A description of EO’s Government Policy Group and its work, can be found at:
http://www.education-otherwise.org/Legal/Consultations/GovConsultFrtPg.htm

The following report is my description of a meeting between DfES and EO on December 19th 2006 for ‘an exchange of views’, and ‘pre-consultation discussions’. DfES appear reluctant to confirm their proposals for the consultation, and hesitant to state whether they are determined to go ahead with the consultation or not. This is reflected in the fact that DfES have not agreed the notes from the meeting, although more than 3 weeks have elapsed since the notes were sent to them. This description is therefore my views of the meeting, and the formal record will be the notes when they are issued. The purpose of a pre-consultation meeting is for DfES to hear the views of stakeholders, and to ‘sound out’ the draft proposals. The delay in agreeing the notes, and going ahead with the consultation suggests that this process has not gone as smoothly as they might have liked. There have also been indications this week (w/c 22nd January) that the policy team are reconsidering aspects of the proposals in the light of feedback, and are discussing aspects of the consultation further with ‘stakeholders’.

It should be remembered that everything discussed at the meeting was provisional proposals from DfES on possible draft versions of the consultation. The consultation might or might not go ahead, and any of the items proposed might be withdrawn or altered if a consultation occurs.

1) INTRODUCTION

Further to DfES signals in late November and early December that they were about to conduct a new review of local authority arrangements for home educators in England, Education Otherwise were invited to DfES, Sanctuary Buildings, London to hear from DfES the intended content of the consultation and have an initial “exchange of views”. The meeting took place in London Tuesday 19th December. The meeting lasted an hour and a quarter. The EO team was Jill Fisher (former chair of EO), Martin Wise (Vice chair of EO) and Phil Hicks (Chair, Government Policy Group). The DfES representative was Peter Walsh who may be the coordinator of the consultation, but he has indicated it is equally likely that Elaine Haste, the official normally responsible for home education, will have that task. He said he has also met with Norman Wells of Family Education Trust http://www.famyouth.org.uk/, and would meet with Jane Lowe of HEAS http://www.heas.org.uk/ The consultation was not fully written, and the start date has not yet been fixed, although January has been mentioned more than once, and more recently February. The consultation will be open to all to respond to, and will last for 12 weeks.

2) SCOPE OF POLICY CONSULTATION

DfES are planning to conduct a full public consultation via the e-consultation website http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/ about the statutory framework for home education. Individuals can register their interest in participating in this consultation, and in being advised of its launch, by contacting the DfES official for home education Elaine Haste, at Elaine.HASTE@dfes.gsi.gov.uk. For information on what to say look at the information flier at http://www.filecrunch.com/file/47v or look at the campaign pages which will soon be available on the EO website.

Local authorities are telling DfES that there is difficulty with ensuring/defining suitable education and with addressing some welfare concerns. DfES believe that the current situation between local authorities and home educators can to be improved by better regulation. DfES recognise that home educators are concerned about LAs going beyond their powers and that there is a wide variation in local authority practices around the country. DfES want to engage with home educators and want to improve policies.

The present plans for the consultation focus on three main areas:
1. Compulsory registration of home educators
2. Clearer standards defining ‘suitable’
3. Monitoring of standards

3) CHANGES TO THE LAW

DfES are considering introducing new law (changes to primary legislation) which would alter the legal framework which currently exists. The stated intention is to make clear the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the main intention would be to define what is ‘suitable’ education by parents at home. It was mentioned that the changes may supersede existing case law, so they could amend the meaning of the existing s7 and s437 by further defining the terms used, or they might replace those sections, but DfES did not state precisely how they would go about changing the law. They did confirm that if this went ahead it could take some time, one or two years, as new legislation would need to be added to a suitable passing bill, or be proposed as a specific item. It was mentioned that standards might be specified by regulations enabled by new primary legislation.

4) COMPULSORY REGISTRATION OF HOME EDUCATORS

DfES see compulsory registration as a means of simplifying the present situation. Section 4 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 requires LAs to identify children who are not receiving education. To do this they have to find children who are not in school and eliminate home educated children (who are not missing education) to leave those ‘missing education’. EO’s recent response to a consultation on section 4 can be found at http://www.tiny.cc/nle3H. (Section 4 comes into effect in February 2007). Section 12 of the Children Act gives LAs some powers to gather data from other agencies to do so (the information is gathered into an Information Sharing Index * ISI). EO’s response on a consultation on section 12 can be found http://www.tiny.cc/LnYIk). This means that all families who are not now known to LAs are increasingly likely to be identified, or notified to LAs. There are a large range of public bodies who are obliged to notify the LA of children who they are aware may be missing education. While officials need not notify the LA of children who they are told are home educated, it is likely that some will. (EO are considering modifying the text on membership cards to state that section 4 does not require the notification of home educated children to the local authority, so that the card with the statement can be shown to officials. While this will not protect all families from discovery by the LA in the long term, it may slow down the process). LAs will hold a register of children who are not in school and record their place of education. DfES think that compulsory registration will save home educators the problems of being notified in the Children Missing Education and Information Sharing Index arrangements. It would also save them money as they would have less need to follow up children notified to them but who are not on their registers.

