Well well well!

Thanks to Valerie at Home Education Magazine for alerting us to this. It appears that Germany has an interesting twin state when it comes to Home Schooling:

C-Ville Weekly, Charlottesville, Virginia, 10 April 2007, UVA student’s film wins Peabody Award

For a broadcast journalist, winning a Peabody Award is a crowning achievement. But for UVA junior Sahar Adish, it was just another day in the college grind. What did she do to celebrate when she heard the news? “I took a three–and-a-half hour exam,” she says.

…

The theme of the project was fear and security, and Light House’s film focused on the life of Adish herself, an Afghani refugee whose family was forced to flee the Taliban-controlled country in the late 1990s for fear of their lives. Adish’s parents were in trouble with the Islamic fundamentalist regime for violating Taliban law. Their crime? Secretly home-schooling their daughter and several neighborhood kids. Schooling was forbidden.

Others have found their inner protester by seeing photos of Melissa Busekros.  Is it that we need a face to provoke fury over affronts to freedom?

Seventies-style consciousness-raising is fine.  I think the German educational establishment is now aware of homeschooling, or at least aware of homeschoolers.  Perhaps we should share our insights with the Afghani authorities as well.

Lol Taleban!

Her parents were forced to flee with her from Afghanistan because they were home schooling their children, just like the German families are being made to flee Germany.

Now, in Afghanistan, school itself was forbidden, but in Germany schooling out of state control is banned. It is essentially the same thing, because the Taleban want to control what people do and do not learn absolutely (you must only learn Koran), and so do the Germans; they want you only to learn what the state says your children should learn, and nothing else.

Both states use vicious punitive measures to pressure anyone who will not conform to their standards of education.

Can you say ‘Strange bedfellows’?

CBNNews.com — A report from the U.S. State Department on human rights abuses to be released next year will include Germany’s harsh treatment of homeschoolers, CBN News sources say.

Last year’s report, which was just released, does not mention the homeschooling situation in German. Several homeschooling parents have been jailed and fined thousands of euros.

Homeschooling is illegal in Germany. There are estimated to be only about 300 to 500 homeschooling families in the entire nation.Some homeschoolers have lost their homes and businesses, while others have fled the country with their children.

In the most highly publicized case, 15-year-old Melissa Busekros was taken from her homeschooling parents in Bavaria in a SWAT-style police raid and placed in a mental hospital and then put into foster care. A state psychiatric evaluation of the girl claimed she suffered from “school phobia” and was too devoted and obedient to her father. The parents have failed to regain custody.

Concern in the U.S. State Department over Germany’s harsh treatment of homeschoolers follows a United Nations report last month that labeled Germany’s school system “an anachronism.”

The report by Vernor Muñoz Villalobos, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to education, said that Germany’s education system should not include “the suppression of forms of education that do not require attendance in school.” It recommended Germany adopt the necessary measures “to ensure that the home schooling system is properly supervised by the State, thereby upholding the right of the parents to employ this form of education when necessary and appropriate.”

But the U.N. recommendation was rejected by the German government, which issued a press release saying homeschooling is “no model for Germany.”

CBN

Well well well.

The Germans are fond of telling people to go back and vote until you get it right when anyone in the EU disagrees with them, maybe the UN will tell them to go back and remove Hitler’s anti Home Schooling law, and keep telling them to go back until they get it right.

It is interesting how they say homeschooling is “no model for Germany.”. Home Schooling is something that individual families choose it may or may not be right for individual families, and that is their choice, but what is ‘good for Germany’ is not the issue (or at least it should not be) because families are not the property of the state in a democratic country. Privatized railways can be good or bad for Germany. Speed limits on the motor-ways can be good or bad for Germany… you get the picture.

There are several problems with this story, the main ones concerning the stubborn and ignorant Germans, whom we have discussed before.

The other ones that are new to us are the statements of Vernor Muñoz Villalobos. Now, I am not saying that Mr. Villalobos is biased, but in his home country of Costa Rica Home Schooling is illegal. This might be the reason why he used the phrase:

thereby upholding the right of the parents to employ this form of education when necessary and appropriate.”

What he SHOULD have said was, “Uphold the right of the parents to employ this form of education should it be their choice for whatever reason”.

Also, it is completely wrong for him to suggest that Germany, “(adopt the necessary measures) to ensure that the home schooling system is properly supervised by the State”. Home Schooling should not be supervised by the state. Many people choose Home Schooling precisely to get away from state interference in education; the state of Nevada is showing clear headed and informed thinking by introducing legislation to make it easier to Home School. The state should be backing away from this area, not trying to get entrenched in it.

Vernor Muñoz Villalobos and all ministers responsible for education need to take the facts into consideration, stay away from trying to control Home Schooling, and stop behaving as if this is the 1970s. Home Schooling is an unstoppable and positive force that is improving the lives of children and families.

Any educator that is against Home Schooling doesn’t know the facts about Home Schooling – it is as simple as that. After seeing the results and getting to grips with how Home Schooling works, all reasonable people are for it and not against it.

Unless of course, you are from the party that claims that day is night.

update…

Here is the crucial part of the UN report by Vernor Muñoz Villalobos, which is more important than the philosophically erroneous recommendation:

62. According to reports received, it is possible that, in some Länder, education is understood exclusively to mean school attendance. Even though the Special Rapporteur is a strong advocate of public, free and compulsory education, it should be noted that education may not be reduced to mere school attendance and that educational processes should be strengthened to ensure that they always and primarily serve the best interests of the child. Distance learning methods and home schooling represent valid options which could be developed in certain circumstances, bearing in mind that parents have the right to choose the appropriate type of education for their children, as stipulated in article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The promotion and development of a system of public, government-funded education should not entail the suppression of forms of education that do not require attendance at a school. In this context, the Special Rapporteur received complaints about threats to withdraw the parental rights of parents who chose home-schooling methods for their children.

!!!

Michael Pakaluk is a professor of philosophy in Cambridge, Mass. who is currently helping to homeschool his 16-year-old daughter.

Over 2 million children are now homeschooled in the United States. On standardized tests, homeschooled children outperform matched peers in the public schools by a wide margin, and they are comparatively more successful in getting admitted to competitive colleges.

Strikingly, homeschooled children do not show the “black/white” test-score gap that is the bane of public and private schools. Likewise, homeschooled children perform equally well regardless of gender.

In light of these ever more widely appreciated facts, perhaps you have considered homeschooling your own children. If you have, a good place to look for assistance would be the Web site of the Home School Legal Defense Fund. But here I simply wish to state the case for homeschooling. Why should you consider it?

From my own experience, I count the following reasons as the most important:

1. It’s efficient. A homeschooled child typically finishes in 2-3 hours the work done in an entire day of public schooling. He can spend the rest of the day reading, playing sports, doing hobbies, practicing a musical instrument, and even helping out with chores.

2. It’s inexpensive. A mere fraction of the tuition of a typical private school is sufficient to pay for a homeschooler’s supplies, books, music lessons, foreign language instruction, gymnastics instruction, pilgrimages — and a cultural excursion to Paris or Rome.

3. Homeschooling tends to develop good habits of reading. Because of the influence of electronic media (television, radio, iPods, Internet, cell phones, video games), few public school students are now developing good reading habits. In contrast, homeschoolers display almost an opposite trend: on average they read widely and voraciously. Yet reading is the most important single determinant of the quality of a child’s education.

4. Homeschooled children more easily become friends with their parents. It’s natural of course for children to grow up admiring, respecting, and eventually becoming friends with their parents. But this natural process is frequently blocked when children are sent to common schools, where, because of peer pressure, they are taught to view their parents as overbearing, uncool and unreasonable.

5. Homeschooling requires that the father play the role that he really should play in his children’s education. The experience of homeschoolers is that the mother’s efforts during the day need to be reinforced by the father’s assistance in the evening — perhaps by his teaching a more rigorous subject, by checking homework. This ‘‘reintroduction of the father’’ into education proves tremendously helpful for children to become serious about their studies.

6. Unity of studying and religious belief. The best education is one in which there is no strict compartmentalization. Homeschooled children are free at any point of the day to consider the relationship between faith and reason, between what they believe as Christians and what they are learning about the world. In contrast, the practice in public schools, where children are effectively taught that there is something “wrong” in speaking publicly about God, does tremendous damage to children, and leads them to suppose that there is no truth in matters of religion.

7. Homeschooling tends to foster a lively patriotism. The reason for this, I think, is that homeschoolers often regard themselves as reasserting, in their own lives, the reality of rights that are prior to the state: the right of parents to educate their own children; the right of religious believers to seek an education which is integrated with their faith. Homeschooling parents will therefore turn to the Founding Fathers as sources of inspiration. Homeschoolers believe what the Founding Fathers taught, and they teach these things to their children as truths that are vitally important to believe.

