The trouble with Select Committees... well, there are a few troubles with Select Committees. The first is that they are made up of a bunch of people who – er – want to rule the rest of the population. That is an odd thing to want to do. Personally, I don't seem to want to rule anyone, except myself and I have a darn difficult time doing even that on occasions being as I'm so multi-layered and mysterious.
Another trouble with Select Committees is that they have to read a tremendous amount of information in a fairly short time. How can they sort out the chaff from the wheat? It would take me a couple of years to properly digest what some interesting and erudite characters have had to say in support of home education and some fascinating points they have raised too. I'm proud to call myself a home edder.
Of course, I've had a tremendous advantage. I belong to some lively and thoughtful lists with some incredibly dedicated folk adorning them so I've been able to sharpen my little Shrek pencil as I've watched their amazing contributions to the outstanding learning opportunity afforded by home education to even the parental contingent of the home educating family. Me, in fact.
Yet another concern of mine about Select Committee is that they employ discreet language. I want to shout Balls is a moron and Badman is a (er, I cannot think of a suitable thing to shout. Perhaps the DCSF would like to consult on that. Suitable names for Badman. It would probably be as meaningful as consulting on a suitable education).
Then, again, there's the fact that people sitting on a Committee are not exactly unbiased. They are biased in many different ways, but one specific way is that they will be biased towards state schooling. If you skin the average person you will find state schooling writ large upon his or her heart. It's a strange thing how something so potentially damn dreadful, and no matter what atrocities of either the educational or bullying kind were perpetrated upon you, you STILL insist that 'they were the best days of mah life.' What PR school has enjoyed. How deep it has sunk into the societal bedrock. What crap it is! So much so that, if someone brings up all the terrible, soul-destroying happenings in his school, he finishes by wiping a tear from his filling eye and blowing his filling nose at the very thought of the old alma mater.
It's like the most insidious of abuse cycles.
So, we have those worthies of the Select Committee, all with their various Party lines, and their multitudinous prejudices listening variously to the rapidly sinking and almost incomprehensible muttering Badman (an upstanding representative of their kind of man) and the bright, inquisitive, alive responses from home educating children and their families.
What is a man constrained by the likes of Ed. Balls to do?
How are they to look their leader in his dark eyeballs if they deploy the nukes on the pathetic heap of prejudiced garbage that is dignified by the name of the Elective Home Education Review.
One of my first thoughts on sighting the Committee report was that they still have not realised that parents are the best ones to parent and are best placed to decide which form of education suits their own children and that local authorities underlying remit is to destroy home education and get those children into school.
So we have home educators – totally committed parents – and we have local authorities, some with fine representatives but others, a lot of others, with no darn clue about any kind of an education at all and a serious blind-spot which makes them avoid the facts looming up to crash into them. The facts are that the school system does not work. I would say it does not work for everyone but the longer I live the more I believe (there's that word again) that school DOES NOT WORK because it is predicated upon force.
And, however men like to spin it, force does not conquer all.
Overall, it's a 50.3% from me for the Select Committee Report. They criticise Badman, yes, they'd have to be blind, deaf, dumb and living inside the mountains not to know that Badman's so-called report is fit only to line our budgies' cages. Yet they haven't caught on that it is the parents' duty to choose the mode of education for their children. The parents' duty. Not the government's, not Balls', not Badman's, not Barry Sheerman's, not the MPs', not the paranoid LAs'.
You know it's practically impossible for a child to avoid getting an education. They're born to it. They question as soon as they wake up and talk. They do it because it is an instinct. You cannot deny a child an education, but you can choose which education – in accordance with their wishes – that they will get, even if that's one that they select for themselves (this is called the autonomous way).
That's the kind of Select Committee I approve of.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Home education less lethal than expected
Following Thursday's headline in the Guardian which was 'Swine flu pandemic less lethal than expected', I'd like to travel forward in time to view the next big headline that will catch our attention.
'Home education less lethal than expected
Reporter: Polly Dolly, Everypaper
Expert examiners yesterday confirmed that the fears of DCSF staff and ex-government Minister, Ed Balls, were groundless.
