No class of person is more loathsome to me than those who exploit vulnerable people, such as the grief-stricken and bereaved, by pretending to have supernatural powers. I detest this sort of thing and avoid those involved in it wherever possible. Sometimes, it is impossible to give them a wide berth and when I do come into contact with people mixed up in that racket I am always sure to make my feelings known pretty plainly.
I am currently being threatened with legal action for libel because of remarks which I have made on here about a husband and wife team who claim to possess magic powers to foretell the future and summon up the dead. It is a pretty awful way to make a living and I have passed several comments about them on here, because they are also home educators.
Let us look at what I have said about these two characters and see whether or not it actually amounts to libel. This will give me an opportunity to repeat the statements of which they complain and to expand upon them, thus making it easier for them to bring action against me if they wish; a prospect to which I look forward with relish. Imagine sitting in a court and watching somebody try and prove that he is really in touch with the dead!
I must first say a few words about libel. The essence of a libel is that it is an untrue statement which tends to lower the person about whom it is made in the estimation of right-thinking people. It must be a statement of fact, rather than opinion. If I say, ‘Smith is an idiot’, this is not libellous because it is clearly my opinion. If, on the other hand, I say, ‘Smith is a thief’, this is a statement of supposed fact and could be libellous. The statements which I have made about the Harpers are a mixture of opinion and fact.
One of the statements which I have made, to which Mrs Harper objects and about which she threatens legal action, was that, ‘she is a very odd person called Nikki Harper who, with her husband, contacts the dead and reads the skies for a living.’ Clearly, the suggestion that she is a very odd person is my opinion and could not possibly be libellous. The statement that she and her husband contact the dead and read the skies for a living is a statement of fact and might well lower them in the estimation of right-thinking people. If untrue, it might be considered libellous; but is it untrue? Mrs Harper claims that at least part of the statement is untrue. She says bluntly of her husband, ' he doesn't make a living from being a medium.' The problem here is that both she and her husband claim in various places that contacting the dead is exactly what he does for a living. For example on Home-Education Biz, Mrs Harper says: ‘my husband I work full time from home. I'm an astrologer, author and writer, and he is a spiritualist medium and healer.’ and also, ’ My husband works as a platform medium in spiritualist churches, and does private readings’ This may be seen here:
http://www.home-education.biz/forum/introduce-your-business/14607-astrology-teen-spirituality-and-mediumship.html
On her blog, the same one where she is threatening to sue me, Nikki Harper states that, ‘I am an astrologer and mind body spirit author; my husband writes too and is a spiritualist medium and healer. We both work from home.’ This may be found here:
http://secondaryathome.wordpress.com/about-us/
Finally, her husband is on Linked in as a self-employed medium. See here:
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Jon/Harper
Is anybody left in any doubt at all that Nikki Harper reads the skies for a living or that her husband contacts the dead? I cannot imagine why either of them should wish to deny it, although they may of course be ashamed of their careers; as who would not be?
Another statement to which Mrs Harper objected was contained in this post of mine:
http://homeeducationheretic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/meanwhile-back-at-asylum.html
You will see that I said, ‘There is something quite terrifying about madness like this. One recognises some of the usual suspects here, people like Nikki Harper from Lincolnshire who is quoted. I do hope that local authorities are reading this stuff, so that they have an idea of the sort of disordered thinking which affects some parents supposedly capable of delivering an education to their children.’
Now Nikki Harper did not actually take part in this conference and nor did I say that she did. A post of hers is linked as evidence though, in Section 9. She posted this under the name ’Elysian’. It is perfectly true that I recognised most of those who are seen on this conference, as well as those to whom the links lead one. How this could be considered libellous is another matter. I did not think, nor did I say, that she took part in the thing. As for the bit about disordered thinking, I cannot do better than quote Mrs Harper herself on the subject of her daughter's education, ' XXXX is showing a real interest in herbalism, spell work and so on.' Spell work; that would be spells as in magic spells, yes? Does anybody here think that teaching a seven year-old to take a real interest in casting magic spells is not an example of disordered thinking? This is not incidentally make-believe; the mother really believes in this stuff and was actively encouraging her child to do the same. What about the statement that, 'Aquamarine prevents water-retention'? Water retention can be a symptom of various serious problems, including congestive heart failure, kidney failure and pre-eclampsia. Hands up everybody who thinks that it is disordered thinking to expect the possession of a semi-precious stone to help with potentially fatal health problems like these? This advice may be found here;
http://spiritodyssey.com/astrological-crystals-and-gems/#more-284
The third thing which apparently upset Mrs Harper was an attempt to connect her husband to Martin Smith, the home educating ’psychic’ who was convicted of rape and then hanged himself. She said, ’ I was disgusted to read the indirect linking of my husband and Martin Smith by either you or one of your commenters’ I have drawn a complete blank on this. I have certainly made no such connection and nor can I find any in the comments on this blog. However, following what Mrs Harper said, I looked into the matter and found one faint and tenuous link between her husband and Martin Smith. Jon Harper has appeared on stage with Ian Lawman, a rather dubious character about whom various allegations have been made. This fellow has been on Britain’s Most Haunted, a television programme on which Martin Smith also appeared. So the most we can say is that Nikki Harper’s husband shared a stage with a man who might have met Martin Smith. I had to dig around even to find this and would never have done so if Mrs Harper herself had not put the idea into my head!
