major issues in family life and learning, concentrating on ‘learning to win’
for every family member.
The Taking Children Seriously (TCS)
philosophy, which is the inspiration of this book, is a wide ranging and far
reaching theory. The book offers a broad introduction to thinking that could revolutionise how we parent and how we think about
learning. With Consent offers a distinctively radical and practical
alternative not only to how we parent, but also to how we relate to our
children and how we all learn. The book
should be of interest to all those in the fields of education and parenting,
whether as professionals or practitioners.
Bound To Be Free:
home education as a positive
alternative to paying the hidden costs of ‘free’ education
by Jan Fortune-Wood
Bound to be Free explores the myth that compulsory education is free education,
arguing that in fact institutionalised education is detrimental
to our freedom and autonomy, whether as children, parents or members of
society. Since financial control and philosophical control inevitably go hand
in hand, parents must take back the former if they value the latter. The social
costs of free compulsory education, including the rise of medical,
psychological and civil liberty intervention into families under the guise of
education, can be astronomical. This is
not so with home education. Similarly, the cost to individuals of being
required to conform to institutionalised systems,
with the resulting emotional costs, including bullying. It is a tragic waste of
human resources that home educated children need never suffer. Finally, 'free' education
de-skills both parents and children in favour of
'experts', whereas home education nurtures a culture of mentors, resources and
skills. Bound to Be Free is a radical re-appraisal of education as a way of
life, as opposed to an institutional instrument of control and social planning.
ISBN 978 1-900219-20-4 price
£10-00
Doing It Their Way:
home-based education and autonomous learning
by Jan Fortune-Wood
The book begins with a brief
overview of the thinking of those who have significantly influenced the trend
to autonomous education. This includes
names like Karl Popper, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Alice
Miller, John Taylor Gatto and Roland Meighan. In part two, the practice of autonomous home
education is explored, looking at key issues and questions. This is followed by
an analysis of the notion of ‘necessary’ knowledge. We see that autonomy
fundamentally questions the prevailing mythology of essential, age-related,
‘balanced’ education. Next is an examination of the question of socialisation, questioning the relevance of school models of
compulsory, age-related socialisation and the need
for homogeneity, and proposing instead a model which allows for the social self
to develop without compromising the child’s autonomy. The wider questions of
the effect of autonomous home education on lifestyle are introduced, focusing
on eradicating the demarcation between education and life and looking at
practical issues such as limits on autonomy, television and computers, the role
of play and life-style education.
ISBN 978 1-900219-16-6 price
£10-00
Learning Unlimited:
the home-based education case-files
by Roland Meighan
Roland Meighan
has researched and written about home-based education since 1977.
“For about fifteen years, I was
an educational double agent. Some of my
time was spent in teacher education, preparing post-graduate students for a
career in schools, and some spent researching and supporting families choosing
to educate their children at home.”
Over the last thirty years, he has collected a considerable
number of stories, case-files, from the experiences of home-based educating
families. In this book he opens fifteen
of his case-files. The files capture some of the variety, pathos, difficulties
and excitement of the families who become ‘reluctant heretics’ and take charge
of their own education. The contrast
between school-based and home-based education has been likened to that of
factory farming versus the free-range option.
All the
case-files in this book are based on true incidents. Most names and most locations have been
changed to avoid any possible embarrassment. The author has permitted himself
some poetic license in the files, over the actual dialogue and the exact
sequence of events.
Dr. Roland Meighan was formerly Special Professor of Education at the
ISBN 978 1-900219-18-2 price
£8-00
Those Unschooled Minds:
home-educated
children grow up
by Julie
Webb
The book is based on interviews with
20 home-educated people. They are now in their twenties or thirties except for
one, a man who is older. Julie Webb first spoke to about a quarter of them as
teenagers in the early 1980s. She wanted
to find out what sort of lives they were leading now, and hear their
reflections on the process of home educating - she thought it would be
interesting to see whether they would contemplate home educating their own
children. She hopes her discussion of interviewees’ reflections on their
experiences will shed an incidental light on the growth of a movement with some
fairly revolutionary implications for standard educational thinking. The common factor in their approach is the
intention of replacing the ‘one size fits all’ philosophy, with learning that emerges from the abilities and
interests of the individual, deepening and expanding as the child matures.