A re-examination of local authority statistics by independent professionals from Statistics International has found that, rather than being more likely to hurt their children, home educating parents are indeed much less likely to be guilty of child abuse.
Betty Wetty of the DCSF says, "We made a few assumptions about statistics that were perhaps incorrect, but fifteen months after we insisted on a new monitoring system, we discovered that the local authorities' facts were not as robust or rigorous as we were assured."
The situation for home educators is summed up by Diana Sminer, a home educator with three children and seven years experience. "We have wasted several years effort trying to point out that they are squandering public funds on a non-problem. We have advised ministers and the media who ran with prejudiced reports from a so-called expert who was no expert on home education. Our children have lost confidence in the political system, except for a handful of individuals who helped us, and have been terrified of being forced into failing schools by local authority Stasi-like representatives. And we don't even get an apology."
The Society of United Home Educators (SUME) is considering legal action. "We believe that government should be held responsible for mistakes of this nature," said Julian Bloomingdale, Vice President of SUME. "They cannot be allowed to ride rough-shod over home educators in this manner and escape consequences."
The DCSF made no further comment'.
'Home education less lethal than expected
Reporter: Polly Dolly, Everypaper
Expert examiners yesterday confirmed that the fears of DCSF staff and ex-government Minister, Ed Balls, were groundless.
A re-examination of local authority statistics by independent professionals from Statistics International has found that, rather than being more likely to hurt their children, home educating parents are indeed much less likely to be guilty of child abuse.
Betty Wetty of the DCSF says, "We made a few assumptions about statistics that were perhaps incorrect, but fifteen months after we insisted on a new monitoring system, we discovered that the local authorities' facts were not as robust or rigorous as we were assured."
The situation for home educators is summed up by Diana Sminer, a home educator with three children and seven years experience. "We have wasted several years effort trying to point out that they are squandering public funds on a non-problem. We have advised ministers and the media who ran with prejudiced reports from a so-called expert who was no expert on home education. Our children have lost confidence in the political system, except for a handful of individuals who helped us, and have been terrified of being forced into failing schools by local authority Stasi-like representatives. And we don't even get an apology."
The Society of United Home Educators (SUME) is considering legal action. "We believe that government should be held responsible for mistakes of this nature," said Julian Bloomingdale, Vice President of SUME. "They cannot be allowed to ride rough-shod over home educators in this manner and escape consequences."
The DCSF made no further comment'.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Erin and John Holt
Erin Brockovich and John Holt.
They would get along, I'm sure.
Erin is and was an individual. She didn't change her 'potty mouth' for anyone. She didn't change her rather uproarious clothes style to please others.
She had principles and she stuck to them.
John Holt in How Children Fail says this:
"After all I have said and written about the need for keeping children under pressure, I find myself coming to realize that what hampers their thinking, what drives them into these narrow and defensive strategies, is a feeling that they must please the grownups at all costs. The really able thinkers in our class turn out to be, without exception, children who don't feel so strongly the need to please grownups. Some of them are good students, some not so good; but good or not, they don't work to please us, but to please themselves."
Students working, not to get a reward from teacher or approval from the school, must be a nightmare for the state schooling system.
School is unmitigated stress for some children. Damned if they do well, they are told that they must do better. Slated if they do poorly, they must do better, even if that is better than their best and how can a person do better than their best? When Shelly is compared with Polly, who is the class genius, how can Shelly feel but inferior and how does that help Shelly or Polly. Shelly may give up trying for that non-existent approval from teacher. Polly may be coasting along not exerting herself because, after all, she is effortlessly clever.
John Holt again: "The trouble was that I was asking too many questions. In time I learned to shut up and stop asking questions, stop constantly trying to find out how much people understood. We have to let learners decide when they want to ask questions. It often takes them a long time even to find out what questions they want to ask. It is not the teacher's proper task to be constantly testing and checking the understanding of the learner. That's the learner's task, and only the learner can do it. The teacher's job is to answer questions when learners ask them, or to try to help learners understand better when they ask for that help."