I do hope that the Harpers follow through on their threats to sue me. If they really feel that I have made untruthful statements about them which tend to lower them in the estimation of right-thinking people, then I urge them to go ahead and issue a writ. I shall not post any more on the subject here, because it really has little enough to do with home education, which is after all the purpose of this blog!
Showing posts with label medium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medium. Show all posts
Home education in the Huffington Post
I have more than once been reproved here for suggesting that an awful lot of home educators are a bit loopy. Specifically, I have speculated from time to time whether there might be some sort of association between strange belief systems and the decision to home educate. Nonsense, I am told; this is purely an artefact of the internet , which is swarming with mad people. This is true, but it is an unfortunate fact of life that home educators who get into the public eye do tend to be a pretty rum bunch.
The latest such person is of course Nikki Harper, who now has a blog on the Huffington Post. Her latest post may be seen here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/nikki-harper/7-lessons-i-teach_b_1622031.html
Now this all conjures up a very unflattering image of home education in the minds of those who know little about it. How the heart sinks to note that it is written by an astrologer who is, ‘passionate about teen spirituality’. Like most people, I have not the remotest idea what is meant by this. The blog post itself practically invites anybody with no knowledge of home education to ridicule the whole business.
The title alone tells one a great deal about a particular strand in British home education. If, when my daughter was thirteen, I had written a piece about the ‘seven lessons I teach’, I might perhaps have listed lessons like mathematics, English language, English literature, history, physics, chemistry and biology. Obviously, I would have hoped that she would also learn things like honesty, self-reliance and compassion, but these are not really things that one can teach. The best we can do is model them for our children and hope that we are providing a good example. Parents of children at school do this as well and to hint otherwise is merely to alienate the 99% of parents who do send their children to school. Hardly a good thing for a home educator to set out to do!
The main problem with the piece is that it is based not upon how schools really are, but upon how they used to be or how somebody who has no dealings with schools thinks they might be. According to the author, modern British schools teach subjects like confusion and indifference, but parents whose children actually attended school know that this is a lot of nonsense. Schools no more teach confusion than, say for example, home educating parents who lead their child to believe in crystal healing and raising the dead. Some schools teach confusion, as do some parents, both home educating and otherwise. Schools certainly do not hold some sort of monopoly on teaching it to children!
Consider just one of the contentions made about schools in this article; that, ‘A schooled child will learn facts’. If only this were true! This pedagogic approach, a Gradgrindian insistance on 'facts alone', is contrasted with the author's own methods, which emphasise context and overall understanding. As anybody at all familiar with modern schools will know only too well, a lot of the time is taken up not with learning facts but with all the paraphernalia of modern educational theory such as collaborative learning, investigative skills, empathy and so on. These techniques long ago replaced the acquisition of facts and figures by themselves. In fact much of what Mrs Harper sees as being a precious part of home education is a standard feature of British schools. I have written about this lack of objective teaching of facts in schools before, here for example in the Daily Telegraph;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3337822/But-how-did-Romeo-feel.html
Mrs Harper evidently believes that children studying history at school these days are still sitting down in rows copying out the dates of the Battle of Trafalgar and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Alas no; nothing could be further from the truth! It is this ignorance of how schools actually are which make this piece an easy and inviting target for those who do not like or approve of home education.
