Living as a Counter-cultural Family
A presentation given at the Home Educating Families' Festival on 16 August 2024.
In this 30 minute talk I explore why home educating families have chosen to live in a way which is counter-cultural in the prevailing monoculture of our day. The need is to understand that what is 'familiar' to us is not necessarily the 'normal,' but it is what we have adapted to without realising it.
What is familiar today is for families to live their lives largely as disconnected individuals, and therefore undervalue the connections and support provided by the multi-generational extended family.
Striving to rebuild family networks will be resisted in our Western societies and it will not be an easy road for those who determine to take it, for the desire of "the state" is to become the de facto parent of every child. Those who wish to preserve the natural and historic benefits of family will need wisdom to tread this path without offering grounds for contempt to those who oppose them doing so.
A presentation given at the Home Educating Families' Festival on 16 August 2024.
In this 30 minute talk I explore why home educating families have chosen to live in a way which is counter-cultural in the prevailing monoculture of our day. The need is to understand that what is 'familiar' to us is not necessarily the 'normal,' but it is what we have adapted to without realising it.
What is familiar today is for families to live their lives largely as disconnected individuals, and therefore undervalue the connections and support provided by the multi-generational extended family.
Striving to rebuild family networks will be resisted in our Western societies and it will not be an easy road for those who determine to take it, for the desire of "the state" is to become the de facto parent of every child. Those who wish to preserve the natural and historic benefits of family will need wisdom to tread this path without offering grounds for contempt to those who oppose them doing so.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Swimming against the flow, living as a counter-cultural family.
00:16I want to introduce why I'm talking about this.
00:24My proposition is that today,
00:27elective family-based learning is a counter-cultural activity in most countries.
00:35It's going against the flow.
00:38Oh, by the way, I like asking questions.
00:41You see my little picture there?
00:44Is it a shoal, is it a school, or is it a pod of fish?
00:49Anybody want to guess?
00:52Okay, let me ask you, okay.
00:54Here's a expert, a marine biologist, who tells us that when fish,
01:01shrimp, or any aquatic creatures swim in a loose cluster,
01:07they should be called a shoal, and it can be mixed of different species.
01:13A school is a group of the same fish swimming together in synchrony,
01:19turning, twisting, and forming, and so on.
01:22A pod are herds of marine mammals.
01:25I just like that biological definition of a school.
01:30A group of creatures all doing the same thing at the same time.
01:34I have a feeling that schools get people to swim like that,
01:40rather than to think for themselves.
01:42But if we're going to talk about being counter-cultural,
01:46we need to ask the question, what is culture?
01:49So my second question is, anybody want to define culture?
01:54Anybody brave enough to say, what is culture?
01:57A set of people who have quite similar points of view and
02:01doing similar things.
02:04Do you agree with that?
02:04Anybody, yeah?
02:06Any disagreement?
02:09Well, here's some I found on the Internet, which is slightly different.
02:13The ideas and physical objects are things that represent a group of society.
02:21The way of life of a people, values, beliefs, arts, cultural feature,
02:26forms of life are learned, but are often too pervasive
02:32to be readily noticed from within, and I think that's a valuable point.
02:37We learn culture, but we don't recognize it.
02:42But somebody else said, defining the term culture is very challenging.
02:47It has been described as a notoriously overbroad concept and
02:51a notoriously ambiguous concept, right?
02:57Okay, if you get problems like that, go to the etymology.
03:01I like that, it's part of my fun.
03:04Here's a start of a definition from that website, and
03:11the word comes from learning to agriculture, growing plants, right?
03:21Promoting growth in plants, then it moved on to fish, and
03:26then scientifically, it became the production of bacteria under the micro-organism.
03:32You see how words evolve over time?
03:36So that's it.
03:37By the way, the bull hasn't got a strong shadow.
03:40There's two of them drawing the cart, and there's a black one at the back.
03:44But that's how the word began.
03:47But we're moving on, right?
03:50It moved on to, in the figurative sense,
03:55of cultivation through education.
04:00Systematic improvement and refinement of the mind in about 1500, right?
04:09But it only became common in the 19th century.
