The apalling bird cage liner that is The Independent, has published a scandalous and purely evil hit piece against Home Schooling:

Across Britain, children are half-gleeful and half-groaning as they finally head back to school. But amidst the bustle of the school-run, there are tens of thousands of forgotten children who aren’t going anywhere. They are being denied an education – and set up to fail for life. The children left outside the school gates fall into four quite different groups – and each one is a scandal.

The Untaught One: the “home schooled.” Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to send your kids to school in Britain. If you decide to keep you child indoors and uneducated, you don’t have to inform the local authority – and nobody will come looking. As a result, we have no idea how many children are kept at home. Nobody is counting. But the current estimate is 50,000. Of course, some of these kids are well-taught – but there is disturbing evidence they are a minority.

This is a lie. Everyone who knows anything about Home Schooling knows this is a lie. Perhaps this human pig hybrid thinks that only people who are ‘educated’ in the way he was are ‘well educated’. Perhaps the frankenstein that gave birth to him can provide him with some pig human hybrid children so that he can show Home Schoolers all over the world exactly how to do it. Home Schoolers are not being denied an education, they are not forgotten and they are certainly not being set up to fail for life. Whatever that means.

When the investigative journalist Rob Blackhurst journeyed into the world of British home-schooling, he discovered 12-year-old children who had not been taught to read. The most detailed survey of British parents teaching their kids at home found that 50 per cent don’t believe in teaching literacy to eight-year-olds. This leaves Britain with a weirdly divided school system. The majority of kids are constantly cooking on the SAT-grill, endlessly tested and Ofsted-ed – while this minority are totally unwatched.

Just because Rob Blackhurst finds 12 year olds that cannot read it does not follow that Home Schooling doesn’t work or is not appropriate. Were those children dyslexic, or in some other way incapable of reading? Perhaps they did not want to read? Who knows? Either way, there are children coming out of schools who are illiterate; does this mean that schools should be abandoned? Of course not, but junk journalists like this swine do not work on logic or the facts.

The only thing that matters in education, wherever or however it takes place, is whether or not the outcome is suitable for the child, and only the parents can determine this, not some beast man or Aparatchick from a Local Authority.

It is not at all weird that there are different types of education going on in a single country. Of course, idiots like this ‘journalist’ believe that there should be one system, one way and a totally uniform culture. There is a word for this. It is a nasty word, a fighting word, and it is as ugly as this article is wrongheaded.

This means children can even disappear. Seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who was found starved to death in her home in Birmingham earlier this year, had been withdrawn from the school system to be “home-schooled”. For precisely this reason, home-schooling is illegal in Germany.

This is another set of lies. Firstly this girl Khyra Ishaq was not a ‘Home Schooled child’ in any meaningful sense of that phrase. Her parents were not Home Schoolers. and conflating Home Schooling with this tragedy is completely absurd.

These people are nothing to do with Home Schooling whatsoever; they are freaks and anomalies and invoking them to smear Home Schoolers is the lowest form of bastardy imaginable. The millions of Home Schoolers world wide are uniformly decent. And even if there are some bad apples amongst them, all of them should not be persecuted because of that statistically insignificant minority.

Home Schooling is not banned in Germany for this reason, you ungoogling ignoramus. Home Schooling is banned in Germany because that is a fascist country, in the same way that you are a fascist. The laws banning Home Schooling date from the Nazi era, and are still on the statute books in that sad and awful country. Even the UN says that the anti Home Schooling laws there are indefensible. The stated reasons why Home Schooling is banned in Germany are:

But the court’s ruling said, instead, that schools represent society, and “it was in the children’s interest to become part of that society … The parents’ right to education did not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

Government officials repeatedly have expressed a determination to stamp out “parallel societies” and that includes homeschooling. An American family of Baptist missionaries reports being threatened with deportation for homeschool, and a teenager, Melissa Busekros, eventually was returned to her family months after German authorities took her from her home and forcibly detained her in a psychiatric facility for being homeschooled.