We avoided speaking to this subject at any length because it was less important than the questions of standards and monitoring, and if standards and monitoring are not accepted, then ISI, CME and registration are not required. We commented that since they plan to be in annual contact with all home educators, compulsory registration will not save LAs any costs as they will have to make regular contact anyway. We stated that compulsory registration will be seen as a change to parents rights and will be strongly opposed by many home educators.

5) STANDARDS FOR SUITABLE EDUCATION

DfES say that they are not considering anything as specific as the national curriculum, but certainly something more prescriptive than a list of characteristics. They described their intention to set a standard of outcomes rather than provision. They mentioned outcomes for literacy and citizenship, ie children should be able to communicate well and access public services, and be familiar with public institutions. The pubic communications unit mentioned to one home educator it was anomalous that independent schools had standards to meet, but home educators did not. (Independent schools do not have defined curricula, but have standards – mainly for provision. The independent schools “standard” is described in part C of the information pack on this page http://www.dfes.gov.uk/reg-independent-schools/, and the underlying legislation is http://www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si2003/20031910.htm ).

We presented arguments at length to make the point that any form of standard would be restrictive, and would cut across parents’ right to determine the form of educational provision and responsibility to match it to a child’s ability and aptitude. Flexibility is needed on the part of LAs to allow parents the discretion they have responsibility for, and standards conflict with that flexibility. The setting of standards would cut across many forms of home education that are currently exercised successfully by parents. Because children are individual and home education is tailored to the child, there is and can be no common standard to measure it. DfES produced the hard cases argument at this point, asking what they do when it’s not apparent that a child is making progress or that parents are making effective provision, and parents are unresponsive to enquiries. They are concerned that some parents are unwilling or unable to make suitable provision. EO presented the characteristics listed in the Scottish Guidance on Home Education (See Appendix) as a counter point, arguing that in the existing legislative framework its possible to make a professional judgement that suitable education is being provided by considering whether some of the characteristics are evident. The characteristics in brief are parental involvement, an educational ethos (not necessarily formal), learning experiences available, activities offered, and resources provided. We presented several scenarios of learning outcomes where no formal curriculum would have been apparent over long periods but the outcomes were good. We pointed out that for many home educated children with special needs and unusual learning styles, any form of age related standard may be an ineffective measure. For example when a child is ready to read may vary from 3 years to 13 years or later, but late reading often still leads to academic outcomes which fulfil the child’s potential. We mentioned that at the start of home education there may be long periods of apparent lack of activity while a child adjusts to the new approach. The parents’ approach and philosophy is the only reference point for evaluating whether they are being successful in making suitable provision. Also the alternative options need to be considered, even if HE outcomes appear poor, that child might have the same or worse difficulties in a local school. On average home education outcomes are generally good when compared to school education.

DfES confirmed that the consultation will contain specific outlines of what is being suggested regarding standards and monitoring.

6) MONITORING

DfES are considering proposals to require parents to have an annual interview, with children present, and to fill in a pre interview questionnaire giving some details of the child’s activities and progress. EO responded that flexibility is required to meet different families’ needs and situations, as happens in best practice around the country now. Reports, and voluntary discussions without the child present are equally valid ways of assuring the LA that education is being provided. The point was made at length, and with examples, that many parents are strongly opposed to meeting the LA, and that conflict with schools and LAs may make such meetings inappropriate for parents and especially children who have had difficult experiences before leaving school. EO suggested that it’s impossible to evaluate outcomes for a single child until many years later. We argued that the existing legislation is adequate, and provides a firm foundation for good practice, being a sensible balance between parental rights and primary responsibility for education, and the state’s role as a backstop in extreme situations.

Although the subject of welfare was not specifically covered in our discussion we know that Normal Wells of the Family Education Trust discussed it with DfES and they confirmed that they accept that they do not have powers to insist on visits to the family’s home.