8. Homeschooled children can enjoy the innocence of childhood longer. Let me put the point bluntly. If you would prefer that your child not learn about (say) oral sex and condoms, then nowadays you should consider taking your child out of common schools before the third grade (more or less), because by that age there will be children in the class whose parents let them watch sit-coms which regularly deal with such things, and who will talk about them in school.

9. Homeschooled children socialize better. Yes, the truth is actually the opposite of the common criticism, that “homeschooled children do not socialize well.” Homeschooled children learn to deal easily with people of all ages — babies, parents, friends of parents, and the elderly. They acquire a mature, “adult” mentality from an early age. (I know I’m in a homeschooling household when I sit down to talk with a friend and find that his teenage children actually want to sit with us and listen to our conversation!) In contrast, there is absolutely nothing less well-suited to good “socialization” than placing a child with hundreds of other children who are exactly the same in age. Remember that “homeschooling” has been the norm for nearly all of human history; compulsory education in common schools is a recent phenomenon, dating from about 1850.

What am I advocating then? Am I advocating that all children should be homeschooled? No, the parents’ decision about their children’s education should be made on a case-by-case basis, and reviewed each year. What suits some children will not suit others. What works in some households will not work in others.

What I am saying is that homeschooling is a very good thing, and that every parent should give it careful consideration as possibly the best option for their child.

[…]

The Pilot

Yesterday a group of Home Schooled children visited the Houses of Parliament. Home schoolers in London get together several times a week for these sorts of educational and social events, and these were all very well behaved, confident and polite children.

Before they went into the palace itself, they were ushered into a room in Portcullis House, so the event organizer’s MP could come and talk to and welcome them.

The MP was Bridget Prentice, representative for Lewisham East. She was ‘a full on New Labour front bencher’ according to one of the mothers. There was a question and answer session. One of the children asked Prentice what she thought of Home schooling.

She said, “Unless there are exceptional circumstances, children belong in school because learning in groups is best for children”.

This was in front of a group of Home Schoolers, i.e. children learning in a group.

I am not making this up.

Parents think that the epidemic of crime in London’s schools are ‘exceptional circumstances’, certainly exceptional enough to warrant taking your child out of harm’s way.

and lets spare a thought for the beleaguered teachers:

A survey of teachers in Bradford found that half were suffering from levels of stress that required medical aid, said Sylvia Jewell, from Kirklees. She said: “It’s the Government’s fault because it piles one demand on us after another.” Gill Lee, from Lewisham, south-east London, said: “We have too much work, too little time, too little pay and too little control over what we teach.” Dave Clinch, another Lewisham teacher, said: “We’re being asked by the government to cram facts into children’s heads instead of giving them a global view of the world.” Pete Bishop, a principal and member of the executive, said: “Primary school teachers are being forced to write down plans for every single lesson they teach. It’s totally unacceptable.”

[…]

oecta.on.ca

Once again, the quality of schools is a red herring; it is your right to home educate without state interference. Period.

A lurker says…

I’ve been following the postings on home schooling on Blogdial with great interest and today I saw the topic linked to below on the BBC “Have your say” website regarding new powers for teachers. If ever there was a need to justify home schooling, this might prove to be another good reason.

What struck me most is this sentence in the BBC’s invitation to comment:

“Previously, teachers had been allowed to restrain pupils under common law with the same authority as parents.”

the next thing that struck me was how many people agreed that it was a good thing (discipline may well be, but it seems to me that we used to have that without needing a law to enforce it).
———-
From the BBC’s Have Your Say Forums:
Have Your Say
Will new powers for teachers make a difference? How far should teachers be allowed to go? New legal powers for teachers and schools in England to restrain and discipline unruly pupils have come into effect. The new law allows teachers to physically restrain and remove unruly pupils and impose detentions outside school hours and on Saturdays.

Previously, teachers had been allowed to restrain pupils under common law with the same authority as parents. This new measure is the first major change in guidelines on discipline in a decade.

What is your reaction to this new law? Do you think teachers should be allowed to physically restrain their -students? Send us your views.
———–
I had not heard anything about such a law anywhere until I saw this as all news coverage seems to be focused on the Iran hostages (I wonder what other laws are being sent through at the moment that I’ve missed).

You guys are probably much more up to date on this kind of thing than I am, but it strikes me that as things stand now, if this law actually exists and has been passed, the Gov’t gives teachers more powers in disciplining a child than it gives parents.

If this is the case, then it would appear that we are well on our way to having children removed from their parents and put into the hands of the state. Not physically removing removing them – if they did that parents may actually realise what is going on and might protest and also the state would have to house and feed them – but by shifting the disciplinary control from parents to teachers in schools they are weakening traditional family bonds.

Children tend to develop respect for those who can stand up to them (real authority figures) – be they teachers, parents, uncles aunts, the next door neighbour etc. If teachers are given more power than parents, then those are the people that children will develop a relationship with, respect and let themselves by guided by. Home will be a place that they go to watch, eat, sleep and eventually report on to the appropriate authorities should the parents not be behaving in the manner the children have been taught is good and proper by their teachers.

In a more alarmist interpretation, this might also give teachers the power to “adjust” students’ behaviour for questioning them, knowing more than they do or simply not towing the line that the teacher wants them to. By being able to restrain them and bring them in at all hours, particularly hard cases (as smart, literate kids with independent views might be regarded) could be worked on extra hard to see the error of their ways and bring back them into the fold.

If such a law actually has gone through, it smacks (no pun intended) of socialisation pure and simple. Get them young, get them impressionable and soon you will have your New Labour Youth. Who knows, in time they might even start wearing uniforms and help inspire or guide others to follow in their righteousness footsteps.

Have you heard anything about this? Am I getting overly worried?

Bye for now,
*****

No, I do not think you are being overly worried…just thinking…and thats always good.

The problem with this goes right back to the relationship between the citizen and the state. Teachers in the state school system are servants of the citizen. Their relationship is one of a servant, obeying the commands of the parent, who is the citizen and the person who is paying for the school service through her taxes.

What has happened is that these and other public servants have forgotten who and what they are, and they have ideas above their station. They need to have their attention brought sharply into focus. They need to be reminded that they must at all times adopt the position and attitude of a servant and never as a dictator, director or owner.

Teachers have a special place in society as most trusted and valued servants; the profession of teacher is one of the most honorable and important occupations in the world, but the high regard in which we hold them does not grant them power over us or the children that are entrusted to them. They remain servants whose job it is to carry out the will of parents.

Here is an example of a teacher forgetting this. I know of a school in the USA, a private school, where one of the tutors took it upon himself to pronounce to his class of 8 year olds, just before Christmas that,

“there is no Santa Claus; your parents buy all the presents and put them under the tree while you are asleep”.

The children came home with this knowledge, and of course the parents went ballistic. This teacher betrayed the trust of the parents that sent their children into that class, and, because it is a private school, that teacher was FIRED immediately for breaching that trust. The facts of Santa Claus are irrelevant; no teacher has the right to divulge sensitive cultural information without the consent of the parent. The true nature of the Santa Claus fable was not part of the curriculum, and by going outside it, in this heartless, senseless and stupid way, that teacher did harm, even though he was telling the truth.

Because he was teaching in a private school, the parents had a remedy. Children in the state schools are taught all sorts of things without the parents consent or approval or choice, and there is nothing that they can do about it. This is absolutely wrong, and it is one of the factors that is pushing parents to remove their children from environments that are out of their control.

If you cannot give control over the agenda to parents with children in the state schools, fine; leave the parents who want to go private (wether this be private school or home schooling) alone. They can find their own ways of educating their children, and this is their absolute right.

This new law is fascinating. What they are trying to do is put humpty dumpty back together again. Instead of doing it the intelligent way, by removing the legislation that caused the problem in the first place they are adding more legislation to fix the problems caoused by ever zealous legislation.

The laws that stopped corporal punishment, and which shackled teachers are the cause of all the discipline problems with the feral youths running wild in the cities. Everyone knows it. This patching exercise is absurd and is actually an admission of the failure of the child centered ‘philosophy’ brought in by nincompoops and tinkering social engineers who are now not able to clean up the mess they have created, let alone admit that they were wrong in engineering the environment that caused it all.

Once again, what needs to be done is to roll back the law and the school systems, including the examinations, to a 1950s state, when things actually worked. This is not a new idea, and there have been informal experiments to see how the wild children of today would fare in a 1950s school. Everyone knows that the situation has been in steady decline. Now we are almost at the bottom of the cuve, with teachers being assulted as well as the students, and everyone not knowing what do do about it except run for the hills.