I am interested in the way that teachers think because I make it a habit not to teach. I am not a teacher. If pressed, I would say I am a facilitator and an education enthusiast. I believe that all people should educate themselves, if they can. The key words there are 'educate themselves'. People can learn from me if they wish and I will impart my knowledge when they ask me for it, but they must ask me. I will not teach anyone voluntarily. I do not believe in teaching learners. I believe in empowering learners to find out for themselves and, if that involves finding out from me, that is fine.
I think there is something rather arrogant about another human being presuming to 'teach' me. It implies a one-way process. It implies that teaching leads to learning whereas we know instinctively that to learn one has to be ready, willing and able to learn.
As John Holt says: “The very natural mistake that Bill and I made was to think that the differences between the children in our class had to do with techniques of thinking, that the successful kids had good techniques of thinking while the unsuccessful, the 'producers,' had bad, and therefore that our task was to teach better techniques. But the unsuccessful kids were not trying, however badly, to do the same things as the successful. They were doing something altogether different. They saw the school and their task in it differently. It was a place of danger, and their task was, as far as they could, to stay out of danger. Their business was not learning, but escaping.”
I would respectfully suggest that John Holt has used an incorrect word there. I suspect that the word he might have used is 'surviving.'
We survive school to go on to our real lives having played the learning game or not, depending upon which survival strategy we adopt during our school years.
Wouldn't it be so much better if we were left to learn in peace, at our own leisure, untested and unmolested? Wouldn't it be so much better if children were all educating at home (and all the other places they educate themselves in?)
Or is that too much to ask?
They would get along, I'm sure.
Erin is and was an individual. She didn't change her 'potty mouth' for anyone. She didn't change her rather uproarious clothes style to please others.
She had principles and she stuck to them.
John Holt in How Children Fail says this:
"After all I have said and written about the need for keeping children under pressure, I find myself coming to realize that what hampers their thinking, what drives them into these narrow and defensive strategies, is a feeling that they must please the grownups at all costs. The really able thinkers in our class turn out to be, without exception, children who don't feel so strongly the need to please grownups. Some of them are good students, some not so good; but good or not, they don't work to please us, but to please themselves."
Students working, not to get a reward from teacher or approval from the school, must be a nightmare for the state schooling system.
School is unmitigated stress for some children. Damned if they do well, they are told that they must do better. Slated if they do poorly, they must do better, even if that is better than their best and how can a person do better than their best? When Shelly is compared with Polly, who is the class genius, how can Shelly feel but inferior and how does that help Shelly or Polly. Shelly may give up trying for that non-existent approval from teacher. Polly may be coasting along not exerting herself because, after all, she is effortlessly clever.
John Holt again: "The trouble was that I was asking too many questions. In time I learned to shut up and stop asking questions, stop constantly trying to find out how much people understood. We have to let learners decide when they want to ask questions. It often takes them a long time even to find out what questions they want to ask. It is not the teacher's proper task to be constantly testing and checking the understanding of the learner. That's the learner's task, and only the learner can do it. The teacher's job is to answer questions when learners ask them, or to try to help learners understand better when they ask for that help."
I am interested in the way that teachers think because I make it a habit not to teach. I am not a teacher. If pressed, I would say I am a facilitator and an education enthusiast. I believe that all people should educate themselves, if they can. The key words there are 'educate themselves'. People can learn from me if they wish and I will impart my knowledge when they ask me for it, but they must ask me. I will not teach anyone voluntarily. I do not believe in teaching learners. I believe in empowering learners to find out for themselves and, if that involves finding out from me, that is fine.
I think there is something rather arrogant about another human being presuming to 'teach' me. It implies a one-way process. It implies that teaching leads to learning whereas we know instinctively that to learn one has to be ready, willing and able to learn.
As John Holt says: “The very natural mistake that Bill and I made was to think that the differences between the children in our class had to do with techniques of thinking, that the successful kids had good techniques of thinking while the unsuccessful, the 'producers,' had bad, and therefore that our task was to teach better techniques. But the unsuccessful kids were not trying, however badly, to do the same things as the successful. They were doing something altogether different. They saw the school and their task in it differently. It was a place of danger, and their task was, as far as they could, to stay out of danger. Their business was not learning, but escaping.”