“Even the United Nations has called on Germany to reform the way it treats homeschoolers. We appeal to the German people and German leadership to do what is right and to protect rather than attack families who choose to homeschool their children,” the HSDLA has noted.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=935

So once again, this control addict pig journalist is lying through his teeth.

The HSLDA responds nicely to the German government’s argument:

To say that “the community has a justifiable interest” to “counteract the establishment of religious or other parallel societies motivated by a worldview, and to integrate minorities in this area” is not a legal justification, but is actually a purely political declaration. The politicization of the judiciary is a well-known hallmark of dictatorship. This is completely incompatible with a constitutional state. Also, this leaves aside the point that no verifiable evidence has been found to show that homeschooling in any country in the world has ever lead to a parallel society. In many large German societies such parallel societies thrive in spite of existing compulsory education.

[…]

http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/200806190.asp

The law here needs to be altered so local authorities regularly interview home-schooled kids. If they aren’t being properly taught, they should be required to enter the normal school system immediately.

[…]

The insufferably bad Independent

No, pig-man, the law does NOT need to be altered. Home Schooling is exploding and the children coming out of it are outperforming the human cattle like you who were blasted through squeeze chutes like the animal that you are.

People like you, childless busybody monsters, have no business telling any parent how to do anything. If you want to live in a society where people are completely controlled, you should go and live in a country like Saudi Arabia or Germany, where your views are shared by everyone.

WTF…YHBT!!!!11111

This article HAS to be a troll. It is just too over the top, too insane, too irrational, too stupid; no one could possibly be this thick, this uninformed, this backward. What sort of person talks about ‘normal schools’ and children being ‘properly taught’? Firstly, it is a person who refers to children as ‘kids’. Secondly, it is probably someone who does not have children. Thirdly, it is someone who is woefully ignorant.

The real reason this piece of trash is frightened of Home Schooling is not that some of them do not meet his high standards, but that so many of them EXCEED and OUTPERFORM the people who come out of ‘normal school’, creating a massive superclass of people who will snap up all the best University places and jobs.

This must be the real reason, because his flawed logic is so flawed, it begs a better explanation.

The comments on this article say it all:

I would like to point out that the 50,000 or so home educated children in Britian are the lucky ones. They are not constantly under the stress of endless tests. They are not ridiculed if learning to read does not come naturally to them at the statutory age of five. They learn from the start more like University students so that Higher Education is a breeze for them. They are not bullied by jealous classmates if they are bright. They can pursue interests such as horse riding or athletics. They make movies, they paint, they draw, they dance, they go to the beach when it is quiet, they have friends of all ages and from all social backgrounds. In short, they are a lot happier than the unfortunate children who are shut inside a huge, impersonal, and dreary comprehensive for increasingly long hours every day.

“home schooled’ = untaught?

Huh?

Doesn’t The Independent have any editors?

12 years in the home-education community and I don’t recognise any of the nonsense written here.

Do some proper research next time and we won’t laugh at you.

The law doesn’t state that every child should go to school – the law states that every child should recieve an education, which is an entirely different thing. The law doesn’t state that children must be taught to read or by what age, which is lucky for many schools. If they were truly held to account for every illiterate or innumerate 16-year-old they would have been closed down by now (and incidentally, being unable to read at 12 doesn’t mean being unable to read by 16). […]

What a TERRIBLE article. As a mum who is homeschooling my oldest 2 I find the first 4 paragraphs highly offensive. We have been homeschooling for 1 year, a decision not made lightly. We have had 1 visit from the LEA & in 6 months my children were “a year ahead”. We attend a home ed group & I can honestly say that NONE of the parents, some 13 + families, have the ideas discussed in these paragraphs, many children are further advanced than their peers in school. They are getting one to one teaching how could they fail to do well? […]

As a home educator for many years to three children who have special educational needs, I shall treat this article with the contempt it deserves.
Mr Hari, your comments are bias, ill informed, derisory and frankly lack any credibility […]