The depths to which this insanity has sunk could not be made up by Brian Aldiss:

Police send four police officers to tackle boy, 11, who called schoolmate ‘gay’

When two policemen turned up unannounced at Alan Rawlinson’s home asking to speak to his young son, the company director feared something serious had happened.

So he was astounded when the officers detailed 11-year-old George’s apparent crime – calling one of his schoolfriends ‘gay’.

They said primary school pupil, George, was being investigated for a ‘very serious’ homophobic crime after using the comment in an e-mail to a 10-year-old classmate.

‘Terrified’: George Rawlinson with his mother Gaynor, who is a magistrate

But now his parents have hit out at the police, who they accused of being heavy-handed and pandering to political correctness.

“It is completely ridiculous,” Mr Rawlinson said.

“I thought the officers were joking at first, but they told me they considered it a very serious offence.

“The politically correct brigade are taking over. This seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial as a playground spat.”

Cheshire police launched the investigation last month after a complaint from the parents of the 10-year-old younger boy who received George’s e-mail.

They said their son had been called a ‘gay boy’ and were concerned that there was more to the comment than playground banter and that their child was being bullied.

As a consequence, two officers were sent to the boys’ school, Farnworth Primary, in Widnes, Cheshire, to speak to the headteacher who directed them to the Rawlinsons’ home in nearby St Helens, Merseyside.

George told his parents that the comment was in no way meant to be homophobic and that he had simply been using the word gay instead of ‘stupid’.

Mr Rawlinson, 41, who runs his own business, and whose wife, Gaynor, also 41, is a magistrate, said his son was terrified when the police arrived at their home.

He feared he was going to be arrested and locked up in a cell because of it, he added. “I feel very aggrieved about this,” Mr Rawlinson, who has lodged a formal complaint against the police, said.

“We are law-abiding citizens who have paid taxes all our lives.

“I’ve constantly contacted police about break-ins at my business and never get a suitable response.

“George was really upset, he thought he was going to be locked up. This just seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial.”

Inspector Nick Bailey, of Cheshire police, said no further action would be taken against George. However, he said the force had been obliged to record the incident as a crime and that they had dealt with it in a ‘proportionate’ manner.

“The parents of the boy believed it was more sinister that just a schoolyard prank,” Inspector Bailey said.

“We were obliged to record the matter as a crime and took a proportionate and maybe old fashioned view.

“Going to the boy’s house was a reasonable course of action to take. This e-mail message was part of some behaviour which had been on going.

“The use of the word ‘gay’ would imply that it was homophobic, but we would be hard pushed to say it was a homophobic crime.

“This boy has not been treated as an offender.”

This is a latest in a series of incidents where police have been accused of heavy handedness for interviewing or threatening children with prosecution for seemingly trivial crimes.

Last October the Daily Mail revealed how 14-year-old Codie Scott was arrested and thrown in a police cell for almost four hours after she was accused of racism for refusing to sit next to a group of Asian pupils in her class.

Teachers reported the youngster, from Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, after she claimed it was impossible for her to get involved in the class ‘discussion’ because only one of the Asian pupils spoke English.

She had her fingerprints and DNA taken but was eventually released without charge.

The incident followed that of a 15-year-old boy from Burnley, Lancashire, who was arrested, thrown in a police cell, hauled before the courts and landed with a criminal record simply for throwing a snowball at a car.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was prosecuted under a little used 160-year-old law last March, and fined £100 in a case which provoked a public outcry.

My emphasis, and that is from today’s Evening Standard. Like I keep saying, you cant make stuff like this up.

These people’s priorities are completely inside out and upside down. They cannot be trusted to run anything, let alone a school, and what’s worse, they will not admit it, and they now want to bring this insanity right into every home. Only a mad dog would allow them to do this, and of course, ten years down the line, when Americans have 50% home schooling, the imbeciles here will say, “Me Too®” and then Home Schooling will suddenly be their idea.

But I digress.

There needs to be a roll back, no question about it. New legislation means more trouble. Legislation does not solve problems, structure solves problem, the type of structure that used to exist in the UK, and which was a natural excrescence of the citizen, the family and their central position in society.

Once again, beer guides us. Its foam is lofted above the beer because each bubble does its own thing cooperatively an automagically. You cannot make a head on a glass of beer by setting up complex rules that have to be monitored and obeyed by the bubbles.

Let the bubbles be bubbles and the foam will be frothy and the beer will be beer.

As it grows in size, it should frighten teachers everywhere.

JUST HOW BAD ARE AMERICAN SCHOOLS?

And how deeply do conservative Americans distrust their government?

One answer to both these questions is provided by the growth of home schooling. As many as 2m American students—one in 25—may now be being taught at home.

The growth of home schooling is all the more remarkable when you consider two facts. The first is the commitment of the parents. They give up not just a free public education, but also often the chance of a second income as well, because one parent (usually the mother) has to stay at home to educate the children.

The next (second) is that the practice challenges most of the assumptions behind public education. For most of the past 150 years, compulsory mass education has been the hallmark of a civilized society. Sociologists such as Max Weber have hailed the state’s domination of education as a natural corollary of “modernization”. Yet in the most advanced country on the planet (on many measures), more than 2m parents insist that education ought to be the work of the family. How has this come about?

FAITH’S IMPERATIVES

The 2m figure comes from the Home School Legal Defense Association. The most recent (1999) survey by the Department of Education put the number at only 850,000. The chances are that the HSIDA is closer to the truth. Rod Paige, the education secretary, uses its figure in his speeches, and, although home schoolers tend to refuse to answer government surveys, a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that home schooling is on the rise.

The market for teaching materials and supplies for home schoolers is worth at least $850 m a year. More than three-quarters (75 %) of universities now have policies for dealing with home schooled children. Support networks have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities across the country to allow parents to do every-thing from establishing science labs to forming sports teams and defending their rights and reputation. When J .C. Penney started selling a T-shirt in 2001 that featured “Home Skooled” with a picture of a trailer home, the store faced so many complaints that it withdrew the item from sale.

Home-schooling is a fairly recent phenomenon. When Ronald Reagan came to power, in 1981, it was illegal for parents to teach their own children in most states. Today it is a legal right in all 50 states. Twenty-eight states require home schooled children to undergo some kind of official evaluation, either by taking standardized tests or submitting a portfolio of work. Thirteen states simply require parents to inform officials that they are going to teach their children at home. In Texas, a parent doesn’t have to tell anyone anything.

The main reason why legal restrictions on home schooling have been swept away across so much of America is the power of the Christian right. Not all home schoolers, of course, are religious conservatives. One of the first advocates of home schooling, John Holt, was a left-winger who regarded schools as instruments of the bureaucratic-industrial complex. A lively subdivision of the home school movement, called ‘unschooling’, argues that children should more or less be left to educate themselves. And the number of black home schoolers is growing rapidly.

Yet the Praetorian Guard of the home schooling movement are social conservatives. They turned to home schooling in the 1970s in response to what they saw as the school system’s lurch to the secular left—and they still provide most of the movement’s political muscle on Capitol Hill. Senator Rick Santorum home schools his children — or, rather, his wife does. Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, sponsored a bill to clear up various legal confusions about grants and scholarships for home schooled children.

George Bush has tried hard to keep home schoolers on his side. During the 2000 campaign, he said: “In Texas we view home schooling as something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for the energy and commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected from the interference of government.” As president, he has held several receptions for home schooled children in the White House.

Just as the teachers’ unions provide so many of the Democrats’ volunteers, home schoolers are important Republican foot-soldiers. According to the HSLDA, 76% of home schooled young people aged 18-24 vote in elections, compared with 29% in that age group in the general population. Home-schoolers are also significantly more likely to contribute to political campaigns and to work for candidates—normally Republican ones.

AN EDUCATION THAT WORKS

So there is certainly an ideological edge to many home schoolers. But do not be misled. First, this is a bottom-up movement with parents of whatever political stripe making individual decisions to withdraw their children (rather than following orders from higher up). Second, the movement has a utilitarian edge. Home schoolers simply believe that they can offer their children better education at home

One-to-one tuition, goes the argument, enables children to go at their own pace, rather than at a pace set for the convenience of teaching unions. And children can be taught “proper” subjects based on the Judeo-Christian tradition of learning, rather than politically correct flimflam. Some home schoolers favor the classical notion of the trivium, with its three stages of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric (which requires children to learn Greek and Latin).

This sounds backward-looking but home schoolers claim that technology is on their side. The internet is making it ever easier to teach people at home, ever more teaching materials are available, and virtual communities now exist that allow all home schooler to swap information.

The other factor working in home schooling’s favor is its own success. Many parents have been nervous about home schooled children being isolated. With almost every town in America now boasting its ow home schooling network, that worry really declines. Home-schooled children can play baseball with other home schooled children; they go on school trips and so on.

