Paper
presented at the BERA conference in
Home Education – Globalisation otherwise?
Christian
W. Beck, A. Professor in education. Institute of Educational
Research.
Keywords: Home
education, globalisation, educational politics, quality in education.
International
capitalism, national states, new media and electronics develop world-wide
systems of globalization, which we more and more deeply are related to.
Education is growing, giving new possibilities for people in a globalised world. Modern schooling also has its dark sides.
A new educational agenda with inclusion, socialization and renewing of the
concept of life-long education, is the “schooling” way of counter-work and
balance globalization-domination in education. However, modern schooling itself
can be an agency to globalization, even with an educational ideology in an
opposite direction?
Home Education seems to be a successful way to educate. Academic results and
socialization-processes in home education are good. Already home education is
global. Home educators everywhere do more or less the same, they educate their
children themselves. They develop new forms of co-operation. Is home education
globalization otherwise? Is home education an impulse to renew modern
education?
Education
is expanding. More people get new possibilities through education. At the same
time throughout the modern world we observe contours of new school problems.
Assessments, OECD (2004), show that quality of education in the modern school
is under pressure. Schools also have new problems with violence and bullying
In the middle of school
expanding some leave the lowest and most established level of the educational
system, primary and lower secondary school, and give their children home
education. Home education develops in most of modern countries. At its
strongest home education is in leading modern countries like the
Is home education a
catastrophe or a gift for the future education and schools? No matter what the
answer to this question is, it is necessary to discuss home education in
relation to ongoing globalisation.
Globalisation and school
International
capitalism, national states and electronic media have made the foundation for
what we call processes of globalisation. Urban Beck holds such processes to be:
a)
Development of a world
wide financial market and increasing power to international organisations.
b)
Ongoing revolution in
information- and communication technology.
c)
Universal claim for
human rights.
d)
A stream of pictures from
global cultural industry.
e)
Development of post
national, polycentric world politics.
f)
New worldwide poverty.
g)
Cultural conflicts
gathered on the same area.
Beck, (2001)
These are the basics in a development towards a
more united world, which he holds cannot be reversed. The ideology that follows
this kind of processes is called globalism.
International capitalism operates on world wide markets in such a way that
values and money are out of political control. International organisations like
EU, UN, The World Bank etc, play a dual part. Such
institutions administer global processes, but also they try to oppose them or
balance them. If these organisations in cooperation with national states are
not able to do the latter, it will lead to a capitalistic world control with a
consequent economical rationality, where the national state, the welfare state
and social justice are breaking up, and where individualism dominates. This is
called globalism.
Against this Beck puts globality, where global processes are lead into a different
direction, where human rights, cultural differences, social unity and local
distinctive character are respected and kept alive. He then speaks about the
world community as a multiplicity without unity, Beck (2001)
Home educators do the same everywhere. They take responsibility for their
children’s education rather than sending them to school. Many home educators
use The Internet to a great extent. Across borders there is wide contact and
networks both electronically and more direct among home educators. It is
possible for home educators to join electronic “schools” or educational centres
where they can get admission to educational programmes/materials, both with and
without payment.
In an article Michael W. Apple from the
One may look at this
differently. Home educators are individualists in
the sense that they individually make the decision not to send their children
to school and instead give them home education.
On the other hand the family
is to a great extent their basic social primary community, which is
strengthened by home education. Furthermore, home educators develop a wide
social network and have social contact, which reaches way beyond home education
itself. Home education may represent revitalization of modern small-scale
communities, like family and local community.
Home educators may be
examples of what the sociologist Z. Baumann calls our time’s missed community.
– collectivism and community in an individual world.
The missing community is those communities which are necessary to handle
issues, which cannot be solved individually, where concern and responsibility for
all people’s right to be a human being and the right to act according to this
right; Baumann (2001). We are here speaking about the renewal of community and
civil society in a post modern world.
If home educators become so
numerous that they threatens public school, this can be because a school
revolution has started. Education is renewed. A number of home educators want
some school and some home education. They want a new school with a concept of
education which better balance between school and home, in favour of home.
The processes of
globalisation are grounded on development of an economy of knowledge. That
brings education and school into the core of such processes. Education is
needed to qualify for a globalised labour market and
to oppose and balance globalised capitalism. One has
to emphasize both individual learning processes and social cooperation. The
claims on globalised school will be enormous.
A number of people hold that
school must educate human beings to become competent participants in a globalised world. This is the right wing of global
educational politics. The left side is critical to such aims and wants schools
as a counterweight to global capitalism. They want more national controlled
schools, which includes everyone and emphasizes social competence and equality.
