UK Government to follow Nazi school guidelines
March 2nd, 2007The 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’
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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.