What about academic standards? The home schooling network buzzes with good news: a family with three home schooled children at Harvard ; a home schooled child with a best-selling novel; first, second and third place in the 2000 National Spelling Bee; a first university for home schooled children (see next story). Systematic evidence is more difficult to find.

There are certainly signs that home schoolers are thriving . One recent survey by the HSLDA showed that three-quarters (75 %) of home educated adults aged 18-24 have taken college level courses compared with 46% of the general population But this is hardly conclusive. Home-schoolers do not have to report bad results. Moreover, home schoolers may simply come from the more educated part of the population.

Yet these arguments point to change in the way the debate is unfolding . It is no longer about whether home schooled children are losing out, or whether they are doing unfairly well . “Maybe we should subcontract all of public education to home schooler? Bill Bennett Pres. Reagan’s education secretary, once wondered mischievously. That looks unlikely. But America’s home schoolers represent an assault on public education that teachers everywhere should pay attention to.

[…]

http://www.dountoothers.org/homeschooling4406.html

There is an absolutely brilliant post here, where the anti-home school nonsense of an anthropology professor named ‘Greg Laden’ who by his own admission, knows nothing about home schooling, how they do it and the people who do it:

What I have discovered about home schoolers, not just in the conversation related to the post you cite but the totality of several different conversations on my web site is that home schoolers are much more diverse in their interests (why they home school) and approaches than I had previously thought (having not thought about it too much previously, to be frank). […]

but who thinks that he is right to advocate its elimination, because in his mind, “Home schooling is a way of cheating the system.”

Home schooling and private schools both have this characteristic. There is a small subset of families that can afford the money it takes to send their kids to private schools. When this happens, an important part of society withdraws from the public, collective endeavor to educate our children.

The post demolishing this amazing drivel is perfect, and I quoth:

“Our” children? So who do they belong to, precisely? As I’ve said elsewhere, this sort of language is very interesting; it seems to say that children belong to everybody, which tends to mean nobody is responsible for them. (More on this particular wording later.) […]

Indeed! And please do go to this post and read it. It is an example of the sort of thinking and writing that we need to have published to refute the propaganda being maliciously spread by the likes of Madeleine Brettingham.

As I said before, the war against home schooling has started, and the propaganda machine is lurching into action. Here is a piece from the Time Educational Suppliment, which is a piece of pure, vile propaganda. Lets take it to pieces line by line.

35,000 lost to schooling

Madeleine Brettingham
Published: 30 March 2007

Madeleine Brettingham has been compromised by whoever put together the press release that she has regurgitated. She obviously knows nothing about Home schooling, and has not bothered to look before ‘writing’ this article.

One in four parents who home-educate children provides little or no teaching

This is a lie, and a statistic pulled out of a hat. No one knows how many Home schoolers there are in the UK, and certainly no one knows what they are or are not being taught. This statistic is therefore completely bogus.

As many as 35,000 home-schooled children are not receiving even a basic education from their parents, according to inspectors, prompting calls for a change in the law.

This is once again, bogus. And WHO is calling for changes in the law? Inspectors have no right to examine what is being taught by home schoolers, so they cannot know that 35,000 children are not ‘are not receiving even a basic education from their parents’. What we DO know however, is that the schools that HMG are running regularly fail to properly educate children in basic literacy and numeracy; part of the cause of the increase in home schooling in the UK.

Despite the stereotype of creative middle-class parents educating their children at the kitchen table, a quarter of home-schooled children are doing little or no work, officials claimed.

This is a thinly veiled snipe by someone without any facts, or decency. That she thinks there is a stereotype of parents educating their children at the kitchen table demonstrates her utter ignorance on this subject. As for children doing little or no work, this is simply a claim, nothing more, and in fact it is irrelevant to the subject.

There are some parents out there collectively known as ‘Autonomous Educators‘ who allow their children to learn in the way that they want, following their own interests without any prompting from anyone. These people have the right to use this method and approach, which to a control addict, might look like ‘not doing any work’ but to the autonomous educators is a perfect solution to their needs. No one has the right to say that Autonomous Educators must change their methods. Period.

Tony Mooney, a home education inspector with seven years’ experience, said: “Schools are told in such fine detail what they need to teach and yet parents can get away with doing nothing at all.”

No one is ‘getting away’ with anything. Schools have to be controlled carefully because they are providing a service to parents; parents in charge of their own children do not need to be controlled by anyone. This man has a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the citizen and the state, that is clear.

Local authority inspectors fear some families are using home education as an excuse to evade problems with bullying, poor attendance or disruptive behaviour. They are also concerned that child welfare could slip through the net because parents are not obliged to agree to home visits.

Parents can withdraw from the school system for whatever reason they like. HMG should concentrate on eliminating bullying and the disruptive pupils that turn schools into violent hell holes that have more in common with prison than what we would recognize as a school.

Now, here come the big guns:

Eunice Spry, the foster mother convicted last week of abusing her children by forcing them to drink bleach and beating them with a metal bar, had withdrawn her children from formal schooling.

This case has NOTHING to do with home schooling, and has everything to do with fostering and the failure of Gloucester council to properly run its services. Anyone and everyone can see this, and that this is being trotted out like this as a reason to control home schooling is frankly as absurd as it is sickening. Shame on you Madeleine Brettingham for not having any integrity or common sense.

Up to 150,000 children in England are estimated to be home-educated. Figures are inexact because families are under no obligation to notify their council.

and that is the way it will stay. As we have seen in the Australian Home School Rebellion, parents will not cave in to the fear-mongers, brain dead journalists and control addicts.

Although many home-educators are committed individuals who see home-schooling as a way of developing their child’s interests, inspectors estimate about a quarter of parents provide nothing.

All home schoolers are committed and individuals. That is why you denigrate them, Madeleine. They do not do it ‘as a way to develop their child’s interests’, they do it to provide a full and rich education of the type that you are against children having. They do it to ensure that their children attend the best universities. They are doing it because their families are stronger through it, their lives are enriched by it, and it’s better than being sent to useless schools. As for the ‘quarter of parents who provide nothing’ this is just a lie that you are repeating unchallenged.

Myra Robinson, an inspector with nine years’ experience, regularly sees children who have been withdrawn from school for an inadequate alternative. “All the rights are in favour of the parent,” she said. “But who is going to stand up for the rights of the child?”

Parents are not separate from their children. The rights of parents are inextricably bound to their children, they are in fact, like a composite entity. All children have rights, but these rights extend from the parents rights until they reach their majority and their rights as individuals come into being. Children who have not reached their majority have rights separate from their parents only when they have been given up by the parents, or the parents die. Relatives or the state then takes over in loco parentis, and only then (if there are no relatives) does the state have the right to ‘stand up for the rights of the child’ because in effect, the state becomes the parent in the absence of the the biological parents.

What this total idiot Myra Robinson said is nonsense. She is an inspector, and should stick to that, and not trying to redefine the relationship between citizen and state by empty headed proclamation.

The circumstances of a significant proportion of home-schooled children are “a real cause for concern”, she said. Recent cases include a boy with learning difficulties who was unable to speak coherently by the age of five, or write his name by 10, and received no visible support.

All children develop at different paces. In Scandinavian countries children do not start reading until they are eight years old. The one size fits all mania of this government fails children, and what is so appalling is that creatures like Myra Robinson seek to put all children into this meat grinder that they have created, without a care for what the child actual needs. The real cause for concern are these incompetent and igorant busy bodies who are desperate to get into the private affairs of everyone in the UK. THEY are the problem, not home education. Home education is the cure to the disease that are the Myra Robinsons and the Tony Mooneys of the world, who are anti family anti children and pro…heaven knows what.

What is certain is that if any child with special needs could get help in school a parent would rush to take advantage of it. The fact is that Myra Robinson is not able to provide what that child needed, and she cannot admit that.

Other pupils were unable to produce work samples on demand or demonstrate an understanding of basic skills, despite parents’ claims about their level of education.

If they were autonomous educators, then that would make sense. The problem these buffoons have is that they are trying to apply their own flawed standards on individuals. They are incapable of understanding that human beings have made achievements and have worth even if you cannot measure their achievement with a test. This is the fundamental disconnect that their limited world view cannot embrace, and which causes them to want to destroy anything that they cannot understand. Our philosophy is superior, because it embraces everyone as individuals, seeks to impose its will on no one, and actually produces the results in terms of better children what perform better academically right on into higher education. Myra Robinson and Tony Mooney cannot say that what they represent works, in fact, it is so hopelessly broken that parents are fleeing from it en-masse. This is not only a disconnect of philosophy, but it is a disconnect from reality because what we do works and what they do does not.

“One girl said she worked in the library but didn’t seem to know where it was,” Ms Robinson said.

Anecdotal and irrelevant garbage. We are not buying this Madeleine!

