“ ‘What you say doesn’t sound liberal, it sounds like a liberal’s twisted argument to justify use of authoritarian methods with children, not even his own children but other people’s children, the whole nation’s children.’

The argument I set out is only illiberal if one assumes that parental freedoms have priority here. But that’s not itself a liberal assumption.”

I have said that I do not believe that parental freedoms should trump those of children. Indeed if people chose to have children they should take seriously the responsibility to support the child’s freedom. Most HE parents take this very seriously. This is a complex balance to achieve and I agree the state has a role, a small one though, the recommendations in the review are not ones that seem to me to take sufficient care of children’s freedoms.

“As I said, and as John Stuart Mill argues in On Liberty, parents have power over children and it is in the interests of children’s freedom to set limits on this power. ”

I have already said that I believe parents should reduce use of power over children. Parents should work in partnership with children. If the freedom to HE is reduced this reduces opportunity for parents to make decisions on education with their children. I agree that parents can misuse their power but so too can government and their staff. There are many examples of this happening to HE families, this review, if implemented, is likely to increase rather than decrease these cases.

The nature of a parent child relationship is such that there is far greater opportunity for parent and child to work together to achieve the best for the child when parents do not have to impose an external curriculum or routine on behalf of the state.

“Since HE is one way in which parents can exercise huge power over their children a liberal state will quite properly want to subject HE to careful (non-arbitrary) regulation.”

The review does not set ways to ensure that the regulation is careful or non-arbitrary.
It does not provide opportunity to protect families from poor judgment by officials.

Already many HE families suffer because HE is not understood by the officials who regulate it, the review does not make sufficient recommendations to remedy this. One recommendation that we should seek permission from the LA to choose our method of education amounts to taking the decision away from parents and placing it in the hands of LA workers. There is no provision for appeal of this decision. This would mean that if an LA official disagreed with a parent’s choice a child who was being bullied or whose special needs were not being met would not have an appropriate escape route from that situation.

“You add:

‘Consent matters for children; you can’t throw it away with some academic argument about what a “liberal” approach to education should be.’

Calling an argument ‘academic’ is usually a sign that someone doesn’t wish to address the argument but dismiss it without considering it properly.”

Forgive me, I do not always have time to enter the argument fully. I was coming from the perspective of feeling that within my parenting practice it is perfectly possible to take the child’s consent seriously in all but rare cases. That is not to say I always manage it I am fallible but it is possible. One of my most coercive parenting moments was when I took a crying 4 year old to school, I’d have found a better solution myself, taken time to settle him there, developed a relationship with the teacher first etc but there was no flexibility in this. The choice was fit my small child into the school environment in the way that works best for the system, not the way that works best for the child, or ultimately risk the law for truanting. So I used my power to implement the wishes of the system.

“A parent is jailed for their child’s truancy once a fortnight every school term in England and Wales, analysis of court statistics shows.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7868061.stm

A truanting child is one who is poorly served by school and by their parents, a creative solution is required. I’m certainly not suggesting this is easily done or that HE is an option in all these cases.

Such coercive use of the Law over parents prevents them from working with the child and others to find creative solutions to their children’s problems.

“What I pointed out was that it cannot be the decisive consideration because children’s preferences can obviously be shaped by their parents. Thus, treating children’s wishes as final can all too easily be a way of signing off on the exercise of parental power.”

Agreed, unless parents hold a philosophy by which they strive to take their children’s views seriously and are constantly aware of their own fallibility. It is such families who are most under attack from this review.

Surely the inflexible recommendations of the review could “all too easily be a way of signing off on the exercise of excessive state power”

Balance is required.

“Well, in a sense, yes: liberals do want to use authority pretty forcefully against those who stand in a potential relationship of tyranny to a weaker party”

So they should, but they should be careful that in so doing they do not allow an even more powerful entity to use its own tyranny.

Families who HE have extra time they spend together and so have opportunities to build deep relationships that support parents in developing skills that reduce the use of “power over” in their relationships with children.

I must take issue with this.

“If you your children are forced to go to a school which will not see the obvious links between genetics and intelligence”

Most teachers strive to view each child as an individual and treat them appropriately regardless of their genetics. It is not always easy for them to achieve this given the constraints on their time but it is certainly right that they should disregard genetics in teaching decsions.

I have never come across a parent home educating for the reason you describe.

My apologies for lacok of care Lee, shame there is on facility for you to use red ball point on here.

True, much better they stay where they can be brain washed in to arrogant supremacists.

