David Cameron will today pledge to cure the ‘national neurosis’ caused by the explosion of health and safety rules under Labour. The Conservative leader wants police, schools and volunteer groups to be freed from the fear of being sued. He said the culture in which someone has to be blamed for every mishap must be […]
World Net Daily has a story that sounds like it could have come out of the Large Hadron Collider i.e. from the future of Britain: By Bob Unruh A prosecutor demanded jail time for two parents accused by German authorities of homeschooling their children, and he erupted in anger when the Nazi foundations of the […]
The memoranda submitted to the Schools and Families Select Committee Inquiry into the DCSF-commissioned review of elective home education have been released. In the submissions, are many entries confirming everything that has been asserted by Home Educators, and permanently sealing the fate of this scandalous, scabrous, ill considered and highly suspicious report. There are also […]
Someone emailed me the link to the uncorrected transcript of the Select Committee. It is quite simply, one of the most amazing things I have ever read. As I said before, this meeting will not change anything. It may however finally provide the push to galvanise Home Educators to mount a proper campaign to stop […]
Everything in the world that involves human interaction can be broken down to property rights, and as I have said before, children are a special case of property. Let’s begin with some Rothbard: Let us take, as our first example, a sculptor fashioning a work of art out of clay and other materials; and let […]
We now have a story that will be of great concern to those Home Educators that believe they will be able to ‘move to New Zealand’ so that they can be free of fascist Britain: French police grab 4 kids on German orders Homeschool family’s children accused of ‘being alone’ By Bob Unruh Four children […]
From a lurker… The old: Interesting Medications from the past Bayer’s Heroin A bottle of Bayer’s heroin. Between 1890 and 1910 heroin was sold as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. It was also used to treat children with strong cough. Coca Wine Metcalf Coca Wine was one of a huge variety of wines with cocaine […]
Whilst googling around, I came across this paper, and couldn’t resist tearing it to shreds: UNIVERSITY OF OSLO, INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH. Article from the research project: “Home education in Norway”. HOME EDUCATION AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION Dr. Christian W. Beck A. Professor of Education Institute of Educational Research University of Oslo, Norway email c.w.beck@ped.uio.no Abstract […]
Mimi Magick points us to a new blog, which if this first post is anything to go by, will be something to watch carefully: […] “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced […]
Two clips from Unschooling: The Movie. These are the sorts of people who are the great threat. Clear speaking, clear thinking, highly educated people who do not conform. This is the sort of young woman that the governments of Germany, Sweden and now the UK want to completely destroy and prevent from coming into being. […]
It seems like the great and the good are finding that Britain has lost all of its appeal: Cory Doctorow has written an article that sums up what is wrong with this country, and his piece chimes with what I have been writing. Although he is a Candian native, Cory’s family came from the Soviet […]
The Independent, that bird-cage liner which is ferociously opposed to Home Education, has let rip again with a piece designed to divide Home Educators and set up a pretext for the government agenda of ending Home Education. What the author, ‘Simon Webb’, fails to understand is that first they come for the most ‘other’ group […]
A Reply to the Badman Report English Home Education: Already In Proper Balance July 2009 Michael P. Farris, J.D. Chairman Home School Legal Defense Association Introduction His name is Badman. Graham Badman. His June 2009 “Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England,” which proposes draconian changes in […]
Philip Johnson writes in the Telegraph about ‘the database state’ and how evil it is. It feels like he has had a whiff of coffee and is waking up. What he REALLY needs are some smelling salts: Beware Labour’s quest for a database state There’s no reason why the Government should know so much about […]
You can get very tired of people voicing their ill-considered views about home-based education with no apparent knowledge of the research of the last 30 years in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere on the subject. They are also forgetful of the dire effects of ‘compulsory mis-education’, as Goodman put it, in the day-prison system […]
The Graham Badman review of Home Education in England has just been released. It is as bad as it could possibly be. The review of elective home education, as the terms of reference (Annex A) make clear, has been triggered by a range of issues and representations, not least being the quite proper concern to […]
The Times has published this piece on the complete insanity that has taken over the state schools: Edu-babble is turning schoolchildren into ‘customers’ Performativity is forcing curriculum deliverers to focus on desired outputs among customers in managed learning environments. If you struggled to understand that sentence, pity the poor teachers (curriculum deliverers) who are struggling […]