04:12And this is a move on of the word culture.
04:15Now, is culture taught or is it picked up?
04:22Is one question I want us to think about.
04:25Is culture taught or is it just collected in life?
04:30For most of it, we think it's collected, I think.
04:34But that is not always so.
04:37Look at this, there's a book up there that's online at the moment.
04:42It's been taken down at the end of December for some reason.
04:45I have no idea why.
04:47But look at those four things where school impacts with culture.
04:53We'll just move on here, cuz underneath there is this heading.
04:58It says, schools ideally perform many functions in modern society.
05:04These include socialization.
05:07Pause.
05:10You all thought that socialization meant do your children have friends?
05:16It doesn't mean that to educationalists, especially on the international scene.
05:22It means, are they being shaped so
05:26that they fit into society, social integration?
05:32Does it mean that they know their social placement?
05:37And does it enable them to bring about social and cultural innovation?
05:45Above it is this paragraph, right?
05:48Social and cultural innovation is a fourth function of education.
05:56Scientists, artists cannot come up with new things
06:02unless they have first been educated in the many subjects
06:06they need to know for their chosen path.
06:10I don't agree with that.
06:11I don't know whether you do.
06:13They have got to learn things, but
06:16not the many subjects that schools teach people.
06:20But can you see where culture and education fit together?
06:25In the minds of some, schools innovate culture.
06:31They take culture in a certain direction.
06:35And one of the reasons why home educators are counter-cultural
06:40is because we challenge the direction children are taken in.
06:45So you, by being home educated, have chosen to be counter-cultural.
06:54The custom, attitudes, and things which are familiar and therefore normal to
06:59a group of people at any given time in any given location.
07:04That's a rough definition for me of what culture is.
07:10But I want to, there's a word in there, what is normal.
07:13And if you were here last year for my talk, you've seen these next slides before.
07:17But I just thought I'd throw them in to do it.
07:21How many of you have ever lived in a street like that?
07:25Well done, you must be a similar age to me.
07:28That's a Yorkshire mill town.
07:31I was brought up my early years spent in a street like that.
07:35That was normal to me.
07:37They've all gone, they've been knocked down.
07:39First of all, they got cleaned up, they got the suck sandbastard off them.
07:44Then they got knocked down, and we've got now modern inferior boxes.
07:49Few more of facilities inside, but the structure's rubbish.
07:55That was normal to me.
07:56Then we moved, we moved to this street in the 1950s, the one on the right.
08:03The yellow arrows pointing to the gate of the bungalow I lived in.
08:07But on the left, you have what it was like 40 years earlier, which is normal.
08:14Neither are normal, they were both familiar.
08:18The 1910s were familiar to the people of that day.
08:21They thought horses in the road were normal.
08:26By the time I grew up, I thought cars were.
08:30Things change.
08:32This is just back from where that picture was taken,
08:35looking down in the same direction, two views of a junction.
08:42You can look at the slides later and play spot the difference.
08:45But I'll tell you, there's horses in one and cars in the other.
08:48Ten years, normality changes.
08:52That's the view today, courtesy of Google Street View.
08:57But my point here is, what is normal changes?
09:02I've got a son who's now nearly 40, I think, I hope.
09:07And he said to me when he was 14, Dad,
09:10what type of computer did you have when you were my age?
09:14And he wouldn't accept, I didn't have one.
09:16And then I remembered that his grandma had a mechanical pound,
09:21shilling, and pence adding up machine.
09:23How many of you remember pound, shillings, and pence?
09:26Right?
09:28Adding up machine, like a typewriter.
09:33And he accepted that was my computer when I was little.
09:36Things have changed.
09:38OK, familiar, the familiar feels normal, it isn't, it's just familiar.
09:47The problem is that most people believe familiar is the best.
09:53People who reject that notion find themselves having to choose to live
09:59in a way, in ways which are counter-cultural to prevailing society.
10:07Right, I want to move on then, because I want now to talk about
10:12benefit as a philosophical choice.
10:17You might be puzzled by that, but here you are.
10:20Here's a set of my reasoning.
