Thinking Love, No Twaddle

The fight goes on. I have written to our local councilor but have not received a reply as yet. He tends to be pretty good on replies so I will keep you posted. Meanwhile one of the mums has written to our MP asking her to sign the Early Day Motion put forward by Mark Fields MP. I have to say I am not holding out much hope, but you never know. It seems to me, but I could be wrong, that MPs whose voting record has been anti family up to now are not going to rush to support home education.

From letters some other home edders have received some MPs who say they support home education do not believe that signing EDMswill help and that they are both a waste of time and money. As I don’t really understand what the EDMs are and what they are for I can’t comment. At least the MPs in these letters are saying home ed is a good thing. Other people seem to be receiving spin-letters. The kind of ‘I’m sure you are wonderful BUT’ letters.

Meanwhile the Government of Sweden are out to make home education illegal on philosophical and religious grounds. This is truly scary stuff.

You can sign the petition HERE and I ASK THAT EVERYONE takes the minute or two to do this. I warned a while ago that home edders here in the UK should be extremely cautious about turning to the Human Rights legislation to aid us. I believed it was man-made and therefore too easy to change.

The Swedish approach says this:

The position on homeschooling in the suggested law is a return to darkness. It is unbelievable. Homeschooling will NOT be permitted for those referring to philosophical or religious reasons according to the European convention on Human Rights!

The added words used to make home education virtually impossible, are FOUR: 

“Education otherwise is allowed if… there exist extraordinary circumstances.”

These four words will soon be used to beat home education here. What on earth will “extraordinary circumstances” be?

A couple of us have written to our bishops and as with other letters I’ll let you know what response is forthcoming. I am also going to write to Bishop POD because he seems genuinely to care about children and their education. It has also been recommended that we contact Lord Alton who has an excellent record of supporting family and children rights.

We have until 19th October to complete the consultation. On the whole most people agree we need to do this. There are mixed messages about whether this is worth doing; on the one hand those who say Balls is essentially a mini dictator and can and does do whatever he likes-on the other hand some people think the Tories might just overturn the Badman report if there is enough pressure to do so. In the end I wonder at this point what we have to lose?

There has been some correspondencewith the Church of England office. They wrote a reasonable response for home education initially but this was misused in the Report. Suddenly the CofE spokeswoman seemed to change her pro-home ed stance and reported that she had been told 40% of home ed families are known to “social care”. (odd use of words that) It seems the CofE have realised their error with this utterly amazing stat and are retracting. It’s all a bit of a mess though. I believe the Cof E could make an important statement to support families in this country. They have that ability, and I am disappointed they seem unable to make a clear statement.

You might want to READ THIS ON BULLYING - a debate between David Howarth MP (LibDem) and Vernon Coaker MP (DSCF). One of the mums has written an excellent letter to Mr Howarth on this. I haven’t asked permission to post the letter here but I am sure she will okay with me at least giving a general abstract.  She was concerned that the whole emphases was on getting bullied children back into the school; that neither the option of home education nor the role of parents was even mentioned.

She points out the costs of not preventing or properly dealing with bullying and the reluctance of schools to face up to it. I agree with her fully on this. We were simply stonewalled over our son’s serious bullying at school.

She asked that the role parents play in both preventing bullying and instilling good behaviour in their children be recognised and that present policy of forcing parents into work so they hardly get to see their children was counterproductive.

I believe we need to fight this alongsideanyone fighting for the rights of families and children but we need to be cautious about supping with the devil so I wont be recommending approaching charities, organisations or individuals who have shown anti-family, anti-child and anti-life agendas up to now.

I’m planning to do a picnic in Sept and I’ll let you know about that.

You will remember that the actual CONSULTATION about home education is going on at the moment and as the closing date for this is the 19th October 2009 you would be forgiven for thinking that the vast array of draconian anti-family recommendations in Badman’s report would be on hold until such time as the results of the Consultation were in. You would be wrong. Carlotta has links HERE and HEREwhich show how monitoring home educated children-coming into our homes uninvited (normally called trespass) is being pushed through.