Even look at these forum rules; it is anti truth and anti reality, it is more important for you to have feel goodism than truth. No wonder people want to home school their kids, if for nothing more than to keep them away from brain washing which intends to make the children hate their own parents.

The argument I set out is only illiberal if one assumes that parental freedoms have priority here. But that’s not itself a liberal assumption. As I said, and as John Stuart Mill argues in On Liberty, parents have power over children and it is in the interests of children’s freedom to set limits on this power. Since HE is one way in whch parents can exercise huge power over their children a liberal state will quite properly want to subject HE to careful (non-arbitrary) regulation.

You add:

‘Consent matters for children; you can’t throw it away with some academic argument about what a “liberal” approach to education should be.’

Calling an argument ‘academic’ is usually a sign that someone doesn’t wish to address the argument but dismiss it without considering it properly. Moreover, nothing I said suggests that children’s consent is unimportant. What I pointed out was that it cannot be the decisive consideration because children’s preferences can obviously be shaped by their parents. Thus, treating children’s wishes as final can all too easily be a way of signing off on the exercise of parental power.

At 117, you also quote Elliot Temple as saying: ‘School doesn’t teach you how to avoid being indoctrinated, it just tries to indoctrinate you itself.’

Evidence, please? This is surely a massive overgeneralization. Any good lesson in RE, Citizenship, History, English, etc. will be focused on developing critical skills of the kind that Elliott rightly values. Of course schools vary enormously in quality. And children at schools can be subjected to all kinds of peer pressures of a conformist kind. And doubtless contemporary state education could give a stronger focus to the kind of skills that build individual autonomy. Parents who feel the state system is letting their children down in this respect perhaps ought to have more opportunity to set up their own schools on the US Charter schools model. At the limit, I would support a right to HE as a final bulwark against the potential weaknesses of the school sector. But only subject to very careful regulation, for the reasons given above.

Bishop Hill@118: ‘There are a lot of alleged liberals arguing that the state should have access to the home without probable cause. What is the difference between this interpretation of liberalism and authoritarianism?’

Again, I think you are just confusing liberalism with the unargued-for priority of parental freedom. For reasons set out above, liberals cannot accept that parental freedom has any such priority. You are falling into precisely the trap identifuied by Mill (see quote @6): nowhere are our notions of freedom more misapplied than in the case of the family. You call this authoritarianism. Well, in a sense, yes: liberals do want to use authority pretty forcefully against those who stand in a potential relationship of tyranny to a weaker party.

What is the difference between this interpretation of liberalism and authoritarianism?

I missed this earlier

“In common with many contemporary liberal political philosophers (though not all), I would argue that the basic, non-negotiable requirements include the following: (1) Children must be educated so that they have the capacity on maturity to question parental beliefs, religious and political, in an informed way.”

They must be educated to question all beliefs in an informed way, even their own.! Theirin lies the way to progress and an excellent education.

Elliot Temple had an interesting perspective on in in a discussion we had a while ago here
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/topic.php?uid=47085782562&topic=9612
“Most kids:
A) have state education.
B) are indoctrinated with a bunch of bad ideas by their parents.
(A) did not prevent (B). It simply doesn’t work. How could it work? School doesn’t teach you how to avoid being indoctrinated, it just tries to indoctrinate you itself.
If you want people to be free thinkers, tell them stuff like: experts disagree all the time. and even when they all agree, often they are wrong. you can’t just trust experts, you need to learn things yourself and use your own mind. don’t ever listen to someone’s opinion just because he has a degree or title or a uniform; you should try to evaluate critically what they say, and see if you think it makes sense or not. if they can’t explain it so it’s clear and simple to you, that is not a sign you’re dumb, it’s either a sign they are bad at explaining stuff or wrong.”

The rest of what you said

“(2) Children must be educated so that they are able to participate in a society with diverse others on the basis of toleration and mutual respect. (3) Non-discrimination: children should not be educated in ways that are discriminatory, e.g., giving science lessons to boys and not girls. ”

I pretty much agree with

The law already requires LAs to intervene if it appears that a child is not recieveing a suitable educaiton. I have no problem with that, I agree they should.

There are the mechanisms, they rarely use them, maybe because they don’t wish to follow the rigorous approach that is needed. Or maybe because if the current law was used against HE families it would be clear that it should also be used against parents who send their children to failing schools
Comment here on the current law
http://www.ourstorysofar.co.uk/?p=1150

You argue that children should have a basic educaiton, well duh!! HE parents agree.

