Words are hard to come by for me this morning -- unusual for one considered a little too gobby and opinionated most of the time -- but I am slowly finding the little blighters and trying my utmost to dilute the venom from my initial draft as I pick and pack them into coherency.

It's hard though.

I read, last night, with increasing horror, Graham Badman's report on Home Education in England and his recommendations to the Secretary of State. A horror which brought tears only a third of the way in. My kids, naturally, were concerned and I had to explain that should they choose to live in England again, they would not be allowed to think freely as they do now, to learn naturally and with complete autonomy. I had to tell them that their lives would be policed, not only by the LEA, but by other home educating families too. I explained that it made me feel particularly vulnerable because all the second guessing about whether or not I was doing the right thing by home-educating my children that I have suffered over the years, the agonising I did purely because I'd been schooled, and bullied at school, and made to believe as a child that it was the only way, came back in a huge, hot rush. And it hurt me badly. My complaints? Just read the document first (opens PDF):

www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/8318-DCSF-HomeEdReviewBMK.PDF

QUOTE:

The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) in its response to the call for evidence, was quite clear in its opposition to the whole basis of elective home education as currently defined:

“The NASUWT maintains the existence of a right to home educate is anomalous with the clear emphasis in Government policy of ensuring that all children and young people can benefit from educational provision where teaching and learning is led by qualified teachers in well resourced and fit for purpose modern educational settings.”

Here we have teachers saying because they have pieces of paper and schoolrooms that they are better qualified than I, and than my autonomous children, to facilitate their education.

QUOTE:

And the Education Division of the Church of England states its concern:

“that children and young people not in formal education are missing the benefits and
challenges of learning in community with their peers. Children who do not go to school
may not experience the social and cultural diversity encountered there; they will not learn
how to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life; they may never meet people with
different faith and value systems. All such encounters, even the difficult or painful ones are
enriching...

Here we have a major religious organisation telling us that bullying is FINE in schools. (I waited with baited breath anticipating the use of the phrase "character building" in that particular section, and would wager a small gold mine that it was all the CofE's Education Dept representative could do to NOT say it).

And with reference to Badman's constant griping that we are all SO maddeningly different...

Here we see the upshot of one person's inability to understand diversity, to understand that every human being on this planet is different, so every educational experience is likely to be just as different. Yes, we are all to conform because this single person did not like the fact that many home-educating families differ in opinion and method.

This report's recommendations are an erosion of the right of our children to live without fear, no matter how much the Church of England feels those children's spiritual and community development needs it. It is an erosion of our children's right to learn naturally and with autonomy, without the fear (yes, that word again) that they are somehow not 'doing it right' because they are facilitating it themselves.

And to tell us that because we may not have the same opinions, beliefs and philosophies as those who home-educate alongside us, that because we do not conform to one standard way of educating our children, we have failed, we need regulating, is outrageous to say the very least. It is nothing less than thought control. Get this: NO TWO CHILDREN ARE ALIKE. How DARE you tell us that we should educate our children in any other way than that which is suitable to THEM and them only. How DARE you compare the educational differences of each and every home-educating family to a failure to successfully home educate. You grossly underestimate both the rights of the child and the parents of that child if you believe diversity to be the problem here.

Indeed, let's look at diversity and what works for each situation such as in nature and bio/species diversity. What is right for one group in nature is not right for another, yet it is their differences that allow them to co-exist and to thrive on the planet. One does not seek to control or wipe out the other. One does not seek to harm the other. Instead, they flourish in a system that would be disfunctional were they not there.

Only humans seek to control other humans in such a way. Conformity. Do your thinking only inside the box.

Keep your individuality, folks. And please please PLEASE comment on this here. The Government wants to know what you think. Tell it.

www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm

Ah well, seems I have words after all. Apologies for their rambling.