Freedom for Children to Grow

DIARY 1980/81 for Roland Meighan, James Hemming and Lord Tony Gifford Q.C.
Evidence 11 4 Worcester Crown Court, Harrison v. Stephenson
re. the education of G, N, and AJ (W now 1 6).

Discussions again on making our own methane gas from human excreta and chicken manure. We did some experiments on methane some years ago. G has done some maintenance on an electric clock and got it working. He is waiting for a main spring to repair a friend's chiming clock. He's now recognising some words in any sequence. They are of the 'more difficult' which he would not work out by sounding syllables.

N is proving to be a big challenge to grown ups in the game of chess. He is a very independent person and I would like to go back about five years ago, he was four or five years old and making a go cart from scrap wood. He had come to a point, when adding a trailer, of needing a nut and bolt. There was no bolt long enough in the workshop and so he found a length of rod of the right diameter, cut it to length and then found the correct dye to cut a thread. He then found a nut to fit. The first time that the family knew of this was after his cart was finished.

N has worked all day with AJ's Puzzler again and later G spent the evening doing puzzles with AJ.

N has decided to open a Post Office. He has an old till, made money, Pension and Family Allowance Books, stamps etc. The family are his customers.

A studio Theatre Group from London has come to stay a couple of days to meet the family. They have been very serious Post Office customers. N changed his Post Office into a Bank the next day and I went to Barclays and got different paying in slips for him, a selection of actual money and he improvised the other things that he needed such as scales. The actors had fun joining in with this new business.

Discussed next day how we had had the wrong ideas about actors. These were a super lot of real people' and we enjoyed them. It made us realise that we must not make such sweeping assumptions in future.

AJ's violin lesson went on all day today. N is still very involved in his money and bank, also the Puzzler. G started his day with a xword puzzle in his R.S.P.B. book. When I returned with AJ after her lesson I found G and N working on the mechanics of the till. Certain numbers had not been working properly, but they are now!

G killed 2 of his older hens, dressed them and put them into the oven in a casserole. He and AJ made them into a pie.

G later did a Xword puzzle using his bird book for reference . He filled in clues with my help.

AJ is reading the Natural Folk Remedies Book and enjoying it. N is continuing with his 100 acre farm, working out what animals an "old fashioned" farm would house, designing housing for them to enable efficiency of time and then he worked out the amount of grazing required per animal. He then calculated the cereal crop requirement, hay for animal fodder and allowing an amount for sale. He ended up with 54 acres for arable.

Today he worked with D stripping down a derelict car. G asked me to help him look up the work ENGLAND in the dictionary. He had found out that the Vikings had added the word LAND to Engel and he wanted to know the origin of the word 'Engel'. I will get some books from the library to help with this.

G and W have spent today stripping down an engine which has been given to them. They intend combining it with the Morris Minor engine to make one good one. I asked for someone to explain the term 'Big End' to me and G called me into the workshop to show me what they are, not a bit like I imagined. G has been driving the others up and down the drive in the Minor to test the engine after stripping down the carburettor. The brakes are still not working and he is waiting for certain spare parts to arrive, hopefully tomorrow. The car had lost its compression, whatever that is

Today N has bound his first volume of Book of Knowledge. He is very involved with the Romans, Saxons and Vikings and been copying ancient weapons with his Fisher Technic.

I am finding it interesting to see how suddenly N begins to understand his numbers. This suddenly came to him after playing with a row counter from a knitting machine, in fact, it had broken and he had mended it with G's help, and HEY PRESTO, numbers had some meaning AT LAST! To many people this would have been a problem, a 10 year old not understanding or even remembering his numbers. Until now he would ask such a question "What is a double tummy?" (being an 8).

I am adding an extract from a note I made on his 7th birthday:

It took him until approx. 6 months ago to recognise his name. Excepting for the letters A and L he knows none by name, even after 2 years involvement in games using letters.

Numbers are similar. The other 3 have worked out many ingenious games, especially, card games, to help him. He can put a pack of cards into sequence very quickly but has only achieved knowing the names up the 6. He does many adult Airofix models and uses his watch to help work out number sequence.

G's bees arrived today, at last. He's repaired a hive and made one of another type. He wants to make a framework to enable him to make his own foundations from old wax scraps. AJ has been reading a lot of bee books to N and G and so he was well enough prepared to hive his new bees himself today. In fact one of the boxes containing the bees had been over heated on transit and we telephoned the suppliers for a replacement.