Laws on home-schooling are relaxed and parents are under no obligation to follow the national curriculum, set a timetable or agree to a local authority inspection. Inspectors would like the Government to tighten the law. But home-schooling organisations are keen to protect parents’ freedoms.

Home schooling laws are not ‘relaxed’ they are appropriate. Home schoolers should be under no obligation to follow the national curriculum, just as many private schools are not obliged to follow the national curriculum. Home schoolers do not need to set a timetable, and this further demonstrates Madeline’s complete ignorance about home schooling. It would be understandable if Madeline was just another journalist, but she is writing for the TES; you would have thought that she would have SOME idea about home schooling, working for a specialized publication whose focus is education.

Anne Newstead, a spokeswoman for the charity Education Otherwise, admitted some parents were using the home-schooling label as an excuse, but said: “We shouldn’t all be tarred with the same brush.

“We know, for example, that some schools are encouraging parents of persistent truants to register as home educators to get their attendance figures up. This sort of thing isn’t good for the majority of parents who do the right thing.”

Sadly, these words are nothing to do with the main thrust of the argument. I would imagine that Anne Newstead said alot more than this, but all of it was ignored. Its interesting how these propaganda pieces work.

The Department for Education and Skills said it had been considering proposals to change the regulation of home-schooling but had no plans to publish them in the near future.

[…]

Times Educational Suppliment

Whatever they publish it will mean nothing. No one is going to allow them to regulate home schooling. They are thinking about running a consultation on this subject; it will be like all the other consultations, online petitions and every other bogus opinion gathering exercise that HMG puts on as part of its sham democracy. They will collect the opinions and even if they are all negative, they will go ahead with what they plan to do anyway. this is what happened with the ID cards consultation and more recently the road pricing petition.

This however, is different.

Unless HMG is ready to haul people off to gaol like the Germans are doing, they had better think twice before they try and change the law. They would be far better off putting all their energy into solving the problems of the schools they are already in charge of, rather than interfering in something they know nothing about at every level and which performs better than anything they can create.

I’m homeschooling and that’s final. My whole family is against it, my wifes family is against it; except her aunt, she homeschooled all of her kids and told us to get ready for a battle of attrition, you’ll either wear them down or they’ll wear you down (everyone else not the kids).

Members of my family know that once the decision has been made I’m not going to change my mind, unless they can break or rend my arguments and leave nothing for me to fall back on. This is one time I’ve gathered all the ammunition beforehand, because the claws and the fangs come out when we discuss the future of our child. The one reccuring point is “socialization”, and you know what, all of their arguments hinge on the socialization argument. The argument of a better education rarely comes up because they know I can cite statistical and personal information that show that homeschool kids outdo their public school counter parts on a consistant basis.

Here’s an argument, why do you think that homeschool children have been dominating national spelling bees from the mid 90s to the present?; could it be that they have one on one tutoring with their parent/teacher, no distractions, no peer pressure, being taught by a person that has a vested interest in the success of the student, any of these things ring true? Now, is it too much of a stretch to say that since homeschooled children do well and win national spelling bees, that maybe, they do well and excel in other subjects?

Here is an argument from my mother in law, I love her, she is a very good person but we don’t see eye to eye on this, “Your child needs to be socialized, he needs the company of other children his age and did you see the news, a ‘homeschooled boy’ shot and killed his girlfriends parents”. Can you see the frustration; an obvious abberation, yet for her, all homeschooled children now share this tendency.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but, I was a lousy student, I had absolutely no interest in school and the teachers that I had didn’t have any interest in making the subject more interesting to me; so long as I didn’t make trouble, I was invisible. When I hear about the astronomical budgets that schools need today to operate, and they do get passed, and the fact that they are also cutting programs (extra-curricular activities, gym and recess???).

I have no doubt that public schools are a business run by bean counters. When comparing the two, public schools huge budget, cut programs, their almost production line mentality (students in, students out) and public schools being used as a giant baby sitting service, compared to homeschools individual attention, no worries about cut programs, the ability and flexibility to change schedules, the freedom to go see the physical manifestation of an abstract subject like mathematics to solidify it in the mind of the student. Most important of all a teacher that cares about you, and only you. There is no question in my mind what is best for my child.

Now, back to socialization, there are networks of homeschooling parents that meet and their children interact (play), there is also church programs, field trips that allow children to “socialize” while imparting religious teachings of that particular faith. Socialization within the family unit (family reunions, weddings, get togethers), interacting with friends that were made in your neighborhood.

All of these things didn’t just appear, they were always there, this is the norm. What isn’t normal, as I see it, is to send your child into what looks like a very stark and steril industrial complex and expect your child to thrive in that environment. Some unsavory things have been happening in public schools of late: shootings, students attacking teachers, drugs, pedophiles; all of these things may have existed before and we are exposed to it more now because of the speed of the information highway, but, it doesn’t inspire confidence in me that these things are almost considered everyday occurrences that the student is expected to deal with.

So, what do you prefer? A nurturing, caring environment for your child to grow physically, emotionally and intellectually in, or a public school system with an addmittedly spotty track record. […]

Education-info Articles Maker

It appears that Home Schooling in New Jersey is almost correct in its approach:

The laws regarding in homeschooling in the state of New Jersey are far more lenient than other states. The main requirement is that you provide an equivalent academic education as the local public school system.

This is a problem because in the future, some busy body could use this part of the legislation as a lever to bring in evaluation.

It is not required to notify the school board. However, it is recommended to avoid dealing with truant officers and the issue of truancy. Save yourself headache; write a letter.

Truancy, as I have said before, is the condition of a child being absent from school without permission. By permission, we mean the permission of the parent OR the school. If a child is away from school with the permission of the parent, then the child is not a truant and you are under no obligation to prove that that you are not a truant especially if you are walking with your children in the street.

Truancy officers should be provided with a list of truanting children each day. This should be made from a list of children who are reported as missing from school, where the parent has also been informed by telephone and reporting that Johnny is out of school without permission. Then you have a list of bona fide truants that can be searched for. This is not rocket science.

If someone is not registered at a school, then they cannot be put on the list of truants. Problem solved. If a truancy officer or police officer encounters someone that they think is a truant, all they have to do is call the parent. In any case, the list of truants should come with descriptions so that the police do not bother people who are not truanting but are instead minding their own business.

What is completely unacceptable are the bogus fishing expeditions and checkpoint charlie tactics being used to catch truants, as we have seen with the recent Liverpool Street Station case.

The state has no right to evaluate your curriculum; if asked, the public school is required by law to provide you with a copy of their curriculum. Be prepared to pay for copying costs.

The state has no right to administer any tests to any homeschooled students.

Good, and good. This part of no right to evaluate could be seen as contradicting the first part of equivalent education, but it seems to be working.

And of course, the big thing in New Jersey, dates back over a year in the case of DYFS (Division of Youth & Family Services) where kids under the DYFS supervision where homeschooled and starved. Unfortunately, homeschooling is being blamed, not the failure of DYFS to keep check on those under the office’s care.

If DYFS shows up on your doorstep demanding to come in and inspect, you have the right under the fourth amendment to refuse. DYFS needs to show probably cause; an anonymous tip does not count.

This is how they do it, get a cause célèbre to get everyone whipped up and then change the law. Thankfully, at least for the residents of the USA there is a written constitution protecting parents in their own homes.

This is exactly what the brain dead journalists and busybodies in the DfES are trying to do with the Gloucester case

To help fight any allegations, there is the Home School Legal Defense Association. The HSLDA was formed by two lawyers to defend the rights of homeschoolers.

To be done.

Also, to facilitate ease of teaching, many curriculums are available on the market. Abeka is one such company, along with Alpha Omega Publications. Options include workbook programs, CDRom programs, online courses, and more. The students progress at their own pace.

It is recommended that you track your children’s hours.

We now have a great tool to do this with.

You will probably find, with most children, that not as many hours are required. For one thing, you don’t need to change classes, no locker time, no bussing time, no time for attendance, morning announcements, group potty breaks, etc. And the class doesn’t stop for the slowest student. You have limited students and can proceed at the pace they need, concentrating on aspects that are difficult for them and picking up the pace for those that acquire easily. Not to mention, you don’t need to spend time concentrating on teaching what will be on the state assessment tests or reviewing after a long break or the summer.

[…]

Associated Content

More reasons why Home schooling is best.

This is what we should have in the UK; freedom to educate without interference. In return, the parents of this island will supply the UK with best citizens imaginable.