ISBN 978 1-900219-15-8 price £8-00
The Holistic Educators
by Cara
Martin
The holistic educators have a long-standing tradition as educational
heretics. From their roots in the
pioneering work of such arch-heretics as Maria Montessori and Rudolph Steiner,
holistic educators have continued to develop their work and ideas under the
influence of more recent radical educational thought. The result is a modern approach to the
education of the whole person which is fundamentally different from that of
mainstream education today.
When asked how they feel about their schooling, children
from many walks of life seem to have a single one-word answer: "boring!" Yet children are not naturally bored by the
world. This simple fact alone must
surely prompt us to ask why this should be so.
Why do so many intelligent, cheerful, well-balanced children and young
people have the same opinion of the well-intentioned efforts of the adult
community. The answer, it is suggested,
lies in the outdated mental model of the world to which many adults still hold,
but which, under the influence of developments in modern science and
technology, is being rapidly superseded.
ISBN 978-1-900219-08-5 price
£8-00
Compulsory
Schooling Disease:
how children absorb fascist values
by Chris Shute
This book demonstrates how
compulsory schooling, with its apparatus of imposed discipline and control, is
dangerous to the mental health and social development of children, and is in
fact the cause of many social problems which it claims to cure. This is not a
book written by an expert to influence the thinking of other experts. It is based on the accumulated experience of
a teacher. One day soon, Shute hopes that it will be
possible for children to use schools as he thinks they should be used, as
places where any person who happens to need help with their studies can go and
receive it. Until then, Shute confines himself to commenting on schools as they are
now, and challenging us to consider whether their regime enslaves the minds of
children rather than setting them free.
ISBN 978-0-9518022-2-4 price £8-00
Alice Miller:
the unkind
society, parenting, and schooling
by Chris Shute
Alice Miller came to believe that
she had discovered the true origin of the vein of ferocity which runs through
human relationships everywhere. She proposed a simple but revolutionary truth:
people are not emotionally distorted by their unresolved Oedipus Complex, or by some complex mismanagement of their
imperious, inescapable drives. Instead, it is the unrecognised
cruelty of their parents, masquerading as 'firm discipline' and 'responsible
control', which injects slow-acting
poison into their lives. If they have learned from their own background and
culture to believe that children are in need of repression, they will crush,
'for their own good', all their innocent attempts to act independently, leaving
them angry, frightened and frustrated. Their children will learn that it is
dangerous to resist the god-like power of their parents, and they then grow up into faithful imitators
of those who oppressed them.
ISBN 978-1-9518022-5-9 price £8-00
and 'The Tragedy of
Education'
by Chris Shute
“I must admit that I didn’t
exactly relish the prospect of reading this account of the life and work of the
Senior Chief Inspector of Schools at the turn of the century; I expected a worthy
but dull biography. How wrong I was. I was riveted by the story of Edmund
Holmes’ working life, and by Chris Shute’s
accompanying heartfelt plea for us to radically rethink our perceptions of what
‘education’ should be. Chris Shute outlines Holmes’ passionate
critique of schools in his own time and shows the relevance of Holmes’ analysis
of what is going on in education today. It is not dry and worthy at all, but is
refreshingly angry about how the education system – then and now – is under a
stranglehold of prescriptive, examination-based instruction … guaranteed to get
you thinking.”
Christine Bridgwood
ISBN 978-1-900219-12-3 price: £8-00
Bertrand Russell:
‘education
as the power of independent thought'
by Chris Shute
Those devoted to the idea of belief as the purpose of
education must first extinguish imagination: “The first thing to kill in the young is imagination. Imagination is
lawless, undisciplined, individual, and neither correct nor incorrect; in all
these respects it is inconvenient to the teacher, especially when competition
requires a rigid order of merit.” But belief is attractive: “All sorts of intellectual systems -
Christianity, Socialism, Patriotism etc. - are ready, like orphan asylums, to
give safety in return for servitude. A
free mental life cannot be as warm and comfortable and sociable as a life
enveloped in a creed.”