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Lord Lucas is still open to views as he looks for a way to help us. He sees registration as inevitable and he also believes there needs to be some sort of umbrella organisation (he mentioned Education Otherwise) who can be part of helping ensure LA staff are properly trained to understand the aspects of home education.

A lot of people have said no to EO and I think I would concur. Other organisations have been suggested. I have to say as things stand I don’t like the idea of any of these organisations training LA staff and seeming to speak for all home educators. I think part of the reason so few of us are members of any of these groups is they don’t speak for us-and there would have to be a lot of groups to cover all types of home edders I think.

This does leave the difficult question asked by Lord Lucas of how we can work together when we have such disperet views. It would be great to say that although we all have different ways to home educate that we all believe in the right of every parent to choose the education for their children and that the role of government is not to deny rights but to protect them. Umm not sure though.

I wonder if there is a chance that home edders in local communities can offer awareness training for LA staff, social workers and others who may come in contact with us; health care professionals spring to mind. I don’t know if this is possible in the current climate. Let’s face it Badman has really scuppered any kind of trust between home edders and most professionals. It was an idiotic thing to do.

Many home education families want to fight this battle on the grounds the Government are undermining, and even removing, our rights. But there is some doubt that we can win by pushing the human rights issue-especially imho if we use the UN and EU charters on rights. Rights that are made up by people are just that: made up. And the very people who made them can either reinterpret them or unmake them whenever they like. Britain claims to be post-Christian (when in reality it is anti-Christian) but it seems to me we are post-pagan as well. The days of understanding natural law as many pagans did are gone. Can we go back to a natural law understanding of human rights? Can we appeal to the great pagan and Christian philosophers and the long standing human cultural understanding that parents were the primary carers and educators of their children?

Can we appeal to history and show how the one major culture to make the state parent was Sparta and they are all dead and gone. They didn’t survive once they started taking children away from their parents. Charlotte Mason points out that even they didn’t do it until the child was 7 (and it was only the boys).

Don’t forget to write to MPs over this. I am choosing to write to Conservatives because it seems more likely they will be in power next year. I am concerned that so far replies do not give full assurances that recommendations will not be implemented. I am also going mto write to a  bishop or two. 

Which brings me to-

The document submitted by the Church of England is available, which I was going to fisk, but won’t bother now as most people have picked up already on the fact that Badman grossly misrepresented their views with his very selective use of quotes. This dishonesty is a bit of a god send when it comes to letters. Nothing like a blatant concrete example of deliberate dishonesty by Mr Badman to help us out I should say.

On the other hand I am left thinking that someone apparently intelligent like Badman and Heppell et al who put this report together didn’t seem to put much effort into making it airtight on logic or even with some basic research. Badman says “I believe” in the report about 16 times without ever backing up his personal opinion with any research or stats. He even goes as far as saying the peer reviewed research on the merit of home education carried out in the USA and here in the UK is not worthy of his respect. He just dismisses it out of hand-giving no reasons!

That level of arrogance and deliberate ignorance must come with some assurances. No wonder none of us believe this report was even remotely “independent”.

Tory MPs are writing back and showing their support but I am increasingly concerned that no one is making a clear promise that none of this would be implemented under them. I find this silence on the matter more worrying that the behaviour of Badman and Balls. I think the damage they can do this next year may be small-but if the  Tories go along with it, then we are looking at a bleak future.

 The consultation documents are written in such a way as to imply Badman’s report has any merit; as though one unelected man can decide the future of parents and children all over the country.

Dawn Primarolo is apparently the new Children’s Minister. She has asked for views and you can give them here. However if her voting record is anything to go by I’m not holding out much hope she gives a monkeys about families or children. She seems to be supportive of Sure Start (battery farming kids) as well. Ah well. Send her your views if the website will let you-which it won’t for me at the moment.

It is good to see that as the report has come and to a large extent in the media, gone, that some people are still fighting our corner with us.

Peter Hitchens posts are somewhat broad and eclectic but he still manages to remember the attack of home education in his writings.