What we diasgree is as follows..

Quoting another HE Parent here
“- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to detain (ie insist on interviewing) HEing families without probable cause. Compulsory interviews are contrary to the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty. There are other, well established, ways for EHEers to provide evidence that an education is taking place according to the law, and they are contained in the 2007 guidance for LAs. And, in a recent survey, 77% of HEed children said they do not want to be interviewed by LA staff (http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html) – are their preferences to be entirely disregarded? Apparently so.

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to enter private homes without probable cause. As you know, even the police do not have this power.

- Badman suggests giving power of veto over HE provision (its style or it happening at all) to LA employees. Rather than them having power to gather evidence and take a HE family to court, they would now have the power to act as prosecutor, judge and jury if they were in charge of granting or withholding registration. This is a very bad idea because of what I think of as the “numpty” factor. To have the final decision about whether an education provided is within the law or not resting with the courts, as now, grants us a level of protection from the ex-school teachers and ex-OFSTED inspectors who tend to populate LA education departments. There is no reason why they would be able to recognise or appreciate an education which doesn’t look like school-at-home, and they absolutely must not be given power over those of us who choose to educate in unconventional ways.

Underpinning all of this is the potential overturning of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.”
from http://www.childrenarepeople.blogspot.com/

Did you not read this explaination on why the current law is sufficinet by Lord Adonis?
http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/Adonis_Judd_Oct13_2006_copiable.pdf

It is irrelevant who is more likely, what matters is that quality can be lacking in both options, yet it is safer and more likely to maintain some base level of quality if regulation is involved.

And let’s knock on the head this idea that regulation has to be about introducing a curriculum. People are smart enough, experts certainly, to assess whether a child is benefiting from the education they are receiving. There is a whole argument about how the current curriculum is not geared towards that benefit on the individual but that again is a separate independent strand of the debate.

You also can’t, with all due respect, accuse the government of wanting to be authoritarian and limiting choice in education while also saying that they’ll only be visiting to check once a year.

“What you say doesn’t sound liberal, it sounds like a liberal’s twisted argument to justify use of authoritarian methods with children, not even his own children but other people’s children, the whole nation’s children.”

It’s two sides of the same coin, Elizabeth. HE advocates generally believe that the parents views and wishes are the most relevant for the child, those against it believe that the parents views and wishes are a potentially poisonous entity in a child’s development. If you’re truly for the child’s best interests being protected then you wouldn’t support one or the other (I can see the positives and negatives of both) but you WOULD agree to measures that ensure that a child’s right to education is upheld no matter what their own choice or wishes entail.

This *does* mean compromise, and it does mean potentially moving education away slightly from HE’s own agenda which could lead to a compromise in education quality at the high end…but I think also that it’s a simplistic view to say regulation would lead to school at home; as if parents of children that go to state or private schools don’t also go through a process of teaching and development with their own agenda attached outside of schooling hours.

There is one simple truth here, regardless of how you’re schooled your parents and family will have ample opportunity to educate you about things that they wish to educate you about, and to provide you with opportunities to develop in areas you wish to be more adept at. The question about regulation is purely about ensuring that learning the basic fundamental knowledge is done across the board, no exceptions made. Argue as you will as to who decides what the basic fundamental knowledge is, how it’s structured, and all that…but the principle in itself is something I find hard to comprehend people would question.

What you say doesn’t sound liberal, it sounds like a liberal’s twisted argument to justify use of authoritarian methods with children, not even his own children but other people’s children, the whole nation’s children.

It may well answer my original question as to why the so called “liberals” do not support the freedom to HE or wish to see help look for more creative ways to help safeguarding while not decreasing freedom in education.
So thanks for the insight.

Children who do not have experience of being given the opportunity to consent or not to what is done to them are children who are most at risk from those who wish to abuse them.

Consent matters for children; you can’t throw it away with some academic argument about what a “liberal” approach to education should be.

What alternatives would you suggest that would take acount of the child’s consent?
I am very keen to have your personal thoughts on this.

I think Pete answered the question about exams, if people need more info I can provide it.

with thanks

Elizabeth

LA officials seeing children once a year is not likely to be effective in dissuading abuse, for some families and for some children it will be intrusive. Having strangers in your home is intrusive. I have suggested other ideas that might help children to access help, I’m sure there are more others can think of, this idea is uncreative, can hardly be effective and as explained over and over by several people is not in line with rigths to privacy as individuals. But as I said before maybe that’s an old-fashioned idea.