7) EVIDENCE BASE FOR DfES’ CONCERNS

DfES acknowledged that the evidence base is limited. The studies which have presented conclusions from which the consultation proposals are drawn lack impartiality and objectivity. These shortcomings are discussed in detail in a briefing paper on the background to the consultation at http://www.tiny.cc/mBGKL

8) COST OF IMPLEMENTATION

DfES acknowledged that this will cost a lot in first contact and monitoring costs. EO argued that the result will also be more court cases rather than less.

9) GYPSY, ROMA, and TRAVELLER COMMUNITIES

DfeS state that “research” suggests there are concerns about home education within Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. They say that home education in those communities is sometimes an excuse not to provide a suitable education. Local Authorities feel the current arrangements for monitoring are not good enough. The underlying research is by Arthur Ivatts: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RW77.pdf The objectivity of the “research” has been criticised by home educators and some local authorities. The study makes the presumption that within their particular communities travellers can be considered likely to be ill equipped to provide sound home education. This is prejudicial to these communities and this premise, and the conclusions based on it, need to be reexamined. Also Mr Ivatts goes on to make recommendations for all home educators based on his observations about the situation of the particular group he was studying. These conclusions are beyond the scope of his study so the recommendations should be discounted.

EO should not be considered to represent Travellers who home educate other than in the general sense of home educators. Traveller Communities are not well represented in the membership base or active in making their views known through EO, so EO cannot speak effectively about unique aspects of their situation. Separate communication will be needed directly with traveller groups.

10) ENGLISH GUIDELINES

DfES stated that it is planned to issue the English Guidelines in February or March. DfES may choose to do proceed with changes to legislation as a result of the consultation, or may not. Either way the guidelines will fill the gap at present and may be sufficient if new legislation is not proposed.

11) CHANGING THE LAW WOULD BE EXPENSIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE

In the last sections of the discussion we argued that the present system works fine, and that trying to create criteria against which to measure education will make things harder for the LAs not easier. Also that these plans, which they envisage would reduce the need for SAOs, would probably have the reverse effect – ie if they have rules, then they will end up with broken rules, so they will need to make more s437 prosecutions than before.

12) SUMMARY

DfES propose to issue a full consultation in January or February on changes to the law on home education.

The consultation has been motivated by local authority concerns about their perceived welfare responsibilities under Every Child Matters initiatives.

The evidence base that there are real problems underlying local authorities concerns is very poor, and was acknowledged by DfES at the pre-consultation meeting to be limited. The studies are neither impartial nor objective.

There is no evidence base for concluding that new legislation would improve educational outcomes. Nor has there been any comparison of the education outcomes recognized by home educators, and how they differ from local authorities expectations.

EO will advise DfES throughout the consultation that the existing legislation is perfectly adequate. Introducing new regulations will seriously damage outcomes for a proportion of home educated children, and put others at increased risk. It would not offer any significant positive benefits, and the cost of monitoring and of prosecution when provision is deemed unsuitable will be enormous.

APPENDIX 1

Typical characteristics of an efficient and suitable education are included in section 5 of the Statutory Guidance on home education issued by the Scottish Executive in 2004

• Consistent involvement of parents or other significant carers * it is expected that parents or significant carers would play a significant role, although not necessarily constantly or actively involved in providing education.
• Presence of a philosophy or ethos (not necessarily a recognised philosophy) * it is expected that the parents have thought through their reasons for home educating, showing signs of commitment and enthusiasm, and recognition of the child’s needs, attitudes and aspirations.
• Opportunities for the child to be stimulated by their learning experiences.
• Involvement in activities * a broad spectrum of activities to cater for wide varieties of interests appropriate to the child’s stage of development.
• Access to resources / materials required to meet the objectives of the parents * such as paper and pens, books and libraries, arts and crafts materials, physical activity, ICT and the opportunity to interact with other children and other adults.

(Improved versions of these characteristics were proposed in section 3.15 of the EO response to the draft English EHE Guidelines 2005. http://tinyurl.com/3c7m22 ).

The government of Bliar is thinking about bringing in Nazi style education guidelines to control home-schooling.

Now for those of you who think that its over the top to use the word ‘Nazi’ in this (or any) context, let me reassure you that I am not the first to use this word in association with this government, and it is also absolutely appropriate to use this word here, because control of Home Educators was mandated by the Nazis at Hitler’s command, in order to ensure uniformity amongst all growing up and subsequently living under the rule of the Third Reich.

The present German government has not erased these Nazi laws from their statute books, and adheres across all political parties, to the Nazi principles that ‘Home Schooling is Bad’, laid down by Hitler. Read this assessment of the sad state of Home Schooling in Germany from the Washington Times and my original post about the police hauling off German children to forcibly attend school.