As for the idea that one would have to teach a child insubordination, because otherwise she might learn to obey authority without question; has this woman ever actually met any teenagers? Has she really met a teenager who has learned the lesson of obeying authority without question? Where is this strange being? I would like to talk to the parents of such a weird and atypical teenager so I could find out where I went wrong. My own teenage daughter never needed any lessons in insubordination nor, I suspect, do most teenagers! The very last thing most parents need to teach their teenage offspring is to challenge authority and ask questions; it is coded into the very DNA of teenagers and always has been. If she is genuinely having to teach her teenaged daughter to challenge authority and encourage her to ask questions, then there is something very odd going on.
All this is hardly a brilliant advertisement for home education; written as it is by a home educating parent who knows nothing about modern schools and thinks that teenagers need to be carefully coached in how to reject adult authority and question why they should do as they are told. The overall impression is of somebody who is perhaps not as in touch with the real world as she could be. Given her line of work this is of course hardly surprising, but it does not really encourage people to listen seriously to what she has to say about education.
The latest such person is of course Nikki Harper, who now has a blog on the Huffington Post. Her latest post may be seen here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/nikki-harper/7-lessons-i-teach_b_1622031.html
Now this all conjures up a very unflattering image of home education in the minds of those who know little about it. How the heart sinks to note that it is written by an astrologer who is, ‘passionate about teen spirituality’. Like most people, I have not the remotest idea what is meant by this. The blog post itself practically invites anybody with no knowledge of home education to ridicule the whole business.
The title alone tells one a great deal about a particular strand in British home education. If, when my daughter was thirteen, I had written a piece about the ‘seven lessons I teach’, I might perhaps have listed lessons like mathematics, English language, English literature, history, physics, chemistry and biology. Obviously, I would have hoped that she would also learn things like honesty, self-reliance and compassion, but these are not really things that one can teach. The best we can do is model them for our children and hope that we are providing a good example. Parents of children at school do this as well and to hint otherwise is merely to alienate the 99% of parents who do send their children to school. Hardly a good thing for a home educator to set out to do!
The main problem with the piece is that it is based not upon how schools really are, but upon how they used to be or how somebody who has no dealings with schools thinks they might be. According to the author, modern British schools teach subjects like confusion and indifference, but parents whose children actually attended school know that this is a lot of nonsense. Schools no more teach confusion than, say for example, home educating parents who lead their child to believe in crystal healing and raising the dead. Some schools teach confusion, as do some parents, both home educating and otherwise. Schools certainly do not hold some sort of monopoly on teaching it to children!
Consider just one of the contentions made about schools in this article; that, ‘A schooled child will learn facts’. If only this were true! This pedagogic approach, a Gradgrindian insistance on 'facts alone', is contrasted with the author's own methods, which emphasise context and overall understanding. As anybody at all familiar with modern schools will know only too well, a lot of the time is taken up not with learning facts but with all the paraphernalia of modern educational theory such as collaborative learning, investigative skills, empathy and so on. These techniques long ago replaced the acquisition of facts and figures by themselves. In fact much of what Mrs Harper sees as being a precious part of home education is a standard feature of British schools. I have written about this lack of objective teaching of facts in schools before, here for example in the Daily Telegraph;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3337822/But-how-did-Romeo-feel.html
Mrs Harper evidently believes that children studying history at school these days are still sitting down in rows copying out the dates of the Battle of Trafalgar and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Alas no; nothing could be further from the truth! It is this ignorance of how schools actually are which make this piece an easy and inviting target for those who do not like or approve of home education.
As for the idea that one would have to teach a child insubordination, because otherwise she might learn to obey authority without question; has this woman ever actually met any teenagers? Has she really met a teenager who has learned the lesson of obeying authority without question? Where is this strange being? I would like to talk to the parents of such a weird and atypical teenager so I could find out where I went wrong. My own teenage daughter never needed any lessons in insubordination nor, I suspect, do most teenagers! The very last thing most parents need to teach their teenage offspring is to challenge authority and ask questions; it is coded into the very DNA of teenagers and always has been. If she is genuinely having to teach her teenaged daughter to challenge authority and encourage her to ask questions, then there is something very odd going on.
All this is hardly a brilliant advertisement for home education; written as it is by a home educating parent who knows nothing about modern schools and thinks that teenagers need to be carefully coached in how to reject adult authority and question why they should do as they are told. The overall impression is of somebody who is perhaps not as in touch with the real world as she could be. Given her line of work this is of course hardly surprising, but it does not really encourage people to listen seriously to what she has to say about education.