The Australian State of Queensland seems to have laws about homeschooling that are similar to Germany’s. The approach to enforcement is however very different

An attempt by the State Government to overhaul home-schooling registration requirements appears to have failed. A new system was introduced in January to make it easier for parents teaching their children at home to legally report to the state without fear of being forced to send them to school. But Eleanor Sparks of Education Choices Magazine for home-schoolers said thousands of parents were reluctant to register with the Government “There is still a lot of distrust there. A lot of parents don’t want to sign up and then have the department try to change the way they choose to educate their children,” she said.

At last, someone somewhere acting like they have some brains!

An Education Queensland report estimates up to 10,500 children are being home-schooled, but just 260 of them are officially registered with the State Government.

Excellent!

Education Minister Rod Welford does not accept the figure though it comes from his own department’s Home Schooling Review.

Isn’t it interesting that these bureaucrats have the same attitude all over the world? They do not know the first thing not only about their jobs or their proper position as servants of the public, but they don’t even have a grasp on their own research. Can we really trust these people with all the details of our children? These people who are pathologically defensive, idiotically single minded and just plain stupid?

I think not.

We all know the huge support Home Schooling has, and its inexorable momentum. People like Rod Welford are on the wrong side of history, and are against families, against education and are for…heavens knows what.

He said he believed parents who have registered under the department’s distance education scheme (4800 students) and the 260 students under the new system represented the “overwhelming majority”. “There may be one or two hundred who we still haven’t captured because we don’t know precisely the number of children who are not in school,” he said.

And a liar to boot. What I detest most of all is the lack of humility, the posture that is the polar opposite of what it should be; that of a servant.

He said he believed the “home-school industry” had an interest in exaggerating its numbers. “I want to spread the message that it is against the law not to be registered, and secondly that it is in their interests to do that,” he said. “It is not a question of bludgeoning parents into some sort of Big Brother control system. “By registering those students we can give them support such as advice on teaching text and give them some assistance through nearby schools if they want to access that.”

It is abundantly clear that this is precisely about bludgeoning and Big Brother control systems. We already know that home schooled children outperform state schooled children in every metric; the home schoolers of Australia don’t need your support you simpleton, and if and when they do want something from you, they will pull the bell and you should come running in your butlers uniform.

And by the way, just WHAT ON EARTH is ‘teaching text’?!?!? Do you, Australian parents, REALLY want this mans advice on teaching anything?

Parents who reject the school system say they do so for many reasons. There are financial benefits to home schooling as parents do not have to worry about fees. uniforms, text books or trips. But parents say the decision to home-school also means financial sacrifices, as at least one parent must spend all their time with their children.

Home schooling costs parents more than sending them to state schools, firstly because the person who does the teaching cannot go to work full time. I’ll leave it to you to imagine just how expensive home schooling is!

Amanda from Ipswich told The Sunday Mail she opted out of schools because she feared exposing her children to peer groups there. “I know that a lot of people out there think that people like us are weirdos who want to live outside society but we’re not. We just don’t believe that schools are the best place to put your children.” Amanda, who asked that her full name not be revealed, has not registered any of her children with Education Queensland and has never followed a structured learning system.

Amanda is doing the right thing. So are the people who send their children to the school that she rejects. This is not about who is a better parent, this is about your right to educate your child in the way that you see fit, without interference from anyone. I support anyone who sends their child to school, and I also support people who Home Educate. This is where the education ministers both in the UK and Australia have it totally wrong; they are against families, against high quality education, and are for Orwellian control, forced curricula and the dismantling of society.

Her eldest child, Gabby, 15, did not start reading until she was nine but is studying for a bachelor of arts at the Open University (an online higher education service that does not require any entry grades). “I enjoyed it. It was a fun way to learn and now that I am at university I don’t find the work too hard. I am able to handle it,” Gabby said. […]

Yet another example of how Home Schoolers perform brilliantly.

Parents must send their children to school unless they receive special dispensation from Education Queensland. But Ms Sparks says governments have turned a blind eye to thousands of parents who choose to school their children ast home.

I think that in the UK, all the Home Educating families will simply ignore any new legislation that is introduced, should the government be foolish enough to try and do that. If the Australians can do it, so can the British. Just as the hunters are now ignoring bad law, so will the Home Educators should it come to that. Obviously it would be better if it didn’t.

The trend is toward home schooling not away from it. It is totally beneficial to all parties. Being against it is irrational, immoral, inappropriate and irresponsible.

The article above by Edmund Burke appeared in the Brisbane “Sunday Mail” on March 25, 2007

Snarfed from this blog.

Checks will be made on all children to identify potential criminals under a further extension of the “surveillance state” announced by Tony Blair today.

‘potential criminals’ actually means people who haven’t committed a crime, in a law court this would mean presumption of innocence, so why not on the street?

A Downing Street review of law and order policy also called for greater use of sophisticated CCTV, an expanded DNA database and “instant justice” powers for police.

‘Instant justice’ is an invitation to lowest common denominator policing and is easily abused and a hassle for those charged to resolve. We know about the inefficiencies of CCTV and the evils of (the police) DNA databases.

The review is intended to chart a course ahead for the next 10 years by focusing more “on the offender, not the offence.”

Most crime is committed by a small number of prolific offenders who could be identified almost from birth, ministers believe. After 10 years concentrating on tougher sentences, the review paper said it wanted to tackle the “underlying causes..through better targetting.”

Ministers can believe what they want but to impose their spurious beliefs on innocent people and their families is unjust and should not be tolerated. Surprisingly for a ‘social-democratic’ government this notion implies that education of these ‘future offenders’ is in effect worthless in terms of sociability and ‘morality’. 10 years of failure is also implied, why should anyone consider these fools to come up with the right answer now?

Vulnerable children and those at risk will be identified by “trigger” factors such as parents in jail or on drugs. They will be subject to personalised measures, including home visits from specialist practitioners. But the Government says the net should be cast as widely as possible “to prevent criminality developing.”

This means if any of your relatives are in jail or live in certain areas your children will probably be ‘loosely monitored’ in case they pick up any nasty habits which they may have missed picking up through their genes [HA!]

It proposes to “establish universal checks throughout a child’s development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending.” The document added: “These checks should piggyback on existing contact points such as the transition to secondary schools.”

This means constant monitoring at school, probably without informing or asking consent of parents. FWIW Home-schooled children probably will have a big fat black mark on their file anyway.

The plan will be beacked up by a new database for all children due to be up and running by 2008. It will contain basic information identifying the child and its parents and will have a “facility for practitioners to indicate to others that they have information to share, are taking action, or have undertaken an assessment, in relation to a child.”

Hmm 2008 sounds sounds suspiciously close to the NIR implementation.
‘child AND parents’ so everyone with a child will be databased too, I imagine this will be via the school asking children to fill in forms about their parents.
‘facility to share’ means minimal Data Protection regulations

New child checks to identify future criminals

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 1:38am BST 28/03/2007

# The main proposals

Checks will be made on all children to identify potential criminals under a further extension of the “surveillance state” announced by Tony Blair today.

A Prison Officer, Tony Blair will today stage a dramatic U-turn on Labour’s crime policy by conceding that too many offenders have been sent to jail since he took office 10 years ago
Mr Blair began his premiership promising to be tough on crime

A Downing Street review of law and order policy also called for greater use of sophisticated CCTV, an expanded DNA database and “instant justice” powers for police.

The review is intended to chart a course ahead for the next 10 years by focusing more “on the offender, not the offence.”

Most crime is committed by a small number of prolific offenders who could be identified almost from birth, ministers believe. After 10 years concentrating on tougher sentences, the review paper said it wanted to tackle the “underlying causes..through better targetting.”

Vulnerable children and those at risk will be identified by “trigger” factors such as parents in jail or on drugs. They will be subject to personalised measures, including home visits from specialist practitioners. But the Government says the net should be cast as widely as possible “to prevent criminality developing.”
advertisement

It proposes to “establish universal checks throughout a child’s development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending.” The document added: “These checks should piggyback on existing contact points such as the transition to secondary schools.”

The plan will be beacked up by a new database for all children due to be up and running by 2008. It will contain basic information identifying the child and its parents and will have a “facility for practitioners to indicate to others that they have information to share, are taking action, or have undertaken an assessment, in relation to a child.”

The database was ostensibly proposed to prevent another tragic death such as that of Victoria Climbie but now appears to be the basis for cradle-to-adult monitoring. It is not clear when data will be erased from the database.

Good old function creep/salamitactik, unless there is a serious effort by the peple who topple Neu Labour to dismantle these databases the data is unlikely to be erased for the simple reason it takes more effort to do so than to leave the audit trail ‘intact’.

The Government believes children can be prevented from becoming offenders if early intervention is targeted at those who displayed certain behaviours. These include having a short attention span or behaving aggressively or living in a difficult or deprived environment.

It does not believe this or educational or other measures which assist rather than stigmatise would have been put in place to rescue these children from their ‘original sin’.

