If a child is frightened when a stranger comes into the home, the child needs help, not continued protection from seeing any strangers.
The above quote seems to me to drive right to the heart of the disparity between the home educating community and those who do not truly understand the reasons for their anger. It is a question of context. The quote assumes the child in question is frightened of all strangers, and has been encouraged/made to feel this way by seclusion. However, this is not the context of the argument.
The context is this; A stranger comes to the house, because they are a stranger their opinions, biases and preferences are unknown. The stranger works for an organisation that has at best, been unhelpful in the past and at worst has been the major source of pain, frustration and emotional turmoil for the family. The family must allow them inside the home on pain of prison sentance, fine and/or having their children removed from their care whether they want to or not. Once inside, the stranger is tasked, by law, with inspecting the family – in the home, education is not separated from daily life or parent and child interaction and therefore cannot be separated from parenting even in families who use the most formal methods of enabling their child’s learning, therefore what the unwelcome stranger is in fact judging is the family’s way of life, their parenting skills, their relationship with their children and the home they live in. It is highly unlikely that the stranger will have any first-hand experience of home education themselves or that they can view cultural or lifestyle differences that are unfamiliar to them without suspicion – it is human nature to be wary of that which is unknown. This stranger will then remain in the home for a number of hours, with the power to demand to see anything they wish whether that be something the child has produced, the child’s bedroom or the child itself and the family will be forced to comply on pain of prison, fine and losing their way of life. The child, whose work may be private to them, whose bedroom is a haven to get away from the world and who may have serious concerns over talking to this stranger without the support of their parents presence will be put in a position of powerlessness, forced to allow the stranger to violate their privacy with no recourse to protest. The child, and family, will be well aware that it’s performance for the stranger may well be a big factor that determines whether or not the family’s way of life will be preserved. The child will be afraid of ‘getting it wrong’, they will be afraid that they may, personally, be the one who destroys the status quo by not being good enough or saying the wrong thing. They will pick up on tensions from the parents who may well have serious concerns over the stranger – they are afraid for their child because they know so little about the stranger. Is this person a liar who will claim untrue things about their family and their child? Is this person a manipulator who will persuade them or their child to say things they do not mean? Is this person prejudiced against something important to the family, such as race, economic status, the area they live in, religion, certain parenting phillosophies, transient lifestyles? Is this person abusive? Is this person close-minded? Has this person any real experience with things that may be affecting your child and understand how they may make the child react to them, such as disabilities, previous trauma, special talents, mental illness, intense emotions, high intelligence? Is this person even aware that the child is affected by these things? The parents are afraid of the power this stranger wields, as nothing in the law puts any limits on the reasons this stranger can give for destroying their way of life, allowing this total stranger to make an entirely subjective judgement that could easily be based on something as simple as a clash of personality and gives the family little recourse to appeal against any such judgement.
Worse yet, this person may not be a stranger. It may be the family have to deal with someone who has already made their life a misery in the past, either by causing or exaserbating serious problems at a time when a particular family may have been trying to sort out issues with a school or who has previously visited them before the law altered and shown a lack of understanding of home education practices, severe prejudice or, as is actually quite common, a lack of understanding of the law and the respective duties of themselves and the families within it. The prospect of seeing such a person again in a state where that person has all the power even within the families own homes, while the parents have no protection in law would be beyond frightening.
You say we have nothing to fear from inspection if what we are doing is ‘as good as is claimed’, but the fact of the matter is, there is no one right way of educating your child just as there is no one right way of living. The effectiveness of an education can only truly be measured in the adult the child will become, and suitability is not a universal standard but implict on the individual needs of each child. What looks like ‘poor’ education to an outsider may be precisely what that child needs at that particular time and unless an inspector knows the child well and is open to educational phillosophies that they may personally not believe in, know about or understand, appearances may be highly deceptive.
This law will expose thousands of families to insitutionalised prejudice, where many ‘inspectors’ will hold it as a black mark against them the very fact that they are home educating. This already happens, and while major strides in many areas have been made towards improving this, the proposed law will put that work back by decades because by it’s very nature it legalises suspicion against a sector of the community whose only ‘crime’ is to live differently.