Not to be left out of the rush to exert total control over everyone everywhere, Bliar’s government is preparing a ‘consultaiton’ on Home Schooling, and amendments to the law. That means they have already made up their minds about what they want to do:

“We believe the best place to educate a child is actually in school.”

Article from The Guardian, Home schooling ‘triples in eight years’

[…]

You can be sure that they have written up a long shopping list that they know no one will swallow, and are in the process of testing the water so that they can see what will be accepted with the least resistance:

The DfES 2007 consultation about changes to the law on home education was expected during January but DfES now say: “FURTHER WORK IS NOW BEING DONE, AND MINISTERS HAVE NOT YET MADE ANY FIRM DECISIONS ABOUT WHAT MIGHT BE INCLUDED”. The government now has its sites set on taking away the rights and responsibility of UK parents to choose the form of education they wish their child to have. They are doing this by the back door – making it appear that this only affects home educators. This issue does not only affect Home educators it affects all UK parents. Up until now the law has stood like this:

The responsibility of parents in England and Wales is clearly established in section 7 of the Education Act 1996 (previously section 36 of the Education Act 1944):

7. The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable-

(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

This law is about to be changed and our right to determine our children’s education removed. If they can take away this most fundamental of rights, there is no limit where this will lead. Determining what and how our children learn will become the responsibility of the state, if we resist we will be breaking the law and our children forcibly removed.

Europe is way ahead of the UK on this, Hitler made home education illegal and this law has never been revoked. At this moment children in Germany are being forced to school by police, HE families are having to flee to Austria for sanctuary, a German teenager has been sectioned because she is school phobic. When this case was taken to the European court of Human rites, the German government’s dictat was upheld.

That is from an HE mailing list.

The law as it stands is perfectly adequate. All are required by law to be schooled. It is the parents responsibility to ensure that the child receives an education. Rightfully, the law does not go into detail about what education is because that can only be defined by a parent. This is well understood on some level even by parents who send their children to school; all over the world there are PTA’s and parent involvement in school decisions.

Home schooling is as natural as breast feeding. Most home-schooled children are at least two years ahead of their peers. Certainly the family life of home-schoolers bucks the trend in society of families not eating a daily meal together. And lets not forget the latch key kid syndrome, where both parents work and children are simply left to their own devices. Home-schooled children are better off in all the factors at which the UK was shown to utterly fail when it comes to the welfare of the child. Read the UN authored report in full.

“We simply cannot ignore these shocking findings”
BBQ

says Bob Reitemeier of the Children’s Society. This is true, and what will certainly make matters worse is if parents who want to Home School are prevented from doing so or interfered with in any way.

Its clear that the government has no answers whatsoever. They are obviously incapable of organizing schools. Members of the Cabinet again and again remove their children from the state sector or poorly performing schools and then give glib excuses or no excuse at all, as the utterly grotesque Diane Abbott did,

“You can’t defend the indefensible – anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical.”
BBQ

We agree with Ms. Abbott. You cannot defend the indefensible. We also agree with her decision to move her child to a school best suited to her child’s needs. A parent’s first responsibility is to the welfare of their offspring. What is utterly offensive is the idea that people like Ruth Kelly, Diane Abbott and Harriet Harman can decide what is right for everyone else while they pick and choose the best options for themselves.

Making any rules that will affect Home Schooling in the UK is absolutely indefensible. Government has no business interfering with the private affairs of the family, bad record on education or not, and certainly, you would have thought that with such an appalling record on education and schools, and cabinet ministers fleeing from ordinary schools, this government would be a little more circumspect and humble when it comes to telling Home Schooling parents what they should and should not be doing, and how they should educate their children.

George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor said of the UN report:

“I don’t actually think government has the answer to all these problems.

“This is not all about politicians in Westminster passing laws, it’s about social responsibility, it’s about parents taking greater responsibility for their children…”
BBQ

Indeed. Lets think about what Home Schooling actually means.

It means that either the Mother or Father or both parents spend many more hours with their children than is the average, on a daily basis, teaching them, guiding them, feeding them and eating with them. What could be more natural and healthy than that? Home Schooling is ideal parenting. It is parents taking not greater, but full responsibility for their children. It is something to be held in the highest esteem, a dream of all parents, many of whom have to hold down two jobs just to pay the bills.

Mothers who stay at home to teach their children are the gold standard of mothering. Which is better for society, all mothers in the population going out to work, or all mothers staying at home with their children teaching them?