End of May and AJ is in Blackpool on a practical course at the Northern Institute of Massage. She's made many friends and when she phoned told me that she's having lunch each day with a group renting a flat near the college.

24th June Driving home from Tenbury today G read out a notice "Old Peoples Bungalows, Grass to be used by Residents only'. HOW MY HEARTS SWELLS! I want to tell the whole world but who would understand??

Later that day N was drawing in his design book and asked me to spell out the words TANK and CABIN. (He was designing a submarine.) G took over from me instantly by spelling out both words. This went on many times during the day.

Over the last few months I have found G reading aloud to N from the Knowledge magazine. Admittedly what he is reading is odd sentences or captions under pictures but G IS READING. How he has longed for this to happen. This takes me back to when he was 1 2 years old. I was preparing a cat tray using sand and had idly written the word CAT in the centre. G noticed this during the day and asked if the word spelt out cat. He was so excited to have at long last recognised a word that Geoff and I clasped him between us and we all danced excitedly round the room and later went out and bought a bottle of wine to celebrate with our evening meal. (At such times I just want to stand on top of a cloud and shout to the whole world for everyone to share my excitement).

Over the weekend we entertained 45 people from Ludlow Friends of the Earth Group. The preparation took over our lives for three weeks. N and D made up side shows and arranged raffles. They made about £30 between them which is good for two 10 year olds.

A day to remember again, N is drawing animals and has asked for help in spelling their names. G took over the spelling of the word HORSE. He left out the letter E but that was fine He has a good feeling of achievement.

He was rather scathing of me when I looked a word up in the dictionary for a letter I was writing during the day. He thinks that I should spell as it sounds. He's going to, so he says. In discussion he informed me that I might lack confidence as I was obviously concerned about what people thought of me. He told me that he hoped to have sufficient confidence not to worry whether he could spell or not. (This has always been my hope that he could get this far, and hold such an attitude.)

Over the last few days N has been using W's wood turning lathe. He's made a number of 'space craft' shaped like cigars and added saucer shapes over them fixed by heavy wire. I would love him to make some door knobs but he has no incentive to do so, yet.

The older three went to a meeting on Defence held by the Ecology Party. This gave us food for much discussion at supper. G holds very strong views and had great ability to express them.

1 St July 1 980. Rather an overpowering discussion for much of the day, mostly on our social system, how we stand in it, and each agreed that there was no worry at it's foundation is crumbling etc.

G walking into the kitchen today, evidently pleased with himself yet saying nothing. It was written over his face that he'd completed the change of link on the front wheel of the black Morris Minor (when reading to G from the manual on this task it said "A very difficult task"). Brian at Tenbury Garage went over the engine he and AJ had repaired afterwards, and made a slight adjustment to the timing and suggested that they adjust one of the brakes again. These young mechanics in our family have made a good relationship with the mechanics at this garage over the time they've been doing car repairs. AJ makes them cakes to pay for all their help and advice.

N has been working out his army of 4,000 men and dividing them into Divisions. He has used percentages to divide. He used G's calculator with G sitting by him at the table. He only helped when asked. Many things that N has been working out for himself recently would have been taught in school at a much earlier age and yet he would not have had any interest in it then, and on top of that he wouldn't have needed that knowledge until today.

I am noticing that whereas I used to refer to Geoff when I wanted the answer to a general knowledge question when doing a crossword I now automatically turn to N. He has an amazing memory for detail. The other evening we watched a film on the last war and certain events had been missed out, which I wanted to know about, and I just asked N to fill me in on them, which he did, with no trouble.

At last AJ's had the fun of decorating her own bedroom, the first she's had since leaving Cheltenham. G finished off the opening window of his new room, replacing the blue fertiliser bags that he'd nailed up to keep out the weather.

He cut the glass for glazing this window. This is the first time that he's done this alone and the pane was very large to handle. He followed up by puttying and adding beading.

G moved into his bedroom above the workshop 3 days ago and W 3 weeks ago. The conversion of this building has been going on since last September 1979. G put a finishing touch to the roof and I watched in horror as he descended the ladder F A C I N G 0 U T W A R D S. He has natural balance and seemingly no fear and I just keep my own to myself.