This is a disgracefully ignorant article, which supposes that all children in schools are receiving a good education. What about the programme “Last Chance Kids”, screened on Channel 4 the other night, which revealed the large numbers of children leaving primary school unable to read? They are hardly being given the education they deserve. […]

You have mixed the problems of badly behaved children, expulsions and abductions with the brave people who decide to take on home schooling.
Let’s look at the problems of bad behaviour that you mention. As you point out this bad behviour has led to expulsion. What is the cause of the bad bevahiour and why was it not addressed before the expulsion? This has nothing to do with school or home education. The fact is that today parents are no longer accountable for the behaviour of their children, nor is there an incentive for them to make sure they are well behaved. It’s the parents of badly behaved children who should be punished; these children need help – from their parents!
If more parents took their responsibilities as seriously as home-schoolers the world would be a better place for it!
Institutionalized education without choice is socialism – and today’s economic environment is proof enough that the country has had enough of that.

Outrageous and irresponsible reporting.

What an ignorant article. I’m sure that some children do slip through the net, but there are also a huge number of SEN children who also slip through the Local Authority net, as the LA are unable to or refuse to provide adequately for them. […]

Perhaps Kyra Ishaq would have been better off at school. Soham School, maybe, where she could have made friends with the lovely caretaker? Come off it! A criminal is a criminal.
Such prejudiced, distorted twaddle is not worthy of a supposedly serious newspaper. […]

What cobblers, as for quoting journalist Rob Blackhurst, I think you should really check again!

Home schoolers have a broader education than those poor children that have to sit in the unhealthy enviroment you calll a class room. […]

To be “educated” means to be “knowledgeable” “well-informed” “well-read” – clearly Mr Hari is none of these things as he would not write such an ill-informed and poorly researched paragraph about home education. Education in itself does not mean school and, sadly, school does not mean education. As a teacher I see far too many children who are failed by the school system. As a home educator I am proud to see my child thrive in the education my husband and I provide her that she would not be afforded at school. […]

Yet another negative article about home education, written by someone who knows nothing about it. […]

What an absolute load of tosh! I would expect far better from The Independent. Mr Hari needs to get his facts right. HE in Germany is not illegal for those reasons, this is legislation left over from the days of Nazi Germany. […]

Ignorant and sensationalist. Is this what passes for quality journalism here? […]

Home education was outlawed in Germany by the Nazis to ensure that all children were indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda in school.

Never did I think we’d be condoning such behaviour in this country. […]

How dare you try and associate home educated children with these other two criminally neglectful acts. You obviously don’t know what you are talking about. Maybe you were taught at a school? […]

Looks like this troll pushed all the right buttons!

As Home Schooling continues to grow and suceeed, people creatures like Pig-Man Johann will slither back under the rocks that they were born from, mainly because he will be employed by Home Schoolers who would never allow such an ill researched article go to print.

And finally from this scumbag’s own website, a list of people who hate him:

Since he began work as a journalist, Johann has been attacked in print by the National Review, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, John Pilger, Daniel Craig, Peter Oborne, Private Eye, the Socialist Worker, Cristina Odone, Jon Gaunt, the Spectator, Andrew Neil, Mark Steyn, the British National Party, Medialens, al Muhajaroun and Richard Littlejohn. ‘Prince’ Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, has accused Johann of “waging a private jihad against the House of Saud”. (He’s right). Johann has been called ‘Maoist’ by Nick Cohen, “Stalinist” by Noam Chomsky, ‘Horrible Hari’ by Niall Ferguson, “an uppity little queer” by Bruce Anderson, ‘a drug addict’ by George Galloway, “fat” by the Dalai Lama and “a cunt” by Busted.

See this disgusting blob of flesh in motion.

How can I not add myself to this list of most(ly) honorable people?

This ladyboy, this motherfucking, pinko, commie, Fascist, son of a bitch, lard ass loser, chinless wonder, subhuman garbage is nothing but a ass an idiot a jackass a mooncalf a moron a nincompoop a ninny a nitwit a simpleton a softhead and a shit, and a perfect argument for abortion.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Home Schooling, Someone Stupid Said, wtf?.