I would respectfully suggest that John Holt has used an incorrect word there. I suspect that the word he might have used is 'surviving.'
We survive school to go on to our real lives having played the learning game or not, depending upon which survival strategy we adopt during our school years.
Wouldn't it be so much better if we were left to learn in peace, at our own leisure, untested and unmolested? Wouldn't it be so much better if children were all educating at home (and all the other places they educate themselves in?)
Or is that too much to ask?
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Erin Brockovich and woman power
My eldest has just asked me if I want to watch the film 'Erin Brockovich' with her.
I said yes.
I've tried to watch it a few times but only managed to see a few minutes at different points. So it will be interesting...
Erin was a legal assistant in America who brought a power company to book for polluting a town's water. Originally, she was an unemployed single mum. The film is based on her story. A real story. About one woman who single-handedly brings down a huge corporation.
Erin is one of my heroes.
She is a magnificent woman.
We can all be like her.
We can bring down liars and cheats and politically motivated quangos and people making money out of other people's misery.
We can.
You can.
I can.
It can be done and Erin did it.
Now I'm off to see the whole dang movie.
To remind myself that there is an Erin in each one of us.
I said yes.
I've tried to watch it a few times but only managed to see a few minutes at different points. So it will be interesting...
Erin was a legal assistant in America who brought a power company to book for polluting a town's water. Originally, she was an unemployed single mum. The film is based on her story. A real story. About one woman who single-handedly brings down a huge corporation.
Erin is one of my heroes.
She is a magnificent woman.
We can all be like her.
We can bring down liars and cheats and politically motivated quangos and people making money out of other people's misery.
We can.
You can.
I can.
It can be done and Erin did it.
Now I'm off to see the whole dang movie.
To remind myself that there is an Erin in each one of us.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
A blissful afternoon...
We've just got back from seeing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
An afternoon of swing and sing and dancing. A time of clapping and emoting as Joseph got sold into slavery by his brothers (ah, that sounds familiar. Wonder where I've heard that before?). But Joseph, he rises again, even higher than the heights of being his father's favourite sonhood.
He becomes Pharoah's favourite Minister. He practically runs Egypt because Pharoah is so busy being an Elvis Presley look-alike.
I bought the tickets some weeks ago. I was asked how many adults and children. I said I didn't know because some people call a sixteen year old an adult and some say people that age are still children. The nice lady on the desk said, "If they are under 18, they're children to us!"
Thank you, Playhouse.
A row of schoolchildren sat, wriggled, talked and laughed behind us. I wasn't asked for my CRB check or tapped on the shoulder and told to move because I was seated near our fragile young and I might be one of them. (Home educators or paedophiles)
There were elderly people swinging their canes, children in school uniforms, middle-aged folk munching on scones and sucking drinks through straws and all of them, jigging about, singing along and clapping their 'ands orf.
Wonderful.
Great musical. Great cast, full of energy and enjoying themselves.
Great audience. All ages, full of interest and wanting to enjoy themselves.
Not a suspicious glance around. No police. No bother about tickets. No worrying whether or not we were going to be picked up as those weird home educators and returned to our home because we were AT LARGE and we should be ON THE EDUCATIONAL PREMISES.
Great afternoon.
So, you see, it can work. This being in the world and not checked or stopped or shown disrespect or hassle.
We can be normal. Life can be good.
Life is good.
An afternoon of swing and sing and dancing. A time of clapping and emoting as Joseph got sold into slavery by his brothers (ah, that sounds familiar. Wonder where I've heard that before?). But Joseph, he rises again, even higher than the heights of being his father's favourite sonhood.
He becomes Pharoah's favourite Minister. He practically runs Egypt because Pharoah is so busy being an Elvis Presley look-alike.
I bought the tickets some weeks ago. I was asked how many adults and children. I said I didn't know because some people call a sixteen year old an adult and some say people that age are still children. The nice lady on the desk said, "If they are under 18, they're children to us!"