Bertrand Russell valued the fact
that he had been educated at home: “I am
glad I did not go to school. I would
have had no time for original thought, which has been my chief stay and support
in troubles.” But, paradoxically, he set up a school for his own
children. This venture was not as
successful as he had hoped. He noted
that one reason was that he overestimated the amount of time children need to
be in the company of other children.
There is an opportunity-cost.
Whilst in the company of peers of equal immaturity, lack of wisdom,
experience and reflection. you cannot be in the
company of others who might help you grow.
ISBN 978-1-900219-21-2 price
£8-00
Henry Morris:
village
colleges, community education and the ideal order
by Tony Jeffs
In 1926 Morris proclaimed "we must do away with the insulated
school". The rest of his life
was to be devoted to creating the educational institutions in which all the
activities "which go to make a full
life - art, literature, music, recreation, festivals, local government,
politics" might flourish. The Cambridgeshire
Village Colleges, with which his name is always associated, were designed to
achieve just such an end. They were not
to be schools wholly for the young but places to be 'shared by all'. In his
lifetime they became a model for community education practice. It is important
to re-examine the concept of the community school, "where every local community becomes an educational society, and
where education becomes not merely a consequence of good government, but good
government a consequence of education."
Tony Jeffs teaches at
ISBN 978-1-900219-06-9 price
£8-00
John Holt:
personalised learning instead of ‘uninvited
teaching’
by Roland
Meighan
John Holt died in 1985.
He had written ten books, many of them destined to become acknowledged
classic works in education. His work was
translated into many languages. At
first, he was status quo content:
"I had no quarrel with traditional
education. If someone had said to me
much of what I have said in this book, my answer would have been,
'Baloney!' I agreed without question
that students should be made to learn ..."
John Holt found, as many of us have found, that formal
teaching did not work very well. Perhaps
it was a technical matter. Holt threw
himself into lesson planning, teaching aids, evaluation lists. It made some difference, but not much. He decided to study the children to see the
classroom from their point of view. It
led him to reverse his earlier position:
"I don't
believe in the curriculum, I don't believe in grades, I don't believe in
teacher-judged learning. I believe in
children learning with our assistance and encouragement the things they want to
learn, when they want to learn them, how they want to learn them, why they want
to learn them. This is what, it seems to me, education must now be about."
ISBN 978 1-9002119-23-9 price
£10-00
A. S. Neill:
'bringing
happiness to some few children'
by Bryn
Purdy
Where does A. S. Neill stand in the history of
education? Was he not, after all,
against academic learning? against the conventional
wisdom of morals? against sexual control? against adult authority? against
religion? Or may he have been a modern Socrates, seeking to release the young
from the mind-set of their elders by the giving of 'freedom'?
Bryn Purdy, who visited and was
invited to work at Summerhill in the 60s, presents
the canon of Neillian beliefs: child empowerment,
child democracy, sexual ethics, religion, and the relevance of learning. The author counterpoints the skein of Neill's
arguments with the thinking of others, within and without the educational
world: for example, Shelley and John Stuart Mill on 'freedom'; Montaigne and Tagore on 'learning';
and Shaw, Ibsen, William Blake, Richmal
Crompton and Lao Tzu
throughout.
Neill's aim was perhaps
ambivalent. Was it, as he declared on one occasion, "the bringing of
happiness to some few children", or, on another, "The Summerhill
Idea is of the greatest importance to mankind"?
ISBN 978-1-900219-03-4 price
£8-00
Charlotte Mason: 'a pioneer of sane education'
by Marian Ney
Marian Ney proposed that
Charlotte Mason is the equal of such famous figures as Dewey, and often saw deeper
and wider than they. She supported
educators, whether teachers operating in schools, governesses in homes or
parents home-educating using parent correspondence materials. A major
contribution to method was through the concept of narration. This consisted of
a child telling back what had been learnt from the teacher or mother. This
discipline had a valuable effect in developing the skills and confidence of
young learners. She stressed that children should become accustomed to reading
good quality books, and that books regarded as adult reading could be enjoyed
by children. She saw parents and teachers as partners in a common task. She was called, "a pioneer of sane education".