What other niche group is forced to accept forced entry into their homes by inspectors whose sole remit is to judge their lifestyle? The answer is None.
What other group is forced to expose their children to legal invasions of privacy, both material and mental, without being able to stand up and protect them should the child beg to have it stop? the answer is None.
The proposals are based on nothing but rumours and fears that have no basis in fact, elevating misconceptions and hearsay to the status of law. They are written by those who niether understand the nature of home education nor care to learn. Nor do they accept that it is the parents duty to educate and care for their child but confer that duty onto the authorities (who also have serious objections to these plans in many cases as they not only add extra costs in time, staff and resources without allowing for extra funding, but by making them responsible for the education and welfare of these children it lays them open to a legal quagmire where they will be blamed for any failing and is likely to ultimately lead to court cases with families suing them for breach of duty if a child forced into school does not receive the promised ’suitable’ education).
It is my duty to protect my children, to be their voice and their strength and to guide them through the world until they are capable of taking on those tasks themselves. These proposals will reduce my ability and effectiveness in this and teach my children that their parents are not capable of caring for them. They will grow up in a world where home education is treated as a form of child abuse – by singling us out for inspection, the general perception will inevitably be ‘Oh, there must be something dodgy going on or they wouldn’t be forced to submit to it would they?’ They will reduce the ability of parents who wish to start home educating to do so. This is never a decision taken lightly and to add a layer of heavy beurocracy to what is already a terrifyingly huge responsibility while at the same time erroding family autonomy and privacy will cause many parents to leave their children in unsuitable, and in some cases extremely harmful, situations when they would otherwise have put their child’s needs first.
All these things will harm my children. They will grow up feeling powerless against the whims of the state, fearful that one wrong move will cause their parents to be imprisoned and in all likelyhood expose them to the worst sort of behaviours from those, official and public, who will assume the law means home education = bad family.
No other country has measures such as those proposed. No one in their right minds can call them ‘Light-touch changes’.
You are concerned over a mythical beast, the ‘possibility’ that some home educators may not be doing a good job, that a hypothetical child may not be getting what they need. I am concerned for my very real children, who really do exist.
You cannot educate everyone to the highest level, not in your schools and certainly not with the current proposals which actually demand the quality of education not be taken into account when sending a child back to school in the case of their parents forgetting or refusing to fill out the paperwork. You cannot save everyone, especially when social services are understaffed, undertrained, underfunded and are known to have be unable to prevent bad things happening within families they know extremely well.
The education of one child is not worth the harm this law will do to thousands of others.
Please, I understand it can seem strange and suspicious to people who have no experience of home education, but don’t, I beg of you, attempt to judge it or worse, pass laws on it, before taking the time to look into it. Read some books – Alan Thomas’s ‘Education at home’ is a good place to start, Paula Rothermel has studdied home education and it’s outcomes, and writers such as John Holt and John Taylor Gatto talk about things that are the basis of many home educators phillosophies. Then, check your laws. Look at the current legal position and the court rulings made based on it, and consider them carefully. Then look at the new proposals and take the time to wonder what it would be like if you were part of a family forced to abide by them. Laws should not be made without consideration for those who will have to live with them. Laws should not be made without evidence that they are necessary. Laws that detract from a person’s civil liberties should not be rushed. Laws that impact on the ancient duties of parents to their children sould not be passed without good-quality, in-depth, carefully constructed, unbiased, accurate and truthful research into the facts and the impacts.
The history of these proposals is at odds with good practice in law-making. The fear and dissention in the population is real. Would you harm, not just me and my children, but the whole of Britain’s legal system with an ill-thought-out law based on pre-conceptions and flawed data that has been complied so suspiciously quickly it was announced before the results of the consultation and the government’s own Select Committee inquiry of the review it is said to be based on were announced and left to go unchecked despite both disagreeing strongly with the proposals?
I would hope that the Lords are all individuals of strong character who are capable and willing to investigate all aspects of a situation and forming their opinions based on the evidence without being swayed by a party line. I hope that my hope is justified.
Very well explained, Snuffyisabear. Thank you.
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