What I am trying to illustrate is that parents who Home School should be actively encouraged to do so, and not interfered with. They are what society actually needs; a return to real family life, to full time parenting. Anyone who is against that is actually for the further destruction and dismantling of society. They are for the feral children that ravage cities, that cause the knee jerk requirement for ‘ASBOS’ and Control Orders.

Once again, we see that Bliar and his cabinet colleagues are completely clueless about families and what they really mean. This is hardly surprising. All of the women in the cabinet gave up mothering to become career politicians; they have no idea of what it means to raise children correctly, never mind Home Schooling them. The men in the cabinet are twentieth century men; blinkered ignorant and utterly useless. But I digress.

In a country like the UK, full to the brim with museums, places of interest, steeped in history, there is no better schoolroom than the entire country.

Home schoolers are very organized. They use The Internets. They meet regularly for social events and trips to museums, and in London this activity is nothing less than wonderful. Many institutions recognize Home Schoolers as a group, and put on special events for them; theaters, museums, and any place you can imagine are more than happy to put on special events and lectures for Home Schoolers. The richness of the Home Schooling life is second to none. Anyone that knows anything about Home Schooling understands this, and once again, Home Schooled children outperform state schooled children in every metric that counts and many of the ones that don’t.

Finally, the law as it stands with reference to Home Schooling is perfectly fine. Home Schoolers get on with their work, pass their exams, attend University, and lead fruitful lives. There have been Home Schooled children in the UK since cave men taught their sons how to shape flint spear heads; the current mania for all children to attend some sort of institutionalized school is, in the long view of history, an aberration.

Parents are home-schooling because its better for the children, better for the family and better for society. They are a highly intelligent, motivated and dedicated group. Any attempt to interfere with them is wrong. This is not Germany. We are not Germans. The British are free people, a man’s home is his castle and woe betide the person who tries to interfere with it and his family.

We will not accept any ‘guidelines’ whatsoever. Home schooling parents specifically do so to get away from the corrosive, anti-family influence of the incompetent state.

The DfES would be far better off spending its time trying to fix the horrific mess it has made of the state school system, rather than viciously and vindictively trying to destroy something that it has no understanding of, which works perfectly and which, if they interfere with it, will only suffer from their corrupting touch. They should actually be consulting with home schoolers to try and fix the hopelessly broken schools in their charge.

Brian Farmer, Research Associate of the John Birch Society.

One would have thought that all vestiges of National Socialism were erased, when the Federal Republic of Germany was established after World War II. But those who created post-war Germany apparently were willing to extend freedom to the German people only just so far. They were not willing to allow German families the right to educate their children outside of the state-run system.

That stands in stark contrast to America’s Founding Fathers’ view of education. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it state that education comes under the authority of the federal government. And the Tenth Amendment makes it perfectly clear that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”

Our Founders understood very well the perils of a compulsory educational system run by the federal government. As Sheldon Richman wrote in his book Separating School and State:

Throughout history, rulers and court intellectuals have aspired to use the educational system to shape their nations. The model was set out by Plato in The Republic and was constructed most faithfully in Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany…. One can see how irresistible a vehicle the schools would be to any social engineer. They represent a unique opportunity to mold future citizens early in life, to instill in them the proper reverence for the ruling culture, and to prepare them to be obedient and obeisant taxpayers and soldiers.

While the number of home-schooled children is growing in the U.S., and has reached almost a million today, home-schooling in general does not always get a very favorable press. A recent network television documentary on home-schooling highlighted situations of neglected or abused children, parents who were portrayed as neurotic sociopaths, etc. It’s no surprise that teachers unions are against home-schooling and lobby states to make home-schooling as difficult as possible for families, by setting up a regulatory maze for parents to contend with.

Despite the Constitution’s clear restriction on federal government involvement in education, the federal Department of Education was created during the Carter administration. Is it mere coincidence that the performance of American students on a variety of standardized tests has steadily deteriorated, since the Department of Education was established?

As pointed out in the article, despite the increasing popularity of home-schooling in America, it is threatened with being made illegal. This threat comes from the attempts to form regional trade blocks, such as the North American Union, which is an obvious imitation of the European Union. And the ultimate threat comes from the United Nations, which is pushing member states to embrace international law. The long line of U.N. conferences over the years makes it clear that the final goal is to create an international system that will control every aspect of human activity everywhere on the planet, including education.

Just because Hitler liked the arrangement of centralized education doesn’t mean that we should. Education should be left up to the choice of the parents in their local communities, not coerced by an unaccountable bureaucracy, regardless of its political label.