ISBN 978 1-900219-14-X price
£8-00
Margaret McMillan:
'I learn, to succour the helpless'
by Viv Moriarty
Margaret McMillan was born in 1860
during a time of great social change in
Viv Moriarty lectures in Early Childhood
Education,
ISBN 978-1-900219-13-1 price £6-00
Robert Owen: schooling the
innocents
by John Siraj-Blatchford
This book is all
about the educational thinking of Robert Owen, the 19th century philanthropist
and founder of the co-operative movement. He became acutely aware of the social
difficulties faced by the majority of the working population of his day. The fortune that he acquired as a mill owner
gave him the means to ensure that his voice was heard. He believed that
community education provided a means of breaking out of the vicious cycle of
social and moral degeneration. Owen was a self-educated man. Here we visit of
just one part of his thinking, an area that has been relatively neglected,
namely early childhood education.
John Siraj-Blatchford was Senior Lecturer in Science
Education at
ISBN 978-1-900219-00-X price
£8-00
Joy Baker:
trailblazer for home-based education and personalised
Learning
by Chris Shute
Winston
Churchill wrote that schools had little to do with education since they were
mainly instruments of control. Joy Baker was of the same mind and sought to
have her children educated rather than schooled.
Later
writers agreed with her – Paul Goodman in Compulsory
Mis-education, John Holt in Instead of Education), and Everett Reimer in School is Dead, to mention but three. So had earlier writers such
as the Chief Inspector of Schools, Edmond Holmes in The Tragedy of Education.
Chris
Shute tells the story of Joy Baker’s bitter
encounters with the Authorities over a period of ten years or so. In the end
the rigid policies of the Authorities were exposed and over-ruled. But she had
to endure court hearing after court hearing, and at one stage, experience her children
being taken away from her by force, before she eventually achieved success.
Joy Baker believed that she could do a better job of
educating her children than the State could, in spite of its good intentions.
She did not want them to become mere rule-followers.
Chris Shute is a former teacher who became a notable writer on
education. His previous titles have been: Compulsory
Schooling Disease: How Children Absorb Fascist Values, then Alice Miller: The Unkind Society, Parenting
and Schooing then
ISBN 978 1-900219-35-8 Price £10-00
by Clive Erricker
Clive Erricker’s
book takes up a similar theme. Various Government pronouncements on family
values, parenting, education, citizenship and many other matters seek to
convince us that democratic ideals shape the changes that are taking place in
these areas and that our society will become more democratic as a result. He
argues that this is a subterfuge
which seeks to convince us that democratic values and free market capitalism
must proceed hand in hand in order that we have a
society which offers both opportunity and prosperity, on the one hand, and
fairness and justice, on the other.
His argument is that the balancing of these values has
been, and is increasingly, suspect. The result is a cosmetic veneer of democratic rhetoric used to justify economically
anti-democratic practices. Why should it be challenged? One reason might be
that the basis of it is competition
(the creation of winners and losers). Another might be that its basis is solely economic (wealth creation).
For every economically stable
family you create another (perhaps many more) unstable one, whether in this
country or elsewhere in the world. For every academically successful child you
create one (or more than one) who is unsuccessful, and less able to compete in
relation to employment opportunities.
Dr. Clive Erricker is Adviser for Religious
Education, Hampshire LEA
ISBN 978-1-900219-25-5 price
£8-00
Participation, Power-sharing and
School Improvement
by Bernard
Trafford
Children who are empowered in school
are more likely to become the committed, responsible democratic citizens of
tomorrow, answering concerns about moral values and citizenship. This book
describes how one school is developing democratic practices to give both
teachers and students a real voice in the school and its management, charting
the changes in the operation and ethos of the school through the perceptions of
students, teachers and parents. The findings are compelling. The more the
school has been able to share power, the happier and more productive it has
become. Teachers and students alike feel respected as participants with
valuable skills and ideas to contribute. They describe a less tense atmosphere,
a decrease in bullying and racism, greater understanding and co-operation between
all involved and an altogether richer educational experience. Levels of
motivation are raised, as are students' self-confidence, self-esteem and
academic performance. As increasing
numbers of British children are alienated by schooling and the future of
compulsory mass approach appears doubtful, this book suggests that the
participative approach is the way schools may adapt and survive.