Most of the electrical work has been finished to the workshop block and its upstairs leaving odd bits and pieces over, which have fascinated N. He has set up a switch board and added bulbs of different colours. As G and I cleared up N watched out for forgotten switches to add to his collection. He and G have now added earphones etc. to the board.

Today I feel like withdrawing from the World and left the FOUR to sort out our many visitors and give one of them some lunch. They are all good socialisers though AJ would rather opt out from it in preference. I just sat for the day in my room bathed in sunshine.

We had a good game yesterday with relativity using a minute spider and the outside buildings. One of the buildings was a little finger of a giant.

N very intent listening daily to news bulletins frequently and being extremely serious and the next moment off he goes with G to play with some guns that they've made.

So much has been happening recently that I've been too tired to get anything onto paper at the end of the day. W is back in Scotland organising the house moving of an old friend and doing a fine job of redecorating. Before leaving the FOUR had great fun helping S and A (friends) hay making but were later horrified to find how S and A were misusing them. We had worked a barter system for a long time with goods exchange. Also making their bread in exchange for flour for ourselves. (A had grown organic wheat and milled it himself.) Suddenly S became very aggressive demanding normal retail prices for goods we had had from her. And so we decided, as a group, the family that is, that in such a case then labour should be rated at the going rate. A rather painful time for all concerned but good for discussion.

We have, once more, come to the conclusion that we can be easily used and resolved to overcome this. It again comes to people using others for their own ends. I cannot go into this conversation deep enough here to give it full justice.

The family has taken the job of sanding and finishing a local village hall floor with a cellist friend's help. She is K who is a student of music in Birmingham and whose parents are in the Midland Radio Orchestra. In fact, J, her father, is its leader. Getting to know this family and helping them through the traumatic musicians' strike and threatened redundancy (they were extremely depressed and used us to talk out their fears) has enabled AJ to see that she wants to be more diverse in life than just being a 'musician'. Hence her decision to go into alternative medicine.

G has a very good relationship with K and she has told him that most people like herself are training to do jobs that they are not certain they will enjoy. In fact she would change course if she could but can't find the confidence to do so.

During the varnishing sessions at the village hall we had fun working out N's questions, i.e. if we were the same size as that fly stuck to the varnish then relatively how many acres would this floor be? This discussion went on more or less for two days.

At the end of the job it was decided that N and I be classed as one unit together for the division of the money and the others one unit each, other than Geoff who should be classed as two units as he had to cover more responsibilities.

5th July 1980 G and AJ have run out of car maintenance, they both love working together at this. In fact, I also get great joy in watching AJ sitting on the oily floor in overalls, reading the stages from manuals as they go along. She is covering such a wide field of experiences because of her involvement in every ones work. The same would also apply to W.

Had fun yesterday joining in with N's puzzle, if we were the size of that money spider then how large would be the outside buildings. It was decided by him that the one barn would be as a little finger to us.

Today G has been playing with N, giving him numbers in thousands to put onto the calculator to divide, subtract, etc. It was connected with something to do with aircraft speeds across the world. Also the speed of light but I did not ask, only hearing as I walked to and from the room.

I heard N tell G that he would take one of his designs of equipment from his drawing board into his Fisher Technic and putting this into practice has taken a couple of days.

AJ"s been wanting to help N put his knowledge of numbers into practice and so once again brought out the game of Click. It's a game using six dice and is challenging to N. This game went on for more than two weeks. AJ having had similar difficulties as N is now happier with his understanding.

N and G have been researching ancient weapons using the World of Knowledge. They then made a replica of a Roman weapon and set up mock battles using actual weapons in miniature.

J and S, the musicians, are coming to supper tonight. Everyone is doing a part of the preparation. J and S do not consider appearance to be of importance in their own home and this brought on a discussion as to our own attitudes.

Today has been spent on farm designing by N again. He allocates a certain number of animals per farm, i.e. 150 milking cows, 50 calves, 100 sheep, horses and fowl and he works out their food needs per annum (including grass, hay and cereals) their winter housing, implements needed for a modern farm as opposed to using horses, workshops and so on. He does a similar farm but without any machinery and using rotation of crops. His buildings are to scale and in great detail.

Today has been interesting. Discussion was inspired after hearing a statement by a friend, "Work is character building". There were deeper implications than this but once again too complex to relate here. We talked about society's attitude generally, and it was decided that work is an attitude and can be classed as play to us in many instances. And so our friend would possibly believe that because we enjoy what we do and it's not a chore then we lack character. Could we end up by seeing life as all play? We talked at length on this and we believe that it is possible, just by creating an attitude toward that end, to enjoy whatever one is doing. This left us invigorated.