It is astonishing, how
people in all countries get more or less the same understanding of school. This
is also a part of globalisation. Doubtless, both political right and left find
more schooling positive. One disagrees on the content in school. However
everyone wants more education, and more education means to them, more school.
More school means that more
social and cultural life become a matter of schooling
connected to formal national educational programs. Teaching processes,
communication, marks and exams then are easily woven together. This is what
Basil Bernstein calls invisible pedagogy, Bernstein (1977).
Such a school is dominated
by new cultural middle class ideology. Research shows that children and youths
from the working class are doing better in a school with visible pedagogy,
where demands for knowledge are more precise and less depending on culture,
OECD (2004). The globalised school can become a power
basis for a globalised
elite, operated by a new worldwide middle class.
Globalised
schooling is large scale education the world has never seen alike.
Standardization and bureaucratisation will be quite necessary in order to carry
through such an education for all. Educational management in the world
community is already a power in higher education. The primary- and secondary
education will have the same development.
In globalised
school, the concept social capital will have a new meaning,
Social and cultural capital
may become an ideological- and economic link between the left and the right of
global educational politics. Knowledge will be transformed among social,
economic and cultural spheres so that actors will achieve an ambiguous surplus
value, connected to development, transferring- and use of knowledge. Education
will become the new ambiguous capital’s important linking area.
Do we see the contours of a globalised united and centralized governing system of
education where knowledge, equality as well as social competence are joined in
an extended economic idea of utility, understood as capital, where the
possibility of capital gain will be guiding societies and each person’s
involvement in school? The outcome could be more control in education and less
emphasize on freedom and criticism? Then there will be little left of Urban
Beck’s vision of global multiplicity, and globalisation could end up more like
A. Huxley’s “Brave new World”.
Home education may be the
only free opposition and opponent to a new globalised
school. Home education will thus follow anti school-ideas from the 1960`s and
1970`s. Such movements had a left side in neo Marxists like Paulo Friere and others, Friere (1968),
but also the institution demolisher Ivan Illich, Illich (1972), and John Holt,
Holt (1968).
New dualism
Globalised
school is built on an ideological foundation, which are becoming more and more visible.
We can see a new pedagogic and methodological dualism, characterized both by
more objectivism and by more subjectivism.
Objectivism. With increased international
mobility schools and pedagogic strategies must be comparable and as like and
governable as possible. This forces the global education towards conformity,
measure ability and bureaucracy, in the direction of technocracy. Programmes,
plans, tests, method, evaluation and documentation with the use of advanced
computer technology will be necessary for a world wide administration and
control of schools.
The struggle for equality
and demand for competence will directly, but also indirectly through gigantic
world wide compensatory pedagogy and a universal system of special education,
lead to internationalisation and to standardizing of diagnosis, educational
programs, diplomas and more.
One needs at present to use objective facts and measurement more than ever.
This will
guide pedagogical processes in the
direction of objectivity. A growing international
pedagogical expertise will strengthen such a
development. This new objectivism will make
the frames, the structure, computer-
and information- and organisation foundation of the
globalised school.
Subjectivism. The contents and the processes in globalised schooling will be about social competence,
communicative skills and production of identity. This can be expressed as educational
subjectivism with the focus on:
1)
Social context,
communication and groups.
2)
A relative conception
of knowledge with emphasise on subjective, instant experience of totality.
3)
Focus on conditions of
teaching and learning and processes rather than on objective factual knowledge.
Such an ideology is expressed as humanism with
emphasise on participation, cultural tolerance, cooperation and socialization.
Pedagogic subjectivism is
grounded on the expectations of social mastering of life in a global society
and is close to the idea called situated learning, Lave and Wenger (1999). This
is about trying to compensate for psychological damages, demolished families
and dissolved local communities, and about adjusting to a post modern globalised existence.
Objectivism and subjectivism
are tangled into a new pedagogy which forms an ideological foundation for globalised school. This may end up with a changed
relationship between the objective and subjective factors of education.
Objective factual knowledge must give way for the subjective- and social
processes of shaping. Thus the subjective and social processes must be coded
into the globalised school’s demand for objective
management.