ISBN 978 1-900219-10-7 price
£8-00
by Clive Harber
Small schools are an international experience, for they
exist in large countries and small, rich countries and poor. They also exist in public sectors and
private. Despite being so common, they
have both advocates and opponents. Those
in favour applaud their personal atmosphere and their
democratic role at the centre of local
communities. Those against believe the
accountants' claim that they have high unit costs, a claim that is in
dispute. It is also asserted that they
can only offer a restricted curriculum, a claim increasingly weakened by the
changes in communications and computer technology. This book examines the issue of school size
in relation to a democratic ideology of education. What is it about a small school that
facilitates the development of democratic behaviours
and values? Small schools, it is argued,
may well be a better investment for contemporary society because they can more
easily educate for the democratic and flexible people required for the next
century, and more easily avoid the risk of creating the large numbers of
apathetic, hostile and vengeful young people from with large schools.
Dr. Clive
Harber is Professor of
Education,
ISBN 978-0-9518022-9-1 price
£8-00
Theory and Practice of
Regressive Education
by Roland Meighan
In the
ISBN 978-0-9518022-3-2 price
£8-00
Rules, Routines and
Regimentation:
young
children reporting on their schooling
by Ann
Sherman
Very little exists that describes the feelings and
thoughts of learners about school. Even
less exists about the views of five-year-old young people during the first year
of their long, 15,000 hour schooling journey.
This book explores their viewpoint.
We learn that they have much to offer us by way of reflection but to
find out we must first ensure that children's voices be heard.
In this book we learn what the school experience means to
young children as they try to understand whether school is an inclusive place,
a place where they feel they belong, a place for
children. These children provide a vital
image for teachers of what really goes on.
They report that they are soon very aware of the authoritarian nature of
school and its heavy dependence on imposed rules and routines as a mean of
controlling what goes on in classrooms.
To many of these children, the
routine itself was school. For
children, what they learn and think about
school may limit what they learn in school. It can easily become the start of the deadening
of the spirit, rather than a celebration of the joy of learning.
Dr. Ann Sherman is an experienced
early childhood educator both in
ISBN 978 1-900219-01-8 price
£8-00
The
Movement of the
ISBN 978-1-900219-09-3 price
£10-00
The Freethinkers' Guide to The
Educational Universe
A selection of quotations on education
compiled by
Roland Meighan
"It's a brilliant
collection ... Good luck with it. " Matthew Parris of The Times
When the first selection of quotations on education
compiled by Roland Meighan was published in 1991 under the title of Unfashionably Unfascist?
it sold out within months and was widely acclaimed as
a source book for discussions and also for illustrative material for lectures,
lessons and seminars. Students also
found the contents useful in the preparation of their essays on educational and
related themes.
In response to the comments and suggestions that were
forthcoming from owners of the first compilation, which now appears to have the
status of a collector's item, the new selection is produced in hardback for use
as a library or classroom reference book, or as a coffee-table source
book. Most of the quotations from the
first book have been retained and augmented with additional ones so that the
selection is twice the size of the original version. The quotations are produced in large type to
allow direct transfer to overhead projector transparencies or into lecture handouts.
ISBN 978-0-9518022-4-0 price
£10-00 (hardback)
The Freethinkers' Pocket Directory
to the Educational Universe
edited by
James Meighan and written by Roland Meighan
This directory attempts to reach
the parts other education directories rarely reach i.e. alternative ideas. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, significant
new ideas usually come from non-conformists: "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now
accepted as obvious was once eccentric."