10:23Your philosophical convictions, whether they are secular or
10:27spiritual, are the foundations for your values.
10:33Your values determine what you consider to be good and
10:37what you consider to be bad.
10:41What you see as good and bad determines what you consider to be of benefit and
10:48what you think is harmful.
10:52By nature, we are prepared to invest in what we believe is beneficial,
10:58unless willing to expend ourselves on what we believe is harmful.
11:04Though some will do the latter when compelled.
11:09But by nature, we don't.
11:11The decision to opt out of the state's free education system and
11:17to educate your own children is usually done through an informal,
11:24but serious, cost-benefit analysis.
11:28You sit down and say, do I want my kids to go through any more of this?
11:34Or before, and you might even say, do I want my kids to go into that?
11:38This is what we go through, and we have to look at the costs,
11:44and we have to look at the benefits, and
11:48of course, you look at the other side as well.
11:55Families who have chosen family-based learning have decided
12:00that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.
12:04In contrast to this, most families just go along with what's normal.
12:14You can challenge this now or later if you want, but
12:16that is what I actually think we've all been through as home educators.
12:24Right, there is a large variety of reasons why families
12:30choose family-based education.
12:33We don't have to be all the same.
12:38We don't have to agree on anything hardly at all.
12:42We don't even have to agree on what the benefits are, but
12:47we do have to believe that the benefits are worth the costs.
12:55Cuz it's hard work, it's not easy.
13:00Everything in society pushes against it, and
13:04so we have to agree that the benefits are worth the costs.
13:10Now, George Bernard Shaw, this is one of my favorite quotes from him.
13:17The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.
13:21The unreasonable man won't persist to adapt the world to himself.
13:27All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
13:34You are being unreasonable as far as the state is concerned by
13:39electing to educate your children within the family.
13:45They think that's unreasonable, but
13:49they think they're working on progressive policies
13:54by getting children in school.
13:57Mm, I've got a 3D opportunity for you now.
14:02Sorry for the bad graphics.
14:04It's about the best I could come up when I prepared this, a 3D opportunity.
14:08What do I mean?
14:09There's three topics all beginning with D.
14:13Can you please tell me, we've talked about the cost of home educating.
14:18What are the delights of it for you?
14:22Very briefly, I don't want a long conversation.
14:25I just want some headline delights that you found.
14:30Shel?
14:30Flexibility.
14:31Flexibility.
14:32Spending all the time with my daughter.
14:35Yes.
14:36Freedom.
14:37Freedom.
14:38The connection with the children that you have.
14:41Connection.
14:43My children love books.
14:49Loving, children can love books even though they're not forced to read them.
14:53Even though they really struggle to learn to read.
14:57Yeah, yeah.
14:58Even when they can't read.
14:59Yeah.
15:00Or they're still learning books.
15:02Yeah.
15:03Opportunities for expression.
15:05So if a child asks a question, they're not being told that they're answering back
15:10when they're just simply answering a question.
15:12Yeah, yeah.
15:13Which was the conversation I had yesterday with the kids.
15:16There you go, right?
15:17There's lots of delights about this form of education.
15:22I'm not going to go into the negative ones of schools,
15:26but my second D is difficulties.
15:31You see, home education, like so many good things in life,
15:35comes with difficulties as well as delights.
15:38What difficulties have you had?
15:42Our own mental mind in the school system.
15:44Yeah.
15:45Yeah.
15:46Just never get your break from the children.
15:48Ancestors use the SEs.
15:52Comparing to friends with their abilities that are better in school.
15:57Oh, yeah.
15:58Yeah.
15:58Yeah.
15:59So it's standard.
16:00And it comes in piece with the way they choose to do things in our world.
16:04Yeah.
16:04Yeah.
16:05Being a man where I'm taught things in our way.
16:07And that's difficult.
16:10Incisively, the uncertainty of your commutation
16:13is not so much the problem.
16:14Yeah.
16:15Anybody else?
16:16Yeah.
16:17Finding a list of the rules for the end of things.
16:21Yeah.
16:22Finding a list of the rules for the end of things.
16:25Yeah.
16:25Finding a list of the rules for the end of things.