[…]

http://www.jbs.org/node/2884

I wrote about the German Police enforcing Nazi Laws on home schoolers a month ago.

Now it seems that the rest of the world is catching up, and are rightfully horrified. My emphasis:

Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.

On Feb. 1, 15 German police officers forced their way into the home of the Busekros family in the Bavarian town of Erlangen. They hauled off 16-year-old Melissa, the eldest of the six Busekros children, to a psychiatric ward in nearby Nuremberg. Last week, a court affirmed that Melissa has to remain in the Child Psychiatry Unit because she is suffering from “school phobia.”

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools. The home-schooling community in Germany is tiny. As Hitler knew, Germans tend to obey orders unquestioningly. Only some 500 children are being home-schooled in a country of 80 million. Home-schooling families are prosecuted without mercy.

Last March, a judge in Hamburg sentenced a home-schooling father of six to a week in prison and a fine of $2,000. Last September, a Paderborn mother of 12 was locked up in jail for two weeks. The family belongs to a group of seven ethnic German families who immigrated to Paderborn from the former Soviet Union. The Soviets persecuted them because they were Baptists. An initiative of the Paderborn Baptists to establish their own private school was rejected by the German authorities. A court ruled that the Baptists showed “a stubborn contempt both for the state’s educational duty as well as the right of their children to develop their personalities by attending school.”

All German political parties, including the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel, are opposed to home-schooling. They say that “the obligation to attend school is a civil obligation, that cannot be tampered with.” The home-schoolers receive no support from the official (state funded) churches, either. These maintain that home-schoolers “isolate themselves from the world” and that “freedom of religion does not justify opposition against the obligation to attend school.” Six decades after Hitler, German politicians and church leaders still do not understand true freedom: that raising children is a prerogative of their fathers and mothers and not of the state, which is never a benevolent parent and often an enemy.

Hermann Stucher, a pedagogue who called upon Christians to withdraw their children from the state schools which, he says, have fallen into the hands of “neo-Marxist activists,” has been threatened with prosecution for “Hochverrat und Volksverhetzung” (high treason and incitement of the people against the authorities). The fierceness of the authorities’ reaction is telling. The dispute is about the hearts and minds of the children. In Germany, schools have become vehicles of indoctrination, where children are brought up to unquestioningly accept the authority of the state in all areas of life. It is no coincidence that people who have escaped Soviet indoctrination discern what the government is doing in the schools and are sufficiently concerned to want to protect their children from it.

What is worrying is that most “free-born” Germans accept this assault on their freedom as normal and eye parents who opt out of the state system with suspicion.

The situation is hardly better at the European level. Last September, the European Court of Human Rights supported Hitler’s 1938 schooling bill. The Strasburg-based court, whose verdicts apply in the entire European Union, ruled that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the State.” It upheld the finding of German courts: “Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to educate does not go so far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

While it is disquieting that Europeans have not learned the lessons from their dictatorial past — upholding Nazi laws and sending dissidents, including children, to psychiatric wards, as the Soviets used to do — there is reason for Americans to worry, too. The United Nations is also restricting the rights of parents. Article 29 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that it is the goal of the state to direct the education of children. In Belgium, the U.N. Convention is currently being used to limit the constitutional right to home-school. In 1995 Britain was told that it violated the U.N. Convention by allowing parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes.

Last year, the American Home School Legal Defense Association warned that the U.N. Convention could make home-schooling illegal in America, even though the Senate has never ratified it. Some lawyers and liberal politicians in the states claim that U.N. conventions are “customary international law” and should be considered part of American jurisprudence.

[…]

Washington Times

Wow.

As you can see, there are many people who understand perfectly that the right to educate your child is fundamental to your freedom and to the health of ‘society’. A society full of people educated out of a single system is one where everyone is not compliant like sheep, one where a totalitarian government cannot easily take hold, because everyone thinks differently on a fundamental level.

This is directly analogous to the times in the UK where there were only two television channels being watched by millions of people. It was easy to get a single message across to everyone simultaneously, and to herd thought in this way. Now, with many different outlets for thought, it is much harder to steer opinion. The Muslims watch their news on The Islam Channel which has a distinctly different take on reality and what is and is not news.

By eliminating home schooling on a wide scale, you make it much harder for a group of outsiders to exist and to have any sort of voice, and as we know, in the age of the internets, it takes a very small number of outsiders to completely change everything.