The contents include entries on the following: the
Authoritarian Approach, the Autonomous Approach, Causes of Bullying, Community
Education, Compulsory Schooling Disease, Curriculum Alternatives, the
Democratic Approach, Discipline, Flexi-schooling, Green Education, the Hidden
Curriculum, Holistic Education, Home-based Education, Learner-managed Learning,
Mini-schooling, Regressive Education, School-Within-Schools, Small Schooling,
A list of addresses, an index and
a list of selected reading and references follow. The educationalists whose ideas are presented
in summary include John Dewey, Paulo Friere, Paul
Goodman, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Margaret McMillan,
Alice Miller, Maria Montessori, Carl Rogers, and Bertrand Russell.
ISBN 978-0-9518022-6-7 price
£8-00
Let Our Children Learn:
allowing
ownership, providing support, celebrating achievement
by Michael
Foot, Tony Brown and Peter Holt
Few books are inspiring.
This little one IS. You can read
it in less than an hour, but it is like a breath of fresh spring air. The message is simple, not patronising, laced with familiar little quotes that sharpen
the points, with superb little illustrations of the children’s work and
ideas. All the time it is the children’s
creativity, wonder and excitement that comes bouncing through the pages. Don’t
be misled, however. It is a downright
piece of anarchy in the present climate of educational commodification,
corporatism, competition and marketisation. There is not a test result to be seen. The belief that the world is sharp,
interesting, etched in wondrous colours and our job
is to help children see these and reach for them with autonomy, joy and choice.
Review by Philip Gammage
Michael Foot retired from a primary headship
in 1995 having taught in primary schools in Gloucestershire,
Buckinghamshire and
Tony Brown retired from a primary headship
in 1998 having taught in primary schools in
Peter Holt retired
in 1992 having taught at secondary schools in Buckinghamshire,
ISBN 978-1-871526-49-3 price
£10-00
by John
Adcock
The book In Place of Schools attracted attention when published a few years
ago. John Adcock follows up with this
next book Teaching Tomorrow. It suggests that we begin replacing traditional
schools with a family-centred, tutor-guided and
multi-media supported approach. It would
be wholly capable of providing a tailor-made and absorbing programme
of learning for each individual child from birth onwards. The book proposes a new order where new
tutor-teachers, in a proper professional role, serve the learning requirements
of families, rather than continuing as mere servants of the ill-informed whims
of successive governments.
ISBN 978-1-871526-44-2 price
£10-00
The Next Learning System: pieces of the jigsaw
by Roland
Meighan
with contributions from: Titus
Alexander, Paul Ardern, Julie Ashton, Don Glines, Sharon Ginnis, Derry Hannam, Anita Higham, Jerry Mintz, and Glyn Yeoman.
This is a collection of articles
from past News and Reviews in A4
format.
ISBN 978-1-871526-47-7 price
£5-00
Flexischooling
by Roland
Meighan
"In spite of
the apparent range and heavyweight nature of the agenda, flexischooling
is a very clear and readable book, designed to be taken on board in a single
sitting. This enables the reader to get the full flavour
of the case as a whole, before returning to check out some specifics. Above all it offers the kind of quiet
optimism and imaginative commitment to genuine education that is in danger of
becoming extinct."
Dr. John Bastiani,
Director of the RSA 'Parents in a
Learning Society' Project
Flexischooling developed out of the experience
of home-based education. Some parents
sought a way of having the best of both worlds of home study and school study
to serve their children's needs in a world of rapid change. Flexischooling,
even in this first version as flexitime, could be seen to be questioning the basic
assumptions of compulsory schooling. The key idea may be expressed in these
words: rigid systems produce rigid people, flexible systems
produce flexible people.
ISBN 978-1-871526- 00-0 price
£8-00
3
Learning From Home-based
Education
edited by
Roland Meighan
In the
People
often try to make generalisations and construct
stereotypes about families educating the home-based way. The only ones that the evidence supports are that:
(a) they
display considerable diversity in motive, methods and aims,
(b) they are
remarkably successful in achieving their chosen aims.
When schools were set up, we lived in an information-poor
environment. Today we live in an
information-rich environment – it is a major factor in the success of
home-based education.