A few weeks ago N used W's wood turning lathe to make some yew door knobs for our Scottish friend. She has since sent him a very generous cheque and he has used it with some additional family cash and cash from G to extend the Fisher Technic set which arrived yesterday. Many complicated mechanisms have been made since, too complex for me to understand. N has told me that he wants to be a designer when he gets older and so far he shows evidence that he has the ability to excel in this. When we were going into our first Court in 1975 we had to have N assessed by Margaret N of Aston University. She found N interesting, he had an aptitude in mechanics of an adult, at 5 years old but was even more dyslexic than G. (I was then warned "never to expect them to be literate").

G and N had a shot practice in the paddock using an air rifle and a whitened baked bean tin today. They came into the kitchen, sat at the table and discussed the possibility of filling balloons with hydrogen, letting them float up and using them as targets. They went on to discuss what happens during an explosion what actually causes the bang, comparing a balloon, bullet, bomb and hand grenade. Is the bang to do with the speed of sound, say of the fragments of metal of the hand grenade? Their discussion included AJ and it went on for at least an hour and to great depths.

There are many times that I am asked to help look up the meanings of words which I forget to add to this diary but made a special effort to remember the following. Today the words were CENTURY, SENTRY, SENTINEL and so on with similar words. Once again G and N had been deeply involved with the Romans and so I presume that this had inspired these questions.

N raised a point which concerned him today. He had been listening to a radio programme which included the Government policy on alcohol advertising and how this had been reached. The policy was determined by how much tax would be gained or lost and not based on the good of society or an individual. So a debate went on as to whether a Government should regulate society be it on drinking laws, or banning advertising or anything else. This discussion was held round the kitchen table whilst AJ did a cooking marathon in its midst and I washed up the resulting dirty utensils.

Christmas day 1980 seemed to bring with it more research than ever. N had been given a poster to colour, Napoleonic War scene, and Geoff searched encyclopaedias with N for uniform colourings etc. Also a new type of Puzzle Book had come onto the market and given to the family. It covered all aspects, mathematical mind benders inclusive. We all spent days sitting pondering these together. It is just the right number of days for a certain worm cycle to have finished today and so N, G and I tipped the worm containers one at a time onto a large board in the middle of the workshop. We then sorted by hand the ones to continue breeding and the smaller ones to grow on further. Each type can be fed different diets when divided. The condition of the red worms was excellent, red and very shiny and should be in peak breeding condition.

The African worms are in a separate container to prevent cross breeding. These worms should not be disturbed when breeding, their habits differ from the Red Worm. Even so we just had to have a peep at them by pulling back a top layer. There were many eggs and newly hatched worms and so they are breeding well. We added more compost to the surfaces.

Over Christmas we had not been able to find a suitable new board game and so N set himself the task to design a new one. He started by doing a large map of the World and doing each country in a differing colour and shade and has since spent an age pondering the rules of the game.

There has also been some experiments on farm implement adaption going on and I am not certain what was hoped for but the results were those intended if one is to go by expressions on faces.

Once again a discussion raised on pro's and con's of "system schooling" and how it would possibly have affected G. Discussion gave W a chance to air her views since visiting cousins in Cheltenham. They are mostly at university or college. She felt that she had greater maturity for her age than they had and this consequently helped her tremendously. In no way did she feel any sense of being out of place, they with their academic backgrounds and ambitions.

G told us that at the moment he felt the job he would be suitable for in the outside world would be something to do with talking with people. He finds this easy. Since he is the family counsellor he is off to a good start. Almost daily he is called on by a member of the family to counsel a relationship. It could be partly due to this that family feelings rarely sour.

Over the last few weeks the central heating in the workshop and upstairs rooms has been assembled. The boiler had to be stripped down, calcium deposits scraped out of the cylinder which surrounds the stove, broken bolts cut and drilled out, new parts made and general cleaning. The flue pipe is being put in today ready to break through the roof tiles tomorrow. It will be sealed with lead flashing and the joints soldered. N's new fascination with numbers has led him to filling pages of sums, additions, subtractions etc. He then finds all the answers and takes his pages to AJ and she corrects them with him.

