As Education Othewise become less and less important for various reasons, other more focussed groups are forming and asserting themselves. Action for Home Education is one of those groups. They have a ‘Parent’s Declaration’ online that they are asking HE parents to sign. This is a good start. It shows that finally, HE families are beginning to feel the very real threat to their families and are girding their loins for the upcoming confrontation with the evil state. The first step is to do this; declare your rights and your unalterable position.

Whilst its great to have a declaration, it is important that it makes sense, and does not contain any language that allows the state to assert in any way that they are the source of your rights. They are not. Your rights have nothing to do with the state, or its myriad pieces of legislation, or fake types of right that are in vogue today, like ‘children’s rights’ or ‘patients rights’ etc etc.

Let’s do it:

PARENTS’ DECLARATION

WE DECLARE our independent status and affirm our responsibility for the upbringing and education of our children in accordance with our lawful rights and natural justice.

First of all that is ‘sole responsibility’. Secondly, any rights you have come from nature, and not from the law, therefore we can only talk about our ‘natural rights’ as opposed to ‘lawful rights’, since the state can declare anything it likes to be unlawful; like drinking orange juice. If, all of a sudden, your ‘lawful rights’, in this case, to drink orange juice, are declared unlawful, are they taken away from you? Obviously not. Your rights exist with you, and cannot be legislated away. The state may make you an outlaw, but that does not erase your rights. For a particularly nasty example of the law making criminals of people who merely exercise their rights, see this. The ‘natural justice’ part is redundant. If you are exercising your rights without interference, that is just.

WE ASSERT our right to choose the place, form and content of the educational provision for our children in accordance with the following:

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.
(Section 7 of the Education Act 1996)

In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.

Once again, if the law changes, do your natural rights disappear? What if parliament revokes Section 7 of the Education Act 1996? That is a very real possibility, especially as all UK HE people rely on this piece of law heavily. If that is one of your pillars then you are in serious trouble if they remove it. Your right to choose the place, form and content of the educational provision for your children has nothing to do with any legislation. The Germans do not have this legislation on their books, do they not have the same rights that you do? Of course they do, because rights do not come from the law.

(Protocol 2 Article 1 of the European Convention of Human Rights)

The european court has already declined to defend the rights of German parents to Home Educate, so I would not put too much store in using them to defend your rights in the UK.

WE WILL protect the rights of our children to own their own lives, to privacy and freedom from undue official interference in accordance with the following rights:

The right to respect for a private and family life, home and correspondence

(Human Rights Act 1998)

The right to be free from “arbitrary or unlawful interference with [their] privacy, family, home or correspondence” and from “unlawful attacks on [their] honour and reputation”

(Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child)

Once again, Britain chooses to ignore what it likes when it comes to the EU, and in any case, as I say above, you cannot rely on European courts to defend what is naturally yours.

WE DEMAND that state officials remain within the bounds of the powers already conferred upon them under current law in their dealings with us, the people.

WE WILL UPHOLD AND DEFEND the above principles without fear or favour where the state forgets its legitimate function, oversteps its bounds or seeks to exert undue influence or power over our lives and those of our children against our traditional freedoms and natural justice.

Finally. This translates to (if we are taking it seriously) “we will not comply with anything that violates our rights.” That means that whatever nonsense the state comes up with, all the signatories of this declaration will simply disobey.

Once again we have some troublesome wording; freedoms are not traditional, they come from you by virtue of your existence. Traditions can be broken, are arbitrary and fleeting. Your rights are not breakable, are not arbitrary, and are eternal. Natural Justice we have already dealt with.

The next obvious step is to create a fighting fund for the inevitable lawsuits that will need to be brought, as LAs pick off the most vulnerable families to make examples of. A list of things that will not be obeyed could come in handy for those who are not up to speed on just how intertwined the monsters tentacles are.

This is good news all in all. Hopefully the numbers in HE crowd that are not willing to compromise will increase and the others who would sell their children for a pat on the head or a job in government will dwindle to a handful and then be permanently sidelined.

Snarfed from Renegade Parent.

UPDATE

The declaration has been translated into Portuguese, including all the references to British Law. Clearly this doesn’t make any sense, since the laws in the UK do not apply to Portugal. Had this document been written more carefully, it could have been adopted world-wide by any parent, since it would have dealt unambiguously with rights that everyone has in common and nothing to do with any particular state and its bogus legislation.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Home Schooling, Post Tipping Point, Someone Clever Said, The Facts, The Law, Yes yes yes!.