TS: It’s impossible for me to work full-time because I teach my four children at home. This takes up a great deal of my time and can be extremely hard work, not least because of the differing age levels, the lack of State funding for home-schooled families in this country and the fact that we often have to rely on self-help organisations like Education Otherwise. I’ve been married for over fourteen years now and we have two girls and two boys. We don’t have a car for environmental reasons and therefore a lot of our time is spent exploring local parks or hiking through the countryside. The children are very artistic and enjoy making their own collages and fantasy comic strips, whilst my wife – originally from Tunbridge Wells, in Kent – has a strong interest in Punk Noir, psychology and basset hounds. I spend my spare time reading and discussing theology, forcing people to eat my attempts at Italian and Indian cookery, enjoying the fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock, and organising football matches with the other kids in the area.
Q: Your Iron Youth Internet site, giving advice on how to bring your kids up as National-Anarchists, features a reading list of childrens’ literature: Swift, Poe, Wilde, Stephenson... Most of these classical authors are now being read at university level by literature students only. Why do you think the current state of English education is so poor, and do you see a way out of this crisis?
TS: The reason the educational standards are so awful in this country, is because the mass media is continuously dominating every aspect of people’s lives. The last few years have seen the growth of a huge social underclass, which seems to be comprised of promiscuous girls and violent males. But it’s futile to completely blame this on poverty. Many of these people have managed to acquire a certain degree of wealth and affluence, but they can’t seem to escape the debilitating peer pressure which encourages people to live in a world of fast cars, fast sex and fast food. There is also a severe identity crisis in England, which has been caused by Americanisation on the one hand, and multi-racialism on the other. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a culture which prides itself on drunken thuggery and so-called ‘reality TV’ has no interest whatsoever in academic matters or the intellectual development of the individual. The only solution to this crisis is home-schooling. Once you take your children out of this detrimental environment, they are free to develop naturally without the constraints imposed by their peers. In South London, for example, most white schoolchildren have incorporated black slang into their vocabulary, blurring the distinctions between the races and creating a uniform monoculture. To be an individual in modern England, therefore, is to become a virtual outcast.
Q: What is your opinion of elitist educational institutions like Eton, Oxford or Cambridge? On the one hand, you support elitist meritocracy, but on the other, you reject centralised education. In a National-Anarchist society, would the likes of Oxford and Cambridge have a chance to survive?
TS: Firstly, National-Anarchists do not recognise nation-states and, secondly, given that we expect the internationalist system to decline to the extent that it leads to a full-blown technological crisis, it would be impossible for universities to continue as they are at the present time. At the village level, on the other hand, I would expect children to be educated naturally and in accordance with their abilities.
Egalitarianism is a myth and some children will always be slower than others, that’s life. But this should take place in a community setting, rather than at a privileged institution, because it is possible to learn from those around you without ever having to establish schools or education systems in the first place.
*
Q. Being a married, full-time father of four children whom you tutor yourself, you set an impressive example for other parents who want to raise a family independent of the totalitarian egalitarianism. How did that come about and how do you cope with what, for most people today, would seem an overwhelming task?
TS: Home-schooling is not funded by the State and is still regarded in many circles as a rather bohemian and outlandish concept. There are well over a million home-educated families in North America, but in England the numbers are far smaller. My wife and I first thought seriously about home-schooling when she was still pregnant with our first child. At that time I was a Traditional Catholic and this form of alternative education was fairly popular amongst many of the parents in those circles. Coupled with the fact that England’s educational standards are some of the worst in Europe, we decided to join Education Otherwise, a self-help group designed to help families interested in home-schooling. A decade later we find ourselves with four children who have been taught to a fairly high standard and, thus far, managed to avoid becoming caught up in the cycle of Americanisation and youth crime that infects a vast number of other children. Home-schooling is very hard work and you do have to be very committed, but I can’t see any reason why all parents with our ideas can’t teach their children at home. It’s a question of reorganising one’s priorities and of making sacrifices. Compared to most people we do have to live on a fairly low income, but the results are there for all to see. Our children, whilst still very young, are already very clued-up about the nature of the world and the direction in which it is heading. By avoiding local schools and liberal teaching methods, therefore, we have managed to instil in our children a sense of identity, self-expression, individuality, history and ecological awareness. Home-schooled children also find it easier to relate to people of varying ages, rather than being unnaturally confined to a classroom with other children of exactly the same age. And rather than being ignored in a class of 40 or 50 pupils, they also receive one-on-one tutoring. People often ask us how we deal with the social aspect, which always seems very curious given that schools are supposedly designed to educate children and not to socialise them. In reality, of course, schools are indeed designed to ‘socialise’ children, inevitably preparing them for a life of uniformity, drudgery and wage-slavery. But our children participate in a whole variety of sports and belong to a number of clubs and organisations. That can involve a lot of time and money, but at least they do have friends outside of the home environment.
Tradition and Revolution
No comments:
Post a Comment