Making the subject an object for
education may end up in ignoring personal freedom and to alienation in
education. This new ideological foundation is already found more or less as a
current pedagogy not only in Scandinavian countries, but also in leading
globalising countries as the
Development of home
education is a specific globalising process. Home educators break with school
as an institution. Home education goes on in the middle of real life, in family
and in society. Home education strengthens what the globalised
school tries to recreate pedagogically. The home educators concentrate on
learning factual knowledge. The socializing process appears more naturally in
this case, out of the home education’s integration in, and openness towards the
actual social life, outside school. We can here find a new dimension on
politics of education, more precisely the politics of home education (See appendix
1).
Two different home educating countries
In the
The home educating
population in
A comparison of social background for a sample
of 128 home educated pupils with corresponding information for the Norwegian
population is made:
Table 1 Comparison
between the survey sample and the Norwegian population (1)
Circumstances
The
Sample
The Population
The household’s income
(NKR)
271.250
517.800
Percentage living in urban
areas
25,2
77,3
Living with both fathers
and mother
(%)
88
77
Number of brothers and
sisters
3,6
1,7
Mother’s education (1)
(Some or completed secondary
school in
%)
49,6
55,2
Mother’s education (2)
(Only compulsory school /
comprehensive school in
%)
17,1
8,0
Father’s education (1)
(Some or completed secondary
school in
%)
53,6
55,8
Father’s education (2)
(Only compulsory school /
comprehensive school in
%)
12,7
8,8
(1) The
data for the population are from Statistisk Sentralbyrå (The National Bureau of
Statistics). Income is for the population take-home
pay for households with children
from 9 – 16 in 2000. The income of the selection is
also take-home pay. The
educational data from the population is for the group
from 30 to 39 years of age in
2000.
The data on home education is collected from a survey on Norwegian home
educators, Beck (2003).
Home educating families in this Norwegian
survey have little less education than the corresponding group in the
population. One should especially notice that there is a relatively larger
group of home educating mothers that have only compulsory school than there are
in the population.
The income of the home
educators lies at a lower midlevel. About 60% of the home educating households
earn from 175 000 NKR to 350.000 (20.000 – 40.000 euro) a year. They have an
average income less than half of what the corresponding groups in the
population got.
Typical for Norwegian home
educators is that they live out in the countryside. Home educating families
often have a number of children. Home educated children have an average of 3,6 brothers and sisters. However, there is a great variety.
40% of the home educated children have two brothers and sisters or less. Home
educated children to some extent live together with both parents, than what is
the case in the population as a whole, Beck (2003).
A survey has been done, based on
three great investigations about home educating families in the
The greatest
difference between Norwegian and American home educators is that American home
educating families earn somewhat above the average of the American population
and that they have some higher educational level than the average American
population. The number of single mothers is the same as among Norwegian home
educators, however the Americans differ more than the Norwegians as the
national average is concerned. In the
An analysis of average
figures on variables in the Norwegian investigation gives the following picture
of the common home educator:
The tendency is that home
educators start home education on a basis connected to a certain events in
school, for example bullying. If they continue home education for a long time,
they get a more principal view on their own home education.
“The home educating teacher” is the mother. In
a few cases the father takes part in the teaching, then mostly in mathematics
and practical subjects. A number of home educators give their children
practical tasks and practical project work in addition to teaching them basic
subjects. The most common teaching form is an effective theoretical teaching
from the parents This is often combined
with that pupils to a different extent work with the subjects themselves,
solves problems and cooperates with brothers and sisters or sometimes with
other home educated children.
The majority of the home
educators are generally satisfied with their home education. The parents are
fairly satisfied with the progress their pupils make in the core subjects
mathematics, reading and writing.
Many parents do home
education on a broader basis of values than purely education. Research from the
The home teaching parents in
the
It is difficult to obtain an
objective and justifiable answer on how well Norwegian home educated pupils are
doing on their exams. Home educated pupils in
Experience from several
single cases over several years does indeed give the impression that we in
In spite of differences in scale and duration
home education is much the same phenomena in the two countries. There is an
interesting social class difference in home education between US and
Is there a home education pedagogy?
There is
a lot in common in practical home education, in the sense that it is shared by
those who practice home education. There are freedom and independence, but also
loneliness and conflicts with the authorities. They all practise home education
more or less in connection with a practical family life and practical work.
They teach in different ways and use a computer and The Internet. The
ideological core troops also have a highly reflected relationship to what they
do and why they practice home education.
With passage of time a lot of pedagogic material for home education has been
developed. There are internet “schools” for home educators. Several books about
“how to home educate” have also been published.
Home educators manage to combine effective teaching with practical projects.
This they often do better than many schools.