Thank you, Playhouse.
A row of schoolchildren sat, wriggled, talked and laughed behind us. I wasn't asked for my CRB check or tapped on the shoulder and told to move because I was seated near our fragile young and I might be one of them. (Home educators or paedophiles)
There were elderly people swinging their canes, children in school uniforms, middle-aged folk munching on scones and sucking drinks through straws and all of them, jigging about, singing along and clapping their 'ands orf.
Wonderful.
Great musical. Great cast, full of energy and enjoying themselves.
Great audience. All ages, full of interest and wanting to enjoy themselves.
Not a suspicious glance around. No police. No bother about tickets. No worrying whether or not we were going to be picked up as those weird home educators and returned to our home because we were AT LARGE and we should be ON THE EDUCATIONAL PREMISES.
Great afternoon.
So, you see, it can work. This being in the world and not checked or stopped or shown disrespect or hassle.
We can be normal. Life can be good.
Life is good.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Dare to tell me...
If you dare to tell me that school is good for most (all?) children, I will spit feathers and turn purple, green, orange and blue like a demented chameleon on a multi-coloured tablecloth.
This mother's story about her lovely artistic son is worth reading:
http://redmummyrambleson.blogspot.com/2009/11/lunatics-are-running-asylum.html
It has brought back to me all the essential wrongness that I remember about schools.
The twenty-seven Year 5 kids pushing one way out of a set of doors and the thirty pushing the other way. The doors bulging and twisting under the force. No teacher in sight. Me, with my hand to my mouth, across the playground, watching frozen in horror and waiting for one or more of them to be knocked to the ground and trampled upon. Waiting for the blood. Waiting for the death.
CHILDREN DESERVE BETTER.
School is safe? School teaches you? Teaches you how to be a barbarian maybe.
School is a place of no choice. School is where you dread to go and hate to be. OK, not all children (maybe in a tiny few cases, school is actually a step up from home) but to young'uns who are loved and respected in their homes?
Is it really what we want for our children?
Having to hide in the toilets away from the three mean and radgy girls who always make you miserable?
Being told you should 'stand up' to them while knowing they'll beat you to pulp if you say A WHISPER to them?
Adults do not know or they conveniently forget how damn dreadful it is being powerless and humiliated and shamed and laughed at and ignored and hit and punched and poked and having your favourite gel pens nicked on your first day at a new school and seeing your best jacket on the floor having been trampled all over with muddy boots.
CHILDREN DESERVE PROTECTION.
My children, and yours, deserve to feel safe every day, not just the day when they have to go to the dentist and so not to school. They deserve to feel secure, not to have their little hearts pumping so fast they can feel sick and dizzy because they see some big kid in the schoolyard who stole the lunch money Mum paid for out of her crap job and who is coming THEIR WAY.
THEN YOU GO TO SCHOOL AND THEY FINGERPRINT YOU.
They steal your fingerprints. You don't give consent because who tells a big tall hard-faced teacher, "No, this is something I do NOT CONSENT to" because it's all "do what teacher says now". But fingerprints - you must have done something pretty bad to be fingerprinted like a criminal but what was it? No one tells you which adds to the confusion and hurting stomach and sick feelings and lightheadness.
Every night you try to sleep to escape the deathliness of your days but you stay awake because you don't want to sleep because that will mean you wake up and it's SCHOOL again and you've just got away from the torture and the hell and the noise and those kids following you around and giggling at something behind your back, but it's not at something else it's at YOU.
God help us. We are spirit-murderers.
God help us. We think this is normal.
In the future, we will look back and cry for what we have done to children.
God help us, but God help the little children first.
This mother's story about her lovely artistic son is worth reading:
http://redmummyrambleson.blogspot.com/2009/11/lunatics-are-running-asylum.html
It has brought back to me all the essential wrongness that I remember about schools.
The twenty-seven Year 5 kids pushing one way out of a set of doors and the thirty pushing the other way. The doors bulging and twisting under the force. No teacher in sight. Me, with my hand to my mouth, across the playground, watching frozen in horror and waiting for one or more of them to be knocked to the ground and trampled upon. Waiting for the blood. Waiting for the death.