G frequently comes to me to discuss things that he's been pondering. For instant, the expectancy that society will have upon him the moment that he reaches 1 6 years old. He has come to the conclusion that morning in bed that there was no problem until he made it into a problem by his own fears and that he would hold the idea strongly inside himself that he would work out his own future.

I am wishing once again that I could fully recall all this as it left me speechless and in awe of this boy that society judged at one time to be 'educationally subnormal'. His own conclusion of life, failure and success, happiness etc is quite profound.

W had been determined to travel the world and find out about herself as deeply as possible. Today she shared with me her feelings. She had decided that it was no good thinking that happiness was 'going to another country'. Meeting lots of people etc. It was no good to expect that until she could achieve it where she is right now, at any time. In fact her decision was that she could search inside herself anywhere. It was not necessary to travel for that.

Once again, I am unable to relate this to its fullest. It just made me realise that she had attained some inner revelation and by just letting her BE she would find more of herself.

AJ and I spent the day in a Manchester Court supporting the A family. She sat knitting during the hearing until asked to stop by the Court Usher. Whilst away N and G dismantled an old door lock which had no key. They were able to replace the damaged parts, made necessary adjustments and then made a new key. At some part of the procedure it was necessary to 'pick' the lock and N experimented in picking the back door lock. He told me that suddenly the whole thing appeared to explode as the casing screws had come loose. He reassembled the mechanism and made the casing screws tighter this time.

Once again much discussion, on the changes in society over the centuries. We referred to N's Knowledge Books to look up the abolition of slavery, how, as early as 1 721 the Quakers made strong protest and attempts to abolish the slave trade. Final abolition came 150 years later.

Today society looks back in horror at slavery and it was decided that undoubtedly the same would happen toward schools in the future. This debate involved the whole family and it created wider issues.

I am not including in this diary times involved in reading and writing as this goes on in such a natural way that it slips between other things i.e. "does this read" and I will check and confirm or help in whatever way is needed. It is usually names and items on packets or names wanted for drawings. When looking through a manual to mend or make an item, keeping a check on dates when making their diaries and so on. It would be impossible for me to do this full justice and so on the whole I just leave it out entirely.

To some extent the same goes for numbers. There is an on going game with the family, someone sees a weight on a packet and then asks for the others to convert it to the equivalent in either metric or imperial. And there are frequent dice games going on. Today N was throwing six dice and had to do the additions. (It was more complex than just simply adding the total.) I watched whilst different members of the family showed N how he or she found it simplest for them to work this out. It was suggested that he decided which was the easiest way for him to do it in the end.

It is nearing the end of the Christmas school holidays and N's friend D has been round to work on their tree house again. I found it difficult to evaluate the value of their play with some of the timber that they took from the timber stack (it is so expensive to buy) but the child had to come before economics and when we look back into our memories of such times they are so priceless.

Its 1st January 1981 today and most of the day has been spent by N, G and me sorting out red worms. I have also ordered another book, this time from the Soil Association, on using worms on farm and garden. Whilst working together N discussed with G a war game that he wanted to make. (G teased him by saying "Some years ago a man called Hitler had a similar idea but he used human beings and not toy men"). I later heard them listening to Radio Warsaw in Poland about the political situation in that country.

We have friends staying whilst house contracts are being exchanged. D also came to play. They were all in the dining room and W came to the window and called out "N, you will have to come and help me with the lathe. You are better at showing me what to do than G is". She was trying to make a door knob for her bedroom. It is at times like this that I get great satisfaction - the family see each other on equal terms regardless of age.

This diary was kept by me and used for Court Evidence of education.

Since writing this D, Newall's friend,the little boy reading to N in the 40 Minute Programme, hanged himself. Such a tragic end to a beautiful boy. He had been badly bullied at school.

Prior to writing this diary W had flown to Denmark to see The Peoples College (Quaker Peace College), liked it and stayed there for three months making world wide friends, who frequently visit.

Iris wanted us to add the following postscript to the diary:

"[My son] Newall asked a friend who lectured maths at university to help him with his maths in return for Newall teaching him how to put new brake shoes on his car. The brake shoes were completed but the friend was unable to help Newall with his maths and took it back to the University for help. We were then told that Newall was doing higher graduate maths."

"Also, since growing up my children have told me that if they had not been home educated it is highly possible they would be either in mental hospitals or prison today."

Iris Harrison February 2007