Some children who show signs of becoming criminals are logged and monitored by dozens of early interventions schemes. Those aged 8-13 may be referred to a Youth Inclusion and Support Panel if they are thought to be potential offenders and data about them is held on an information system.

This will simply devalue the role of parental responsibility in the eyes of the children. It will foster a mentality that in the end the State rather than ‘people’ will intervene. It will devalue respect for other people and short circuit community responsibilities.

[…]

Telegraph

Yet another catch all scheme that will be ineffective, expensive and impose on everybody innocent or not at the same time as destroying liberty, respect and imposing conformity.

Many people who are unfamiliar with homeschooling picture it as a bunch of religious fanatics socially isolating their kids from culture and diversity in order to brainwash their kids. However, the facts bear witness to the fact that the opposite is true. Here are some facts culled from the excellent Homeschooling entry at wikipedia.

In general, people who are against home schooling are ignorant of it’s history in America, it’s proven benefits, it’s proven superiority over public schooling, and that the classic criticisms leveled against it, primarily those of social and religious extremism, omissions of critical subjects (like evolution), and poor socialization, have been shown by many studies to be nearly entirely false. In fact, as it turns out, homeschoolers are better educated, more emotionally stable and mature, more socially adjusted, and more academically balanced than students who emerge from our faithless, Darwinist, underperforming public schools.

The Downsides of Public Schooling

• Damaging emotional development: “where possible, children should be withheld from formal schooling until at least ages eight – ten.”. Their reason was that children, “are not mature enough for formal school programs until their senses, coordination, neurological development and cognition are ready.”
• Other negative emotional pressures of formal schooling: the outcome of forcing children into formal schooling is a sequence of “1) uncertainty as the child leaves the family nest early for a less secure environment, 2) puzzlement at the new pressures and restrictions of the classroom, 3) frustration because unready learning tools — senses, cognition, brain hemispheres, coordination — cannot handle the regimentation of formal lessons and the pressures they bring, 4) hyperactivity growing out of nerves and jitter, from frustration, 5) failure which quite naturally flows from the four experiences above, and 6) delinquency which is failure’s twin and apparently for the same reason.”
• Damaging social development: Aside from academic performance, early formal schooling also destroys “positive sociability”, encourages peer dependence, and discourages self worth, optimism, respect for parents, and trust in peers. This situation is particularly acute for boys because of their delay in maturity.

Homeschool Benefits

• How to develop genius: A Smithsonian Report on the development of genius, indicating a requirement for “1) much time spent with warm, responsive parents and other adults, 2) very little time spent with peers, and 3) a great deal of free exploration under parental guidance.
• Academic performance: the average homeschooled student outperforms their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. The study also indicates that public school performance gaps between minorities and genders are virtually non-existent among homeschooled students.
• What children need for learning and healthy mental/emotional development: Their analysis suggested that children need “more of home and less of formal school” “more free exploration with…parents, and fewer limits of classroom and books,” and “more old fashioned chores – children working with parents – and less attention to rivalry sports and amusements.”
• Healthier self concept: Dr. John Taylor later found, using the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, “while half of the conventionally schooled children scored at or below the 50th percentile (in self-concept), only 10.3% of the home-schooling children did so.”
• Better socialization: Regarding socialization, it appears that very few home-schooling children are socially deprived. Critics who speak out against home schooling on the basis of social deprivation are actually addressing an area which favors home schoolers. Apparently, the research data indicates that it is the conventionally schooled child who is actually deprived.”
• Graduates are more socially involved than public school children: Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. 71% participate in an ongoing community service activity, like coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association, compared with 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages from a traditional education background.
• Graduates are more active in civics: Homeschool graduates are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. 76% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the corresponding U.S. populace. The numbers are even greater in older age groups, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.

Graduates report being happier and more excited about life: 58.9% report that they are “very happy” with life, compared with 27.6% for the general U.S. population. 73.2% find life “exciting”, compared with 47.3%

Now, imagine if I went out to the homeschooling sites and mined even more information. However, I understand that it takes time to change people’s minds, esp. when mired in years of brainwashing regarding the superiority of public education. But education is changing public opinion:

Gallup polls of American voters have shown a significant change in attitude in the last twenty years, from 73% opposed to home education in 1985 to 54% opposed in 2001. […]

http://www.twoorthree.net/2007/03/the_superiority.html

From a Home Schooling mailing list comes this astonishing story:

We have just returned from a weekend away. At Liverpool Street station on Thursday (when we left) we were approached by a truancy officer together with a helmeted uniformed officer. There were also two other uniformed officers stood behind at close-ish range.

They asked us if we were on holiday and if we had permission for Reuben to be out of school. I explained that we were home educating and that we were on holiday. They had no problem with this but asked us to fill out a rather lengthy form which they would then send to check us out with the local authority. I explained that we were not known to our local authority as this was not a legal requirement. They said this wouldn’t be a problem. The LA would just check that we were not ‘out’ of one of their schools.

The details of the form were as follows:

Child’s name
Address
Local authority
Date of birth
Telephone number
Date child last attended school
If child was excluded – date of exclusion
Whether child was with parent
Reason for being out of school
Name and address of parent
Ethnicity

There may have been a few other things that I can’t remember.

I was unsure about filling in these details. I had hoped to remain unknown to the LA for at least a while longer.

In the event, our train left in 10 minutes, so we filled it in to avoid hold-ups.

Has anyone else been approached like this? Is there a formal response that I should have been aware of? Do you think that the LA will put us on their register now? Or perhaps, as Ian thinks, it will be lost in a mountain of paperwork and never touched again.

I will let you all know if we are contacted for an inspection, as this would be the only route to it as far as I know.

There is no way that people in this country know that this is going on, because if they did, they would surely be outraged. Parents are responsible for their children. If a child is with its parents, by definition the child is not a truant, because truancy means absent without leave from school:

n. pl. tru·an·cies
The act or condition of being absent without permission.
Dictionary.com

Not only were these children not truant because they were accompanied by their parents, but there were a total of four salaried people there to intercept them. Four people who were wasting their time questioning parents about on their own business in their own country.

Great Britain has gone totally MAD.

The most worrying thing about this is that this person stated that there was no legal requirement to fill this form, but filled it anyway instead of saying point blank that she would not comply.

This is the greatest problem that we face; any government can enact legislation; the thing that gives it force is obedience. If the home schooling community of the UK will not stand up for its rights, then it will have no rights.

And that is a fact.

If I told you that intelligent, mature, socially involved, well-educated teens, just 15 years ago, were being denied entry to college you would not believe me.

Unfortunately, it was true. Many of the nation’s burgeoning number of home-school graduates had, and on many occasions still have today, a very difficult time navigating the college admission process. Fortunately, in 2007, the situation has dramatically improved, but just 15 years ago home-schoolers faced huge obstacles accessing college.

Although a legitimate criticism of colleges is that they were relatively slow to react to the growing numbers of home-school graduates, it is fairly easy to sympathize with their situation.

Home-schooling began its resurgence in the 1980s. Consequently, the first wave of home-school graduates was ready to enter college in the early 1990s.

For decades, colleges had been focused on traditional high school applicants from both public and private school. Procedures, experience and expectations were firmly entrenched. When a home-schooler knocked on the door, with a diploma signed by his parents, colleges did not know what to do.

Home School Legal Defense Association, founded in 1983, intervened on behalf of home-schoolers and showed that a parent-signed diploma was valid. HSLDA, however, recognized that any college would need more information about whether an individual home-schooler was ready for college level work before it could make an informed decision. We suggested that a policy which focused on the SAT or ACT scores plus references and portfolios of work would satisfy any reasonable entry requirements.

Over the past 15 years, many colleges have developed either a home-school admissions policy or hired a home-school admissions officer. In fact, today, 85 percent of colleges have one, or both, of these in place. But some colleges have gone further and chosen to actively seek home-school graduates. The most recent example is the University of California at Riverside, which last year changed its policy to allow home-schoolers to submit a portfolio of work.

“We are excited about the positive response from home-schooled and nontraditionally educated students and their parents,” said Interim Director of Admissions Merlyn Campos.

Frank Vahid, professor in the Department of Computer Science, said: “It looks like we’ve tapped into a pipeline of great students.”

It is no surprise to home-schooling families that their children succeed in college. The genius of a home education is an individualized learning plan. The education is tailored to the child. In addition, most home-schooled children are encouraged to work on their own. To get the most out of college, a student needs to be self-directed, which is the methodology that home-schoolers have been using for years.

Every year, the total number of home-school high school graduates increases. The best estimate for the numbers of home-schoolers is 2 million children spread relatively evenly across the grades. Therefore, we can expect to see around 100,000 home-schooled graduates per year. A significant percentage of these students will seek college admission.

