Home education may benefit some children, but I can’t help but think it’s secretly all about the parents

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Last week, the government revealed that all home educated children have to be registered (Alamy)

Education, from cradle to whenever it finishes, ought to give our children the tools to earn a living and, just as important, be a good citizen.

Children need to experience as many different facets of learning as is necessary in order to raise their horizons and be consistent with their abilities.

Working with or being associated with a group of their peers necessarily sets guidelines and boundaries of behaviour.

Without these common behavioural presets being set at an early stage in their development cycle, it can be “awkward” in later life to “fit in”.

Being educated at home, children have fewer opportunities to interrelate with other like-minded children, and I believe that they do not receive a full or rounded education as one who attends a mainstream school.

There may be concerns that the school is failing in some respects to educate your child in the way you would want to prescribe, but I ask myself: “Who is the specialist in the art of teaching?”

One of the benefits of being taught in a group is that it plays on children’s natural competitiveness and when harnessed by a teacher all things are possible and on a consistent planned basis.

Discipline when administered by teaching professional is generally instructive and therefore beneficial for the child and others.

In my view, educating children at home benefits the parent’s aspirations more so than the child, especially in respect of religious or sexual concerns.

The school curriculum has been set to give our children the best start in life and is based on informed current thinking and modern technologies(as finances allow).

Should there be differentiation between what is taught and what is not? I think not. Some of the controversial or worrying topics for parents in the education curriculum (relationships, religion, homosexuality, etc) seem to outweigh the impact that they have on the child’s development.

Am I misguided in proposing that parents ought to support the efforts of our beleaguered teaching professionals to educate our children?

Keith Poole
Basingstoke

What is the point of economic activity?

Perhaps the answer to the great challenge (Politicians mustn’t lean too heavily on central banks) facing the economies of the developed world – how to boost growth in a world of very low interest rates – could spring from the right question: what is the point of economic activity?

The prevailing neoliberal model of capitalism has as its sole objective profit and in pursuit of “anything goes”. The untrammelled consumerism in which we currently wallow is characterised by conspicuously vulgar ostentation, heinous levels of waste, planet-killing pollution, resource depletion, greed, corruption, social control mediated by debt and destitution, a pervasive dysphoria and political extremism – among many other malign things.

The European Central Bank would do well to consider establishing a new regime in which economic activity is reprioritised towards beneficial outcomes other than profit.

Nobody needs to be a billionaire, but everyone does need clean air and water, secure and safe food, shelter and clothing, a meaningful job and a world that is left in a good condition.

Give the people tasks that benefit them and ease up on the exploitation.

Steve Ford
Haydon Bridge, Northumberland

Private companies to blame for disability benefit failings?

I have read May Bulman’s interesting article (‘The power to wreck your life’: Tens of thousands of disabled people denied benefits for extra month). What occurs to me is to what extent subcontracted private companies are involved in the process of assessing disability allowances.

They have to be seen to earn their money by saving the government money. Some people with disabilities are treated abysmally by probably unqualified staff of these private sector companies to decide on claims.

B Marenbach
London NW11

The intergenerational divide

It appears in the UK that a person’s actual age increasingly reflects the probability of them wanting a) Brexit, b) England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to continue building an independent nuclear deterrent and c) us to go to war with the likes of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

And now, I note, it also appears maybe d) wanting to vote Conservative?

In spite of this (or because of this) the oldies currently appear to be winners on all fronts.

Is this a sad reflection of nationalism and populism and, sadly, a growing intergenerational divide?

Andy Turney
Dorchester

Can Theresa May get any worse?

Each day I wake up thinking that surely Theresa May can’t get any worse, and every day I’m wrong. Well, if Corbyn can tear up the manifesto upon which the Labour party was elected, I suppose there’s no reason why she can’t do the same for the Tories.

That way BOTH parties will be wiped out at the next election at the hands of an outraged electorate.

James Mason
Address supplied

Where’s the evidence of Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitism?

Your anonymous correspondents (“Jews must speak out against Corbyn before it’s too late”) say the evidence of Labour’s antisemitism has been plain for all to see. I’m afraid it hasn’t.

Many claims of varying degrees have been made but little actual evidence has been on show.

This may account for the fact that many see this issue as one of resentment against Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Palestinians rather than one of actual antisemitism.

There is certainly a campaign of gigantic proportions against Corbyn, and we will see at the ballot box whether people obey the various demands and commands from many quarters to loathe the man, or not.

Penny Little
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire