SUPPORT the Rights of Home Educating Families in the UK
Posted by: mum6kids on: February 14, 2009
- In: homeschool| news
- Comment!
Tammy of Just Enough and Nothing More kindly asked how homeschoolers not resident in the UK can support us against the attack on our rights as parents to home educate our children.
The group “Stop the Government Stigmatizing Home Education” has begun a thread in which all messages of support will be placed so that Govt personal, Mr Graham Badman who is to analyse the review and the NSPCC can see that we have support.
Please put your messages in the comments box or you can email me at sctshell@aol.com
For all homeschoolers in the UK- you only have until Friday the 20th Feb to get the review form completed.
Please don’t treat this as somebody elses problem. There is reason to believe this attack on home eduation has far reaching implications for the rights and welbeing of all parents and children in the UK.
Also the TIMES ONLINE have picked up the story.
Thank you all for the support and prayers.
25 Responses to "SUPPORT the Rights of Home Educating Families in the UK"
February 14, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Parents are the primary educators of their children and the family is the basis of society.
Government and the State exist in a democracy to serve the citizens of a country not to dictate to them.
All the home educated children I have met have been a pleasure to be in the company of.
How dare the government interfere in family life.
February 14, 2009 at 5:34 pm
This government are like any other – they use the subject of education generally as a political football. I find this despicable, distasteful and plain wrong.
Every parent should have the opportunity to educate their own children if they wish to do so, that should remain a fundamental right.
In these days of struggling public education I find it ludicrous that people are attacked for trying to provide something for their children that the state seem eminently incapable of doing.
More power to the home schoolers.
February 14, 2009 at 6:03 pm
The right of a family to raise and educate their children according to their wishes is inalienable, inviolable and not a matter on which the UK Government can dictate. I support the right of parents to choose to educate their children through homeschooling. Nowadays more than ever, every human right must be defended with unfailing conviction!
February 14, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Large schools are not always the best places for children to develop their full potential.
Teachers have so much to learn from the wealth of work done by many homeschoolers in the ways they value and raise young people.
May God bless all our children wherever they are educated!
February 14, 2009 at 9:01 pm
What Laurence said!
I wholeheartedly support the right of parents to choose to educate their children themselves.
As a non-homeschooler of children educated in state schools in their early years and Catholic Schools in their latter school years, i feel very strongly that education in the home should be supported. Even Catholic Schools in the UK, and certainly from the general consensus of friends who are Stateside are often poorly lacking in meeting the educational needs of the child, not to mention, but i will, areas such as issues with bullying, sex education, peer pressure to smoke/drink/have sex/behave like an obnoxious little jerk.
If i thought for one minute i had the whereabouts to have home educated my children, i would have done so. I never even knew i COULD home educate my children until i started blogging and found out about the humungous homeschooling network that exists in the UK and more specifically in the U.S.
February 14, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I totally agree with all comments here so far.
Families have the right to raise their children and educate them. No govt can take that right away without turning into a dictatorship.
Therese
February 14, 2009 at 11:14 pm
The government should stay out of it. Parents should be able to educate their children in the best way they see fit.
February 15, 2009 at 3:32 am
Amen to all the comments so far. It is the parents’ God given right to educate their children. The parent is the child’s first teacher.
February 15, 2009 at 5:17 am
Subsidiarity is the key word here . . . no level of government should interfere in anything that can be handled perfectly well by a lower level.
The first and foremost level of authority in any society is the family. Our children do not belong to the government; they belong to God. He has entrusted them to us parents to form and educate. It is our responsibility to do so.
Any government interference in the proper functioning of a family is an abuse of power – in any country.
Ours were homeschooled in Canada – I can only say that it was a positive experience.
February 15, 2009 at 5:20 am
Parents have the right to determine the education of their children.
Governments have the duty to serve families by not interfering.
Children are abused in many ways in schools around the world: through physical, mental and sexual violence; sexual exploitation by teachers and fellow students; bullying; teacher neglect; being shown sexually explicit material far before they are ready psychologically to deal with it; indoctrinated into harmful lifestyles and attitudes under the guise of ‘diversity’; taught distrust in and disdain for their parents and religious teachings and so forth.
Governments are bureaucracies that do not care about the individual, but about the power and money that can be gained from the group (and individuals can be discarded if they are not producing sufficient wealth for the state or are ill and drain that wealth and power).
Families are about nurturing and caring about each individual and wanting the best care for each member.
Keep government bureaucrats out of family life and let parents direct their childrens’ educations.
If government worries about ‘abuse’, family doctors are far more likely to notice it than underpaid and understaffed workers in institutionalized programs and overworked teachers and administrators.
Shana M Buck, Weirton, West Virginia USA
February 15, 2009 at 11:48 am
Parents are the primary educators of their children and should not be required to subsidize their teaching with that of the state.
February 15, 2009 at 3:10 pm
I have to echo several of the comments left here: the fundamental basis of a free society is that the government exists to serve the people, not vice versa. I would be gravely concerned by giving the government the right to “trump” parental decisions on what is best for their children when there is not clear and measurable harm imminent. (Obviously we have given the government the authority to step in when there is clear abuse of children…but logically getting from “homeschooling” to “abuse” is more than a leap, it borders on an Olympic event.)
I support quality public education as a cornerstone of a free and fair society; but I also support the rights of parents to determine what the best way is to educate their children, whether it be public school, private school, or home education. It will be a sad day if that right is abrogated in a society that calls itself free.
February 15, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Wow, all wonderful comments! I agree with everything said so far. I am a staunch supporter of homeschooling. No government has the right to tell us how to raise our children.
Sue in Idaho, USA
February 15, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I agree – parents have the right to educate their children at home. I also agree with everything said so far.
February 15, 2009 at 11:23 pm
The State does not have the right to interfere in any aspect of family life so long as the child/children in question are not in danger.
To try and dictate to parents who are solid & law abiding citizens how they may educate their children is not an act of social caring, it is fascism.
The Government is there to serve the people in the best interests of all. The Govermental role is not there to dictate to parents on how they should raise or educate their children.
If parents are competent enough to homeschool their children then that is their fundamental right and Governments need to leave this decision to the parents in question.
Let Governments run the country and not the family unit as it is they can barely manage the budget let alone interfere in family life.
I am for homeschooling and non governmental interference.
Peace to you Shell:)
Marie
February 16, 2009 at 1:51 am
Even though I currently live in the United States, this does affect my family. With my husband’s job, we could conceivably end up living anywhere… except somewhere that doesn’t allow homeschooling.
Just a thought.
February 16, 2009 at 1:55 am
I support the right of the parents to homeschool their children. We have been homeschooling for almost six years(since kindergarten), and my child is on par with his same aged niece who is being educated in the English school system. Initially my son was homeschooled due to a speech delay, but he is completely recovered from this delay.
We live in as area of the U.S. which has a high number of homeschoolers, many of whom go onto skilled trades and/or higher education. Their reputation here is excellent, and I am totally sold on homeschooling.
Homeschooling should be considered carefully by the parents, but in the end it must be the parent’s decision in a free society, not the government’s.
February 16, 2009 at 6:34 am
Wow great comments, and thanks for the link to the Times School Gate…had missed it somehow.
February 16, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Two of my three children were home schooled. One had ADHD and managed to get in to college a year early. The other one had to be at home for two years before going to college. They are both doing fine – one manges a child and parent UK on line centre and the other is going to go to University.
February 16, 2009 at 6:14 pm
The news of a young boy and his slightly older girlfriend having a child recently underlines how right homeschooling parents are in withdrawing their children from a system that is failing these young people. The response of the “professionals”? Abortion, followed by even more sex-education at an even earlier age. This is not the answer and there are many parents who see this route as nothing more that child abuse. It is abuse to deny a child their childhood! Rather than providing a moral and virtuous place of safety and support to children, our state schools are ensuring that more and more children’s lives are ruined.
I support fully all parents who have been brave to say enough is enough, by refusing to place their children into a system that values its stupid liberal experiments over a tried and tested means of educating children, which will ultimately raise mature men and women.
February 17, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Homeschooling should definitely be kept as an option for parents… they are (or ought to be) the first educators of their children.
The attack on homeschooling reeks of political control-freakery (“We can’t control it, so it must be wrong, and must be stopped, at all costs”)
Good luck with your campaign
February 19, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Homeshooling has been a great option for our family. It has helped my reluctant reader at age 10 be very astute at age 18. I think in the school system, he would have been labeled “learning disabled” and then not been able to achieve his achedemic dreams. Also, both of my children view other people as good whether they are age 3, 30, or 80 and can relate very well to them. Homeschooling is a great option for those who are want better for their children than what is out there already. I believe homeschooling works very well.
February 26, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I’m a Canadian living in Scotland. I homeschooled our eldest sons in British Columbia but sent them to public school here in the UK. Now, we’ve had to pull our middle daughter, who is affected by a rare genetic syndrome, from a special needs school when we learned she was being mistreated by one of her teacher’s aides, mimicking disruptive behaviour of severely disabled children, and then, finally, hit in the face by an uncontrolled peer. Kate is integrated at her siblings’ mainstream school part-time but now we are going to homeschool her in the am. I think back to homeschooling in Canada, and the government was so supportive in B.C. We were paid more than $1500 for each of our sons to homeschool. We had to provide receipts of the expenditures, but that included curricula, music, swimming and visits to museums etc. It was only a fraction of what a school would have received to educate our children, but it was still helpful. I wonder if homeschoolers here aren’t interensted in doing what many Canadian homeschoolers did — that is, demand that the money follow the child. My daughter, as a foreigner, has not had access to any disabled benefits but I do think that if the government is willing to spend money (needlessly) on transporting children long distances, having one-on-one chaperones or various questionable “therapies”, why can’t a fraction of that be spent on swimming lessons or educational needs chosen by parents?
Leave a Reply
Charlotte Mason
February 14, 2009 at 1:11 pm
When the rights of homeschoolers are threatened anywhere, they are threatened everywhere! This is everyone’s problem. No matter where one’s children are educated, nor which side of “the pond”, undue, unjust interference in parental rights is a threat to everyone.
It is rather shameful the UK government is poking its nose into the rights of parents to choose the means, methods and location for the education of their children, and especially so under the guise of “protecting children.” How do they justify wasting time and funds attacking home educators rather than tackling actual problems? To my understanding, the UK already has many checks in place to ensure that home educated children receive a minimum standard of education. It has been effective. Why all of this now?
How do they justify troubling with a group of citizens who, by and large, raise up well-educated, thoughtful, compassionate patriots rather than spending the time, energy and money on those things which the government ought to be doing? It is shameful and this problem belongs to all of us.
Count me as one of many who support you and your most fundamental right to parent and educate your children without governmental interference.
And count on my prayers.