College entrance, and subsequent success in a college program, helps complete the education picture for home-schoolers. For many, it is the final step on a long educational journey. […]

Washington Times

BBQ once again, produces a piece of sly propaganda, as it shamelessly boosts the anti-home schooling push:

By Tara Gadomski
In New York

Thirteen-year-old Jack August sits on a small sofa in a cozy, carpeted room, reading aloud from a book about knights.

All the while his playful golden retriever, Mighty, tries to sneak up on the sofa when Jack isn’t looking.

Jack’s mother, Sue, sits alongside, asking him questions about the story.

Earlier in the day, the two performed a science experiment together, using the sofa cushions and a ball fetched from the garage.

This is a just another day for Jack, who is one of the two million students in the US who are homeschooled – taught by their parents at home. And he loves it.

“I like the flexibility. If an opportunity to play tennis or anything else pops up I can do it and just make up the schoolwork later.

“And with the one-on-one instruction, it seems you can move ahead quicker and be at a higher level of learning.”

And yes, says Jack, he does socialise with other children.

“I have friends from church, from sports, and I do know other local homeschool kids.”

Boom time

Until the 1970s, homeschooling was more of a necessity than a choice for American parents.

It took place mostly in rural areas, where schools could be long distances away and children were needed to help out with the work at home.

But after the publication of several controversial books that criticised institutional schooling, the modern homeschool movement in the US began, with thousands of suburban families joining in.

Still, it was not until recently that the numbers of homeschoolers really exploded – nearly doubling in the last six years.

The National Home Education Research Institute (a pro-homeschool advocacy group) estimates that that around 1.5 million children were educated at home in 2000, but in 2006, the number was closer to 2.5 million.

This increase is due, in large part, to the rise of Christian homeschooling – parents’ choosing to teach children at home from a Biblical point of view.

Now there is a vast and highly organised network of Christian homeschooling advocacy groups, legal advisers and curriculum material.

Faith factor

Sue August says she and her husband decided to homeschool Jack even before he was born.

“Our Christian faith is pretty strong and we thought this might be the best way to be able to pass on those values to our son.”

Her husband Mark says parents can impart something that teachers can not.

“Character is just as important as academics. And so what we’re looking for are character training issues and we would rather do that ourselves.”

The Augusts use a Christian-based curriculum for teaching their son.

Legally, they can teach him whatever they want.

Homeschool regulations vary state by state in the US, but New Jersey, where the Augusts live, has some of the most lenient. There are no requirements for attendance, training, testing, or even the use of books.

While that may seem highly unorthodox to many people, Mark August says homeschooling is just a different way of looking at the world.

“I understand why people look at the lack of regulation and are taken aback. But who is ultimately responsible for raising the child – is it the parent or the state?” Mark asked.

“From a Biblical standpoint, it’s the parents’ responsibility. Parents are going to act in the best interest of their children a majority of the time.”

Here it comes…

Worries

But Wendy Puriefoy, president of the advocacy group Public Education Network, in Washington DC, questions the ability of parents to provide an adequate environment for maturing as well as learning.

“I worry about the lack of accountability in homeschooling,” she said.

“I worry about the lack of socialisation for youngsters outside of their families.

“I worry about the access to other kinds of non-academic resources that youngsters have in public schools that you might not have in a homeschooling situation.”

These worries are totally unfounded. Home schoolers are head and shoulders above pupils that attend state schools, and the top universities are bending over backwards to attract home schoolers:

“homeschooling is a growing trend among the educated elite. More parents believe that even the best-endowed
schools are in an Old Economy death grip in which kids are learning passively when they should be learning actively,
especially if they want an edge in the global knowledge economy.” … “In some circles homeschooling is even attaining
a reputation as a secret weapon for Ivy League admission.”
http://tinyurl.com/dhe6d

A February 11, 2000 Wall Street Journal article stated that:
A recent survey by the National Center for Home Education, a Virginia-based advocacy group, found that 68% of
colleges now accept parent-prepared transcripts or portfolios in place of an accredited diploma. That includes Stan-
ford University, which last fall accepted 27% of home-schooled applicants – nearly double its overall acceptance rate.
“Home-schoolers bring certain skills – motivation, curiosity, the capacity to be responsible for their education – that
high schools don’t induce very well” says Jon Reider, Stanford’s senior associate director of admissions.
http://tinyurl.com/3bsny2

The next part of this article, is just totally ABSURD

Worlds away from Jack’s comfortable sofa, a group of teenagers in a New York City public school history class are gearing up for a debate over the ideal form of government.

The classroom is lively and noisy as students hunch over their institutional-style metal desks to prepare their statements and re-check their facts.

Enlightenment

When the debate finally begins the different voices, accents, opinions and academic aptitudes are apparent. But all the students are participating in their own way.

Homeschool advocates might argue that this way of teaching will slow down the brighter children or prevent the slower learners from catching up.

But the students in this classroom say they would not have it any other way.

“When you’re at school, you’re pushed. Competition brings out the best in you,” said 11th-grade student Frank, adding philosophically: “The most enlightened people are those who are enlightened by others.”

Another teenager from the class, Julia, points out what she sees as another benefit of going to school.

“I wouldn’t want to be around my Mom all day!

“No offence, I love her, you know – but this is a nice little break away from her!”

This is hardly an argument, and frankly it is clear that this nincompoop ‘Tara Gadomski’ didn’t use the internets before she wrote this utter drivel. If she had done so, she would have been overwhelmed by the amount of material in favor of home schooling, and its benefits and the real reasons why it is becoming more popular day by day, which are mostly to do with parents wanting to provide a proper education for their children.

The reasons behind the growth of home schooling are not solely due to religious beliefs, and people like Tara Gadomski focus on that reason to try and isolate home schoolers in the minds of the public as unusual folk who are motivated by fervor and not reason. Nothing could be further from the truth, and everyone knows this. When you write this tripe Tara, it makes you look SILLY, it shows your inability to research and your complete absence of depth.

“the students in this classroom say they would not have it any other way.” Yes, she actually wrote that, astonishing as it seems, and as for the anti-family sentiment of a child wanting to get away from her mother being portrayed as perfectly normal – it is THIS corrosive bile that we are trying to (and which we are successfully) getting away from, these sick ideas laid out as if they were perfectly normal. It is as sad as it is frightening; ‘the benefit of school is that you get way from your mother’ how perfectly horrible.

“When you’re at school, you’re pushed. Competition brings out the best in you,” and this is meant to be a voice of someone who is socialized! I have some bad news for you ‘Frank’ Stanford doesn’t want people who need to be pushed to do their work. They want people who display the following qualities, “…motivation, curiosity, the capacity to be responsible for their education – that high schools don’t induce very well”

So, no Ivy League place for you then Frank!

In every way that counts, Home schooling is better. It produces better students, better people, better citizens and thus, a better society. It very probably produces better journalists.

No number of poorly written pieces of trash will change this.

Proposed CT Legislation Marching This State To Socialism

By Judy Aron

Good intentions or larger plan? If you examine the proposed legislation it should become clear to what is slowly being rolled out in CT regarding how early child education, public education and mental health initiatives are all being combined. It is already happening in other states in the country, like Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey for example. The underlying agenda is to have children attend school as early as 3 years old, with health (including mental health screening) services to be administered from schools instead of your own family care. Medical facilities/resources will be located at the school. This is all taxpayer funded. While “Universal Taxpayer Funded Preschool” is now just being proposed on a voluntary basis here in CT, once the infrastructure is put into place, the compulsory school age will be lowered and all children will be required to attend school at age three. Government/taxpayer funded universal preschool is offered in most European countries, and “Social Progressives” are pushing those initiatives here. Most children in Britain already start full-time school — in so-called “reception” classes — at age 4. Standards and developmental benchmarks have been set by the State and woe to the parent of the child who doesn’t meet those standards which include nutrition and weight.

Mental health screening and early childhood education is going hand in hand in many states, as is the expansion of compulsory school age in some states to encompass age 4 to 18. The ultimate is Pre-K to age 22. Yes, age 22, as the community colleges and other forms of higher education will be part of the entire school program. The State Board of Education and the Board of Governors for Higher Education are already working together on many initiatives to encompass this “K-16” learning in CT, and that will soon be including Pre-K as well. […]

http://nheld.com/socialistct2007.htm

This is an interesting article, which describes part of a larger picture of troubling developments bubbling around the internets, like the really bad sounding ‘TeenScreen‘ where children are being exposed to scientifically groundless standardized tests which ‘pathologise’ children as neatly described in episode two of The Trap.

Listen to the clip and take a look at the documentary.

The way that they are administering these bogus tests, without parental consent, is like the fingerprinting without consent that has taken place in the UK recently.

People are not property, and it is time that parents started to get tough on this nonsense.

But you know this!