CHILDREN DESERVE BETTER.
School is safe? School teaches you? Teaches you how to be a barbarian maybe.
School is a place of no choice. School is where you dread to go and hate to be. OK, not all children (maybe in a tiny few cases, school is actually a step up from home) but to young'uns who are loved and respected in their homes?
Is it really what we want for our children?
Having to hide in the toilets away from the three mean and radgy girls who always make you miserable?
Being told you should 'stand up' to them while knowing they'll beat you to pulp if you say A WHISPER to them?
Adults do not know or they conveniently forget how damn dreadful it is being powerless and humiliated and shamed and laughed at and ignored and hit and punched and poked and having your favourite gel pens nicked on your first day at a new school and seeing your best jacket on the floor having been trampled all over with muddy boots.
CHILDREN DESERVE PROTECTION.
My children, and yours, deserve to feel safe every day, not just the day when they have to go to the dentist and so not to school. They deserve to feel secure, not to have their little hearts pumping so fast they can feel sick and dizzy because they see some big kid in the schoolyard who stole the lunch money Mum paid for out of her crap job and who is coming THEIR WAY.
THEN YOU GO TO SCHOOL AND THEY FINGERPRINT YOU.
They steal your fingerprints. You don't give consent because who tells a big tall hard-faced teacher, "No, this is something I do NOT CONSENT to" because it's all "do what teacher says now". But fingerprints - you must have done something pretty bad to be fingerprinted like a criminal but what was it? No one tells you which adds to the confusion and hurting stomach and sick feelings and lightheadness.
Every night you try to sleep to escape the deathliness of your days but you stay awake because you don't want to sleep because that will mean you wake up and it's SCHOOL again and you've just got away from the torture and the hell and the noise and those kids following you around and giggling at something behind your back, but it's not at something else it's at YOU.
God help us. We are spirit-murderers.
God help us. We think this is normal.
In the future, we will look back and cry for what we have done to children.
God help us, but God help the little children first.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Choice that is no choice
Every day, in hundreds of ways, we all make choices.
To get up or lie in bed, what to wear if we choose to get up, whether to turn the heating on or off, what to eat for breakfast, whether or not to have breakfast....
Thousands of choices, not hundreds.
Some choices are no choices. I choose not to hurt my children. I choose to listen to my children. I choose to treat them with respect and consider what they say as worthy (as, indeed, what they say is worthy).
Often I will act upon what they say. They are privy to my thinking about what they choose to tell me and we share a lot of information and knowledge.
Choice should have a choice.
Choice should not be made under duress because choice made under duress is no choice.
Choice should imply that one can limit or, in fact, choose not to choose to choose.
A man who leaps out of a bush and demands that you hand over your cash or he will shoot your dog leaves you with no choice.
' The common English usage of the word "defeasance" has also become acceptable in law, referring to a contract that is susceptible to being declared void as in "immoral contracts are susceptible to defeasance."' (Duhaime)
Immoral contracts are susceptible to being declared void.
Immoral contracts are ones in which we have no choice. Immoral contracts stem from a misunderstanding and misapplication of the word choice, and from a source which sees people as counters on a game board.
A choice which is no choice is force.
Coercion.
The review written up by Badman and so enthusiastically embraced by Balls has advocated 'choice' for no one. Children caught up in this conspiracy of choice are sold a piece of swampland in Florida. They are offered a voice which implies choice. They are told they will be listened to. They are not told that they will be listened to and then ignored.
It is an immoral system based on immoral targets.
It contravenes so many of the United Nations Rights of the Child that Britain has signed up to.
"States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention."
Article 5
http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/uncrc.asp
From the same:
"1. States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
3. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others."
Article 14
Naturally, we can be respected in that the government can tell us that we are respected, and yet they can behave as if we are anything but respected. I can hear what you say but I don't have to act upon what you say or change my mind about what I think you might need or want or deserve. However, when we treat a minority group like home educators differently to any other group in society, then we are being flushed out into a vast sea of moral effluent. We are going wrong. We are taking heed of our prejudices and our misconceptions to affect other people's lives and that is a serious undertaking.