German schools are used, overtly, to control and shape society keep everyone in thrall. That is why the Germans (and the populations of Belgium, Italy and other EU states for that matter) accept ID cards without question. That is why they have no understanding of human rights. I have been saying this since 1995, when I wrote a lightweight analysis of the German Constitution, which gives rights and then takes them away with the same breath.

Now these Nazis are breathing down our necks via the EU and the UN. We won’t have it.

The philosophies that are injected into the minds of children in the state sector are simply horrifying. Completely artificial concepts like ‘Hate Speech’ are taking hold in the previously (more) free thinking west because the teachers are drilling this drivel into the young, who take it on faith that indeed there is such a thing as ‘Hate Speech’.

The same goes for all of the other lies and molten lead doublethink that gets poured into the minds of young students – and it doesn’t just happen in the classroom. Schools that are requiring students to be fingerprinted to get books out of the library or to eat lunch are softening up the students to accept this method of criminal control, this violation, as normal and acceptable. The indoctrination runs across the most innocent of actions and activities, and we have the absolute right to say ‘no’ to it and to educate our children to our own standards and in our own philosophies, whatever they may be.

Brother, I’ll drink to that!

Most people reading Cryptogon inside the U.S./Britain are familiar with nonstop feelings of impending doom and frequently asking themselves questions like:

Am I next?
Is this it?
Can I escape?
Is it too late?
Has everyone gone nuts?
Have I gone nuts?
Is this job killing me?
What booze is on sale?
etc. etc.

That was what it was like inside my head for about two years before I bought my one way ticket to New Zealand.

What was the actual escape like for me?

After a couple of hectic days of selecting what to take with me, and what to leave behind, the time arrived for me to get to the airport.

As I was groped and fondled by defenders of the Homeland at airport security, I went into a kind of dreamlike trace. “Will I make it out to the other side of this thing?” I wondered. The cacophony of the checkpoint became a sort of languid hum. The fat TSA employee started to move its lips, but I don’t remember what it said. I complied, on some instinctual level. A few minutes later, I was standing just beyond the security checkpoint, holding my shoes and belt in one hand, and my falling down pants with the other.

I exchanged a couple of brief, humiliated, what-just-happened-to-us? kind of looks with other travelers, many of whom were not Americans, and not used to being treated like that.

I walked to the appropriate Air New Zealand gate and sat down. I took my mobile phone out and called a couple of people to say one last goodbye. Then I called the voice mail system for my phone and changed the greeting to something close to this:

“Hi, you have reached Kevin. I have left the United States and don’t have any plans to return. Goodbye.”

Minutes later, hundreds of people, including me, took our seats in the belly of the large white bird. Minutes after that, it hurdled down the runway and out over the Pacific Ocean, veering South and West. I’ve never been able to sleep on aircraft before. But I did on that flight.

Once I was in Auckland, I had to catch another flight to reach the Far North, my wife (she went over a few weeks before me) and my new family. I walked to the domestic departures area in the Auckland airport and asked an Air New Zealand employee where the security checkpoint was, because I somehow wound up at the gate without passing through one.

“There is no security checkpoint for domestic flights, sir.”

You can imagine my shock at this remarkable statement.

“There’s no security checkpoint?!” I asked.

“Nope. Not for domestic flights,” she smiled.

I felt like dropping to the ground and kissing the polyester airport carpet, but I didn’t.

I took a seat and mumbled to myself, “I’m not even out of the airport and things already seem better here.” That was my first big epiphany in New Zealand, and they just kept happening. (Maybe someday I’ll write more about this. In short, if you’re having doubts about the lies you’ve been taught all your life about the U.S., run with those feelings. Run for your life.)

When I read the story below, I wondered, “How long has it been since I escaped America?” As of today, I have been in New Zealand for exactly one year. On reflection, I think back on my life in America as a vague and distant nightmare. The United States has became a vast nut house inside a debtor prison. I’m still not over the euphoria of being out. […]

http://cryptogon.com/?p=448

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues—principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.

Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime’s occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America’s embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.

Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi’ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi’ite. Bush’s accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.

On the basis of this absurd accusation—a pure invention—Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran’s coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.

In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a “head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.” He said a plausible scenario was “a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran.” He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a “mythical historical narrative” for widening their war against Islam. [Testimony in PDF]

Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?

There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler’s revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the Middle East.

[…]

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070228_lost.htm

Like I have said before, if any country can turn around from a situtation like this, the usa can. It will however, cost nothing less than trillions of dollars in reparations and literally, the heads of the conspirators listed above.