Home education is integrated in family life as such. Home education has a close
connection to real life and is often build on more basic values.
It is difficult to find one
or more specific pedagogic theories of home education. Home educators seem
little concerned about pedagogical theories and methods, in spite of that home
education has become the great project in many home educators` lives.
There are a few pedagogues
who can be named home education pedagogues. The classics from the 1960s are
John Holt, Holt (1968) and the Christian couple Theodore and Dorothy Moore,
Moore and Moore (1994). Today the American John
There are two conceptions
that are used in several connections as far as pedagogic ideology for home
educating is concerned namely, unschooling
and natural learning.. The two of them cover together a unity of pedagogic
understanding, which puts stress on the following:
a)
Greater stress on
learning rather than teaching. The child lies with its mastering of life ahead.
The teachers (the parents) guide and show the way in accordance with the
child’s needs and interests.
b)
Learning is deinstitutionalised.
That does not happen in school. Almost absence of curriculum,
textbooks, special methods and other formal systems in learning.
c)
Learning is a part of
real life, connected to tasks in life.
d)
Learning is different
to everybody, connected to the single child and the single family.
e)
Construction of
confidence to the child’s and parents’ resources and freedom.
Fredriksen (2001). (There are a number of articles on unschooling and natural learning on The Internet).
Unschooling and natural learning put stress on
the simple character of learning. Learning is best with life itself as teacher,
without pedagogic schemes, methods and evaluations. Seen as theory it is more
like an anti-pedagogic one.
Natural learning is seen by
some home educators as learning with minimal planning, governing and direct
teaching, like the one found by the philosopher Rousseau, Rousseau (1961).
Others, especially home educators that have been practicing for a while,
understand the natural in home education as the close relationship between
family-, home- and working life the household is engaged in. Within such a
frame, home educators can then make strict and efficient teaching programmes in
i.g. core subjects. They find such education as the
most sensible and natural.
We here find the contours of
two main ways of home education:
There is one more practical
oriented home education grounded on natural learning terms. The academic
factual knowledge here is to some extent put aside to the advantage of
practical work and the learning of one or several professions. Such home
education has proved efficient for the more practical oriented pupils, even as
learning of basic skills as reading, writing and mathematics are concerned.
The other main way for home
education is a very academic way to educate. Such home education is close to
cultural middle class family life and they utilise the parents’ academic and
other resources to the maximum.
In practical home education,
basic ideas and thinking I find a relationship to pedagogy, which is close to
what I would call a general anti-pedagogic understanding of pedagogy. Such a
pedagogic understanding is characterized by learning being understood as
something wider than what is given by any teaching, and by good teaching having
a minimal relationship to formalized pedagogy. A practical oriented
anti-pedagogy like this can be formulated shortly in the following way:
Good teaching is produced
by:
Some people have knowledge in a practical
or theoretical subject and wish to teach this to someone else who want to learn
it. Those who wish to teach this knowledge and those who want to learn it, have
a chance to meet to proceed the necessary teaching and
learning process, Beck (2000).
In this understanding of
good pedagogy one will be open to research, theory and experience understood as
deeper insight and wisdom, which can make education better.
Though it lies in such an
understanding that pedagogic theory developed on the basic of research or other
experience, again will make a method for better pedagogic practice, in reality
can be unfamiliar with good teaching. Outcome of pedagogy in this methodical
sense is that teachers, pupils and the knowledge the
teaching is about, will be subdued to the regime of pedagogic methods, and in
that way becomes less relevant. The most important in teaching is put aside in
favour of the method. This can make teaching worse.
Home education is close to
life and has small-scale character, which counteracts both objectivism and
subjectivism in school and society as well. Home educators’ closeness to life
gives a humbleness and withdrawal from the use of pedagogic theories and
methods in teaching. This may be the main explanation why home education shows
good results. The main pedagogic principle for home educators, seen from the
outside, is that they use their personal will to achieve something, which has
become extremely important to their lives. Home education then confirms basic
values of education.
Appendix 1
Figure 1. Main interests in education:
(A)
(B)
STATE
MARKET
X
X
Public
-------------------------
Private
Equality
------------------------
Free choice
Socialization
------------------------
Knowledge
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - -
(The third frontline of education)
X
THE
PERSON
(C)
Family
Community
Civil society
There has to be a balance in education in a
society between A:B and C..
To day there is an unbalance in global modern education. C is almost ignored.
There has to be a revitalization of C, to find a new balance between A, B and
C. Such processes create
the third frontline of education and the politics of home
education
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