"What is not acceptable is arbitrary application of law so that some people end up being treated more badly than others where objectively the circumstances do not warrant such treatment."
European Convention on Human Rights, Article 14, from the book Unlocking Human Rights, page 385
Home educators are subject to the arbitrary application of law. We are being treated worse than those people who school their children. As home educating families, we are subject to more intrusion and intervention than any schoolchild's family has to put up with.
Lastly, the circumstances do not warrant such treatment.
To choose to implement laws that place a blameless and caring group of parents in a no-win and intolerable situation is the work of evil. The circumstances do not warrant it. Home educating parents do not warrant it. Home educating children do not warrant it.
Home educators may be forced to undergo a series of malevolent changes in the laws that affect them. They will have no choice but to obey these laws unless they realise that, to bend to accommodate a bad law, goes against their very nature.
Home educators will still have a choice.
To obey a tyrannical law or not.
To choose or not to choose, that is the question.
To get up or lie in bed, what to wear if we choose to get up, whether to turn the heating on or off, what to eat for breakfast, whether or not to have breakfast....
Thousands of choices, not hundreds.
Some choices are no choices. I choose not to hurt my children. I choose to listen to my children. I choose to treat them with respect and consider what they say as worthy (as, indeed, what they say is worthy).
Often I will act upon what they say. They are privy to my thinking about what they choose to tell me and we share a lot of information and knowledge.
Choice should have a choice.
Choice should not be made under duress because choice made under duress is no choice.
Choice should imply that one can limit or, in fact, choose not to choose to choose.
A man who leaps out of a bush and demands that you hand over your cash or he will shoot your dog leaves you with no choice.
' The common English usage of the word "defeasance" has also become acceptable in law, referring to a contract that is susceptible to being declared void as in "immoral contracts are susceptible to defeasance."' (Duhaime)
Immoral contracts are susceptible to being declared void.
Immoral contracts are ones in which we have no choice. Immoral contracts stem from a misunderstanding and misapplication of the word choice, and from a source which sees people as counters on a game board.
A choice which is no choice is force.
Coercion.
The review written up by Badman and so enthusiastically embraced by Balls has advocated 'choice' for no one. Children caught up in this conspiracy of choice are sold a piece of swampland in Florida. They are offered a voice which implies choice. They are told they will be listened to. They are not told that they will be listened to and then ignored.
It is an immoral system based on immoral targets.
It contravenes so many of the United Nations Rights of the Child that Britain has signed up to.
"States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention."
Article 5
http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/uncrc.asp
From the same:
"1. States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
3. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others."
Article 14
Naturally, we can be respected in that the government can tell us that we are respected, and yet they can behave as if we are anything but respected. I can hear what you say but I don't have to act upon what you say or change my mind about what I think you might need or want or deserve. However, when we treat a minority group like home educators differently to any other group in society, then we are being flushed out into a vast sea of moral effluent. We are going wrong. We are taking heed of our prejudices and our misconceptions to affect other people's lives and that is a serious undertaking.
"What is not acceptable is arbitrary application of law so that some people end up being treated more badly than others where objectively the circumstances do not warrant such treatment."
European Convention on Human Rights, Article 14, from the book Unlocking Human Rights, page 385
Home educators are subject to the arbitrary application of law. We are being treated worse than those people who school their children. As home educating families, we are subject to more intrusion and intervention than any schoolchild's family has to put up with.
Lastly, the circumstances do not warrant such treatment.
To choose to implement laws that place a blameless and caring group of parents in a no-win and intolerable situation is the work of evil. The circumstances do not warrant it. Home educating parents do not warrant it. Home educating children do not warrant it.
Home educators may be forced to undergo a series of malevolent changes in the laws that affect them. They will have no choice but to obey these laws unless they realise that, to bend to accommodate a bad law, goes against their very nature.
Home educators will still have a choice.
To obey a tyrannical law or not.
To choose or not to choose, that is the question.
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