16:28Any others?
16:29Right?
16:29Time.
16:30Do you mean personal time?
16:31Personal time.
16:32Big one.
16:33Big one.
16:34Struggling with the trouble.
16:36Yeah.
16:37There's lots of difficulties, but we think it's worth it, do we?
16:41Anybody think it's not worth it?
16:43We hope so.
16:46OK.
16:47Now, I want to share something.
16:49The Conrad family are here.
16:50I think they're doing one of the sessions later.
16:54Earlier in the year, Jesper posted this statement
17:00on Facebook.
17:02The idea that our society is best served
17:04when all family members separate in the morning
17:08to do the things they generally don't enjoy
17:11could be the biggest fallacy ever imprinted upon humanity.
17:16I think that's a pretty astute thing.
17:20And there were some interesting comments,
17:21but there was one that really hit me in the guts.
17:26And I want to say that.
17:27I haven't got the permission to share it.
17:29There's no names, but one of the respondents
17:31said they were raised as a feminist career hunter,
17:36realized in their 40s how weird it
17:39was that their parents never talked
17:41about her brother or herself taking over the farm.
17:49She'd spent decades traveling the world looking
17:51for intentional community until she woke up to this fact.
17:58She went back to her parents and said, I've got the money.
18:03Let's form a family cooperative on the farm.
18:07I'm translating slightly.
18:10I'm not co-parenting with the state anymore.
18:14And I want our legacy to be that our children
18:19never know what it means to commute
18:21to a cubicle for a mortgage.
18:25How many of you would like to be in that type of situation?
18:29Great.
18:29Yeah.
18:30Right?
18:33The punchline.
18:34I hope you understand Americanism here.
18:36I don't think she is an American.
18:38But my parents are still drunk on the Kool-Aid,
18:42and they don't want her.
18:44I broke up with the state for nothing.
18:46Back to looking for a surrogate family.
18:50Now, why did that hit me?
18:54I'm probably the oldest person in this room.
18:56I don't want any medals for it.
18:59But I'm one of the baby boomer generation.
19:03And this woman's comment brought home to me
19:07that I'm part of a third successive generation, which
19:12have bought into handing all our personal responsibilities
19:19over to the state.
19:23My parents and theirs bought into the complete and compelling
19:28cradle-to-grave offer.
19:31They willingly handed over to the state
19:34all their personal responsibilities, including me.
19:39Over time, that has not only empowered the state,
19:44but it's taken the agency away from individuals.
19:49When things go wrong, the state is responsible.
19:53Listen to politicians.
19:55Listen to the moaners out there in the press and other places.
20:00When things go right, most people
20:03thank the state for its benevolence.
20:06The consequences are a culture of dependence on the state.
20:12And you are counter-cultural, because you are not
20:16depending on the state to provide for your children.
20:26This shows, particularly in the breakdown
20:29of historical family life, not just nuclear family,
20:34but importantly, the extended family
20:37that that woman was talking about.
20:41We put our children in daycare.
20:43We call it school.
20:45We increasingly put our parents in day and night care,
20:49also known as elderly care.
20:53I hate signs like that.
20:55I think they're a blemish on modern society, breakdown.
21:01It isn't just the young end I'm concerned about.
21:06It's people my generation.
21:08We've got six children.
21:10I'm hoping I won't end up in one of them.
21:16The difficulties.
21:17This is a difficulty.
21:19We now have a culture where disjointed and broken
21:23extended families are considered normal.
21:26I strongly believe that the current generation of parents
21:30need to reclaim their parenthood,
21:33and that adult children need to reclaim their parents.
21:39The problem is that many of my baby boomer generation
21:44are like the woman whose parents were still drunk on the Kool-Aid,
21:50and they don't understand what's broken.
21:56Therefore, instead of encouraging their children
22:00to go against the flow,
22:01they tell them just to stand in line, just as they do.
22:06And this is a cultural problem of our Western societies.
22:12Another quote for you.
22:13I don't know who did it.
22:14Found it on the internet.
22:15Taking the path of most resistance
22:18often leads to the most reward.
22:21If you are fighting for home educational freedom,
22:27there's a lot of resistance out there.
