International Center for Home Education Research Reviews

Record: Harriet Pattison, “How To Desire Differently: Home Education as a Heterotopia” in Journal of Philosophy of Education 49, no. 4 (November 2015): 619-637 [Available Here]

Summary: Pattison, many of whose other works have been reviewed on this blog, here offers a more philosophical and less empirical defense of informal learning than is usual for her.  She begins with a brief orientation to home education in the U.K., noting especially the infamous Badman review and the controversies it precipitated.  From there she focuses in on one particular type of home education–what we in the States often call “unschooling,” but is frequently called in the U.K. “autonomous education.”  She traces its roots to John Holt, who combined the child-centered, activity-oriented pedagogy of Rousseau and Dewey with a more pessimistic view of adult oversight of children.

Parents and advocates who celebrate children’s autonomous approach to learning often have difficulty being understood by outsiders, especially government officials, who have a different philosophy of education.  Pattison’s article here is an attempt to explain the philosophical distinctives of autonomous education in the hopes that doing so will increase public understanding of and tolerance for the practice.  She especially wants to get beyond debates about which approach, home education or institutional schooling, is “better,” hoping that we can instead understand that the two are just “different,” not really capable of being compared. Continue reading →