ISBN 978-1-871526-06-X price
£8-00
25 Years of Home-based
Education:
Research, Reviews
and Case Material
edited by Roland Meighan
This is a collection of articles
from past News and Reviews in A4
format
ISBN 978-1-871526-50-7 price
£5-00 A4 format
Developing Democratic Education
edited by Clive Harber
Schools have been essentially authoritarian in most
countries and have never educated seriously for democracy. This book demonstrates that this is now
changing. The collapse of communism in
Education is seen as central
because democracy is not genetic - it is learned behaviour. There are important signs that education for
democracy is high on the international agenda of debate. This increased interest coincides with
evidence that more democratically organised schools
are more effective schools, both in the conventional sense of better
examination results, less vandalism and truancy, and also in the sense of creating
individuals with democratic values and behaviours.
ISBN 978-1-871526-22-1 price
£10-00
Beyond
the challenge for transparency
by Lynn
Davies
Significant new trends are emerging
in educational management internationally which threaten a return to
authoritarianism but simultaneously offer possibilities for more open and
democratic governance of schools. Four
recent developments in the field of management in schools and colleges:
comparative research on the realities of organisational
life are; the school effectiveness movement; equity and democracy initiatives;
and school self-appraisal. In examining
the various contemporary languages of management - from markets to militarism -
the book exposes the power of managers to influence outcomes. Accepting that management training is a
growing international endeavour, the book develops
alternative training implications based on establishing performance indicators
for transparency and democratic practice.
The quest is open recognition of educational management as an
essentially political activity. This
book is designed for current or potential managers in schools and colleges, and
all those concerned about the good governance of education.
ISBN 978-1-871526-16-7 price
£10-00
Voices for Democracy :
a North-South dialogue on education
for sustainable democracy
edited by Clive Harber
This book addresses the important question of the
relationship between education and democracy in four countries committed to a
democratic form of government -
Despite the different periods of time that democracy has
existed in the four countries concerned, it is clear that no one country has
all the answers and that there is much to be learnt, both negatively and
positively, from more established democracies such as Britain and (in the
African context), Botswana and from recently emerged radically reforming
democracies such as South Africa and Namibia. Authors from the four countries
concerned explore both the broad picture of education for democracy, and
certain key educational themes associated with it. These include human rights
and peace education, managing a democratic school, democratising
teacher education, gender equality and the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) in promoting greater democracy in
education.
The writing team includes Roger Avenstrup,
Glenda Caine, Professor Lynn Davies, Betty Govinden, Prof. Clive Harber, Dr. Changu Mannathoko, Iole Matthews, Janet
Meighan, Prof. Roland Meighan, Dr. Lebo Moletsane,
Dr. Robert Morrell, Dr. Audrey Osler, Dr. Bernard
Trafford, Ann Welgemoed.
ISBN 978-1-871526-39-6 price
£10-00
Sharing Power in
Schools: raising standards
by Bernard
Trafford
This is a case study of one school
which is attempting to promote learner-managed learning and democracy in
schools. It is written by the head with
contributions by students and teachers. The report describes how a traditional,
academically selective independent day school is setting out to create an open
and democratic ethos in which the students themselves have ever greater
responsibility for, and power over, their own lives and learning. Evidence is
produced that students, and their teachers do work better individually and
together; that the atmosphere of the school becomes more relaxed, friendly and
creative; and that academic standards, at least as measured by public exam
results, rise.
ISBN 978-1-871526-12-4 price
£5-00
Early Childhood Education: the way forward
edited by
Philip Gammage and Janet Meighan
The
themes include:
Parent/teacher partnerships by Janet Meighan & Dr.
Jennifer Little: The significance of the family and parents as the child's
first educators has gradually come to be recognised. This is one reason why parent-teacher
partnerships are under review.
Developmentally appropriate
practice by Dr.
Jennifer Little - reaffirms the principles of child development and their vital
role in planning appropriate strategies for learning.
Combined nursery centres by Dr. Iram Siraj-Blatchford
- presents original research on combined nursery centres
looking at quality and community involvement issues.
The integration of special needs by Shannon Fletcher reviews theory and practice to date.
The question of quality by Professor Christine Pascal and
Dr. Tony Bertram.
