A lurker writes:

Hi. I visit Blogdial when I can to get a different take on what’s going on.

I know that home schooling is a topic that comes up from time to time and wanted to share something that noticed on the BBC website earlier today. I am not sure about whether I am confused (and therefore missing the obvious connections) or whether this is a blatant attempt at linking a tragedy to home schooling without even the pretence that the two have a common link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7291792.stm

The death of Scarlett Keeling, 15, in Goa has highlighted the issue of parental responsibility and the law relating to education.

I have been reading about this girl’s death, or murder as now seems more likely. It is a tradgedy that this girl died and even more so if it turns out that she was indeed drugged, raped and then murdered.

However, I am still trying to find a link between her death on a beach in Goa and the law relating to education and more specifically to home schooling which takes up about half of the BBC’s piece.

The only thing that I can think of is that she might have been out of school during term time, but since she was with her mother and siblings (ie not a truant), and presumably the school knew where she was, this should really not have been an issue.

From what I have read, Scarlett was prone to experimenting with drugs but does not seem to have been arrested or have priors on this or any other count, so this does not appear to be an issue either and a link between this and laws on education or home schooling seem tenuous.

The only question seems to be that her mother left her with friends while she went with her other children to a neighbouring area. In my mind this is a separate issue and can be related even less to laws on education or home schooling.

I freely admit that my research into this non-existant, but even if she did have a record and she had been taken from school during term time without the school’s knowledge, the fact remains she was enrolled in a school even though it may be regarded as quite alternative (I am providing the link as it looks like a very cool project http://www.smallschoolhartland..org/).

In fact a previous BBC news article quoted:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7275977.stm

“Staff and pupils at Scarlett’s school – The Small School in Hartland, which has only 23 students – said they had been deeply affected by her death. “

Starting from this basis I do not see any link between her death and home schooling or why it should even enter into the equation, yet the BBC piece devotes about half of the text to home schooling. Not only that, but the paragraph immediately preceding the start of the home scholing section is titled “When is it appropriate to leave a child alone?”.

Am I missing something here?

Is this really just using the headlines surrounding this girl’s death possibly at the hands of someone in Goa to try and suggest that home schooling is somehow at fault?

Or to equate home schooling to leaving a child alone?

Or even that small community based schools are bad because they are similar to home schooling and nowhere near as protective of the children as a large state run school would be?

Maybe I am just confused and if Scarlett had been enrolled at the local comprehensive then none of this would have happened and she would have gone on to become a happy and productive member of society or maybe an MP or MEP even.

What do you think?

Bye for now.

Xxxxx

Well, first of all this is a typical BBC propaganda piece, without an author so there is no one who is accountable. These people are the worst human garbage behind keyboards, and they are rabid statists and control freaks.

This death has nothing whatsoever to do with Home Schooling, and neither do any of the other bogus stories that the BBC posts where they weave Home Schooling into a horror story with their poisonous lie spinning loom.

Home Schooling is under attack by these scum-bags, for several reasons.

Those jackasses that managed to produce children and who also work at the BBC are green with envy of the families that Home School; lets face it, Home Schoolers are a very fortunate lot, living lives that BBC types would love to lead, whereas they have to work their bollocks (and tits) off to pay their mortgages while their children are being brainwashed in inferior schools.

They know full well that the many Home Schooled children that are now entering the system are going to beat their inferior children for places at University. As you read BLOGDIAL, you will know that Universities in the USA are bending over backwards to attract Home Schooled students because they are simply superior in every way. By extension, these BBC animals know that what will inevitably follow is the exclusion of their children from jobs at the BBC, which of course, they feel belong to their children by virtue of the fact that they work there now.

This is a class war issue, pure and simple. The BBC editorial control and the anonymous writer in this case, have lumped Home Schoolers in with Etonians as a class of people who have unfair ‘privilege’ and advantage by being Home Schooled while everyone else has to suffer a substandard education at the mercy of the state. Like Etonians and Harovians, Home Schoolians get fast track access to the best in higher education, and all the downstream advantages of that. This deep and bitter resentment is doubly compounded by the fact that Home Schooling families have better family lives than they do. They eat together, spend quality time together and actually know each other, unlike the BBC drones who only get to see their children for a short time every day after work, when they are completely exhausted and unable to be fulfilled.

Finally, Home Schoolers do not watch television.

That is their greatest sin.

Once again, this is a pure propaganda piece. It suddenly switches, without any reason, to ‘How many children are taught at home?’ out of nowhere. It is a vile, nasty baseless piece of garbage writing, delivered on command, as part of a long term strategy to dismantle Home Schooling in the UK. The people ordering this sort of bogus report know full well that they are building a dossier of cases that will eventually be trotted out as sufficient proof that there, “is a need to change the law”. We must remember that ContactPoint was justified on the death of a single girl – this is how they operate. In the case of Home Schooling, because such a tragedy is not likely to happen, Home Schooling parents being the least likely to fall into the class of people that abuse their children, they would have to wait literally until the end of time for a ‘Climbie’ to materialize to help them outlaw Home Schooling. This is why they have to build up a dossier over years, and this case, though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Home Schooling, fits the bill, because they can lie on the record via the BBC.

The fact of the matter is, Home Schooling is growing, and will continue to grow. American home schoolers are very organized, and there are millions of them; they have already reached the tipping point, and legislation over there is mostly retreating from the tidal wave of change.

Britain, sadly, is always 20 years behind america, so we will have to wait until the evidence is so ‘in your face’ that the paid liars at the BBC cannot ignore the facts any longer. Then the headlines will transform overnight to, “Should more children home School?”, instead of the biased, baseless, brainwashing attacks they peddle now.

That is what I think.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Fear-mongering, Home Schooling, Politricks, Someone Stupid Said.