Can a parent really educate their child appropriately?
School is an anomoly. State compulsion schooling and the extension of compulsion in schooling to take over the majority of a child’s life is an experiment of less than 200 years standing. The last 200 years have seen a steady decline in the standards of popular education and a proliferation of paper qualifications. Parents and communities have educated their children and young people since time began. School is not the default. Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison,John Stuart Mill, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Claude Monet, Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, George Bernard Shaw, Hans Christian Anderson, Natasha Bedingfield and Venus Williams all seem to have managed pretty well on a home-based education.