Initial teacher education by Professor Philip Gammage
ISBN 978-1-871526-21-3 price £10-00
Learning Technology, Science and Social Justice:
An integrated
approach for 3-13 year-olds
by John Siraj-Blatchford
This book provides a practical
guide to the organisation and implementation of a
Design and Technology and Science curriculum for 3-13 year-olds. Unlike most books on the subject, it
illustrates how global perspectives, appropriate technology, ideas of mutual
interdependence and social justice can be incorporated into integrated
investigative, designing and making activities. Teachers will find this book
helpful in schools. Parents and other
educators will also find that many of the practical activities suggested may be
applied as a supplement to school-based activity, or in home-based education programmes of study.
ISBN 978-1-871526-25-6 price
£12-00
The Caring Classroom: towards a
learning environment
by Henry Pluckrose
The themes examined in this book include encouraging
creativity, the presentation of the curriculum, the way children learn, and the
importance of spoken language. They have
been chosen as a direct consequence of the personal experience of the writer
over the past 35 years working with teachers in
Henry Pluckrose is a well known writer of books on
education and well respected for his concern to make schools fit places for
children.
ISBN 978-1-871526-43-4 price
£8-00
Praxis Makes Perfect:
critical
educational research for social justice
by Iram Siraj-Blatchford
A division between theory and practice has come to
dominate education. This division stretches all the way from the classroom,
where teachers 'deliver' a national curriculum, to the university research
seminar room, where the delivery often uncritically involves positivistic or
interpretative methodological choices. This book is concerned with educational
research and is therefore written for critical post-graduate research students
and researchers. who have yet to take on the challenge
and responsibility of justifying their knowledge claims rigorously. This book
fills a significant gap in the literature on research methods for social justice.
ISBN 978-1-871526-18-3 price
£8-00
A Very Private Affair: sexual exploitation in higher
education
by Pam
Carter and Tony Jeffs
This book fills a significant gap
in the literature on sexual behaviour in higher
education settings: should university staff enter into sexual relationships
with their students? Can a university
condone such relationships or should it seek to discourage or forbid them? Should we view such liaisons as an inevitable
result of mature adults meeting and working together in a shared environment,
or as examples of a misuse of power? Sexual exploitation is a delicate
matter. From the outset we gave everyone
we interviewed for this research a guarantee that they would not be identifiable
in any published material.
ISBN 978-1-871526-20-5 price
£8-00
Anatomy of Choice in Education
by Roland
Meighan & Philip Toogood
Chapters are devoted to: Minischooling, Small Schooling, Community Education, Work as an Educational Resource, Home-based Education,
Autonomous Learning, Democratic Schools, and Flexi-schooling. The question of choice in education is posed
- prospects and limitations.
ISBN 978-1-871526-07-8 price £8-00
contents:
John Taylor Gatto Alfie Kohn
Alice Miller Don
Glines
Nel Noddings Charles
Handy
Howard Gardner Ted Sizer
Daniel Greenberg Ivan Illich
Paulo Freire and 'William'
ISBN 978-1-871526-40-X price
£5-00 A4 format
contents:
Edward de Bono Sir
Alec Clegg
A.
ISBN 978-1-871526-51-5 price
£5-00 A4 format
Issues in Green Education
by Damian
Randle
This is a collection of key articles taken from The Green Teacher. The book recognises that the greening of education has made a start
and that 'environmental education' has come a long way in a short time. But more needs to be done if the questions of
deep ecology and social ecology are to be answered. Questions raised include: 'is green education
the same as holistic education?' A
manifesto for education for the twenty-first century, based on holistic
principles is offered for review.
Another question raised is whether 'green' thinking has
paid too little attention to the concerns and insights of their 'red' radical
predecessors. No ready-made solutions
are offered, but the book stimulates further debate, both practical and
philosophical. The practical approach is
exemplified in items such as the Green School Survey which contains twenty-five
questions that teachers, students, parents can ask
about their school in attempting an audit of their environmental values in
practice.
ISBN 978-1-871526-11-6 price
£5-00