22:29Come to the political Q&A this afternoon.
22:33There'll be plenty to talk about,
22:36but it does lead to the best rewards.
22:39There are some dames.
22:41Anybody heard of Dr. Sheila Cassidy?
22:46Now, you have to be born a while ago, right?
22:49She's there pictured leaving Chile.
22:51What was she doing in Chile in 1971?
22:55She went to work in the E-Department in Chile.
23:01In 1973, the dictator, General Pinochet, seized power.
23:09In 1975, she was asked to treat a wounded revolutionary,
23:15which led to her arrest and torture
23:18and two months' detention as a political prisoner.
23:23Why? Because her patient was an opponent of the regime
23:29and he'd been hit by a bullet.
23:32The next day, when she was visiting a friend,
23:35the police suddenly began shooting into the house
23:38and arrested her.
23:41Cassidy was beaten, blindfolded,
23:45taken to a detention facility
23:48where she was stripped and tortured with electric shocks.
23:53It was headline news when I was much younger than I am today.
23:58Some years later, I heard her being interviewed on the radio
24:04and the presenter asked her if she had felt that her dignity
24:08had been taken away by her torturers.
24:13Her reply struck me and it was to the effect
24:17that she had come to realise while in prison
24:20the only way she could lose her dignity
24:24was to do so by giving it up herself
24:29in response to those who mistreated her.
24:33She could keep her dignity no matter what people did to her.
24:38And that is something I want to say.
24:41We are in a fight to protect educational freedom.
24:48We do not want it to go down the road
24:51that we've seen in Britain recently,
24:54not just in the last few weeks but over the last things
24:58where oppression is used to fight oppression.
25:03That will never work.
25:05We have to maintain our dignity in this.
25:09The dangers today, that's not a normal compass.
25:13If you look at it carefully, you see it's got other words on it,
25:15not north-south, it's got good, evil, right, wrong.
25:19Most people today have very badly functioning moral compasses
25:26and we need to strengthen them if we're going to fight.
25:30Here are three people I recommend who knew how to do that.
25:35Do you know who they are?
25:37You probably know the one on the right
25:39and the one in the middle.
25:41Anybody with the man on the left?
25:45Leo Tolstoy.
25:47Tolstoy, a Russian dissident, wrote, a writer,
25:54he inspired Mahatma Gandhi.
25:57Gandhi told Luther King about him
26:01and they both inspired Luther King.
26:05What were they committed to?
26:08Non-violence, non-oppression.
26:13Violence can be done with the tongue
26:16as much as with the fist or the brick.
26:23Tolstoy wrote a pamphlet on anarchy.
26:28In his day, the anarchists were rising up in Russia
26:32trying to do things.
26:33He thought their cause would not be successful.
26:36It was the wrong cause.
26:38And this pamphlet discusses either do you
26:42fight with violence against the bad state
26:46or do you join it to try and improve it?
26:50And he says, both these issues being firmly closed
26:54and impregnable, what remains to be done?
26:58He asked this question.
27:00If we can't fight them physically and violently
27:04and we can't join them, what can we do?
27:07He says, to utilize violence is impossible.
27:10It would only cause reaction.
27:12You have seen that in England in the last few weeks.
27:17And the reaction is the real danger.
27:20To join the ranks of government is also impossible.
27:24One would only become its instrument.
27:26That might be a bit much for you to think about,
27:29but we need to think about it.
27:31One course, therefore, remains, to fight the government
27:35by means of thought, speech, actions, life,
27:39neither yielding to the government nor joining ranks
27:44and thereby increasing its power.
27:49This alone is needed.
27:51And he says it will certainly succeed.
27:53I would ask it's the best chance of succeeding,
27:58but it will also be costly.
28:01It is not easy.
28:03We know a family who have been battling a local authority
28:07on school attendance orders for over four years.
28:11Mum has been very, very low during that time.
28:15It's costly.
28:17OK?
28:18So my question to you, are we counter-cultural
28:24as we need to be?
28:28Or are we all battling to get on to what we think is normal
28:34and it isn't, it's just familiar?