Nothing less will set the balance right, and even that may not be enough.

cj bolland gets back to what he does best, stompers with an eery rhythmic precision, only this time employing very sophisticated effects and mix editing …. check out the new album at http://www.last.fm/music/CJ+Bolland/The+5th+Sign

Someone Clever Said:

Mr. Porter,

Interesting piece on WTC 7. We’re all hoping it is only a bit of doctored footage.

If it is not, please do let us know what is about to happen in or around Iran. And be so kind as to give us more than 20 minutes notice.

A classic comment from The Editors Blog where a totally retarded liar and propagandist tries to wiggle out of the complete fiasco of the ‘documentary’ and subsequent ‘911’ lost footage scandal.

We and many others have said for years that BBQ is a totally controlled, propaganda pumping, palace of prostitutes, and now the whole world knows it.

Their imbecilic staff don’t even have the self preservation common sense to simply say, “we messed up”, which would be far more believable than the ‘daddy knows best’, ‘there there’ pat on the head tone that scumbag Richard Porter takes.

They all have this attitude, from Dimbumblebee down; snot nosed, supercilious and condescending. Listen to the slimy Guy Smith slither around as Alex Jones questions him about his odious piece of shit ‘documentary’. This is what your license fee goes for; the salaries of liars and bastards who spit in your face as they collude in dismantling this great country.

It is completely impossible that they have lost the original tapes. Broadcasting industry standards make it impossible. This is why:

“I’m an archivist with the CNN News Library in Atlanta, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, the mere idea that news agencies such as ours would “misplace” any airchecks from 9/11 is preposterous. CNN has these tapes locked away from all the others. People like myself, who normally would have access to any tapes in our library, must ask special permission in order to view airchecks from that day. Multiple tapes would have been recording their broadcast that day, and there are also private agencies that record all broadcasts from all channels – constantly – in the event that a news agency missed something or needs something. They don’t just have one copy… they have several. It’s standard procedure, and as soon as the second plane hit, they would start recording several copies on other tapes machines all day long.”

What they are claiming is simply impossible. It is a lie.

As can be seen from above, private agencies will also have copies of that days footage. The totally insulting line of Porters:

So if someone has got a recording of our output, I’d love to get hold of it.

Simply beggars belief. So we are supposed to supply you with the footage? IF someone has a recording of it? Surely he must know at least what that CNN guy knows about what happens to live footage of a big event – if he does not, he should be SACKED.

Note his tone, like the details don’t matter, as if he doesn’t really work there, and has no special knowledge of the workings of the BBQ…and he is one of the editors.

This really is astonishing, not that they are lying but that they are lying so badly.

and finally, a taste of what is spreading all over the internets:

I’m not a conspiracy nut. But this footage of your reports of WTC7 collapsing a full 20 minutes prior and repeatedly discussing it’s collapse is highly suspicious.

If you were talking about a building that never did collapse, well then you’d just look imcompitent. But as we all know, building 7 did, in a feat that suspended all laws of physics and logic, collapse spontaneously due to fires on floors 7 " 12.

You can’t possibly expect us to believe this. Let’s look at all the pieces here.

1. BBC reports for 20 solid minutes that WTC7 has collapsed when even in the live shot it stands as sturdy as the day it was built.

2. The idea that WTC7 would collapse spontaneously due to minor fires and minimal damage to the north face is laughable and an insult to intelligence. But it did, approximately 5 minutes AFTER BBC’s report….or at least 5 minutes after Jane Standley’s live shot was disconnected.

3. BBC loses all of it’s 9/11 footage so this cannot be reviewed or explained. My nephew still has all his VHS tapes from that day. He recorded almost every news station for 24 hours straight. He’s 19 now. He was 13 when it happened.
So, a 13 year old can be more responsible with his VHS tapes than one of the largest news organizations?

4. The archive footage is mysteriously pulled off of youtube and google video repeatedly and without provocation or explanation.

5. BBC’s response is, ‘there is no conspiracy. it was a mistake.’

Grant us logical thinkers at least one thing. This is highly suspicious. The BBC needs to reveal what source they drew the conclusion that WTC7 had collapsed.

Oh, and the ez-out phrases like ‘it appears’ and ‘we’re receiving reports that..’ were not used throughout this footage.

Especially when the anchor starts talking about the (lack of) body count since there was so much time to evacuate since the collapse of WTC1-2.

The BBC needs to reveal what source they drew the conclusion that WTC7 had collapsed. I do not necessarily think the BBC is a witting participant in some 9/11 conspiracy, but it’s definitely looking like you were a pawn. Revealing who/where the BBC received the information that WTC7 had collapsed would be a good start in clearing your name.

Its over BBQ; you have LOST!