“And just to clarify here, the issue at hand is whether children, who are wishing to be home schooled or otherwise, get quality. That is their right, to expect not to be hampered by the shortcomings of their educators regardless of where that takes place.”

I agree, but who is more likely to protect that right a parent who is open to choice in Education or a government who do not support such diversity.

A reminder on why it is parents not the state who in law have responsibility for education
http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/lord-adonis-on-fourfold-foundation.html

I can understand why many people would prefer that the state has this responsibility.

“The rights issue is, to me, more interesting a discussion than this one…”

Me too but this is more important right now both to us HEers and to all children who are at risk of abuse, wherever they are educated.

“this one is a discussion on which I don’t understand why anyone could possibly stand against the idea of regulation, as long as it doesn’t include conformance to strict guidelines to pass inspection.”

You can’t have standards without guidelines on how to measure them if that’s the kind of thing you like. People who work for LAs and the documents they use to evaluate children (ECM guidelines etc) are all about targets not about provision. These guidelines they use do not allow for the consent of the child, they do not on the whole allow for education that is the bringing out of ability but look for education that is the filling up of vessels.

Many of us who begin a life of HE find other methods of education, some older some newer, but methods that are often very different from school and yet the LAs insist on judging us by the schoolie way of learning. It has been harmful to many HE families.

If you stand against a reasonable regulation system for HE then you’re standing against children’s rights to be ensured a decent education, let alone standing against an effective yet relatively non-intrusive route of dissuading abuse.

It strikes me as sad that so many HE people can’t support a reasonable regulation system to dissuade abuse because it takes away more of their ‘freedoms.

Why aren’t more home educators supporting an alternative to the regulation proposed rather than shooting it all down because all their freedom will be taken away if two or three children somewhere are supported in what could be a damaging and destructive situation?

Clearly the ECHR matters not one jot if a Government have other ideas. Paranoid are we?

“My hubby is French, so we’ve been checking out the situation there. Although we
knew they already had compulsory registration & monitoring, we were completely
unaware of the recent developments. In March 09 a new education bill was passed,
which dictates the curriculum to be followed. If that’s not bad enough, it seems
to be dictating the method of delivery of said curriculum. Age related targets
therefore come into play, and obviously any form of autonomy goes out of the
window.

The three main HE orgs in France are outraged by the lack of proper consultation
before imposing the new legislation, and are basically feeling that it marks the
end of any form of diversity in French education. (It seems this will all also
apply to previously exempt private schools too – but I haven’t read all the
details yet).

As I haven’t spotted anything about this on any of the lists I lurk on (blush -
sorry, always too busy to post!), I thought I should flag this up, as it is
making us wonder if some of the pressure for the Badman review etc. might be
coming from Europe, and we’re also wondering if we should be launching a wider
European campaign or if there is anything we can do to help our neighbours in
France? We will continue looking into this.

The freedom we have enjoyed until now is getting rare. We need to persuade
people that diversity is something to be proud of & to cherish. By quashing all
forms of education other than those imposed by the state we risk losing so much.
It would be nothing short of irresponsible to allow this to happen.”

And just to clarify here, the issue at hand is whether children, who are wishing to be home schooled or otherwise, get quality. That is their right, to expect not to be hampered by the shortcomings of their educators regardless of where that takes place. That is why I say it is unrelated. The rights issue is, to me, more interesting a discussion than this one…this one is a discussion on which I don’t understand why anyone could possibly stand against the idea of regulation, as long as it doesn’t include conformance to strict guidelines to pass inspection. If you stand against a reasonable regulation system for HE then you’re standing against children’s rights to be ensured a decent education, let alone standing against an effective yet relatively non-intrusive route of dissuading abuse.

Matt M provides an excellent summary of the conservative philosophical position on nearly all issues, there… ;-D

Dear friends,

Today the Swedish Government released its suggestion for a new Swedish
school law which has been in the works for many years. The position on
homeschooling in the suggested law is a return to darkness. It is
unbelievable! Homeschoolings will NOT be permitted for those refering to
philosophical or religious reasons according to the European convention on
Human Rights!

The reason given is: “…that the education in school should be comprehensive
and objective and thereby designed so that all pupils can participate,
regardless of what religious or philosophical reasons the pupil or his or
her care-takers may have.”

Thus, the suggested law argues: “…there is no need for the law to offer the
possibility of homeschooling because of religious or philosophical reasons
in the family. All together this means that this suggested change cannot be
said to contradict Swedens international obligations [Human rights
conventions].”

The quotes above are my translations from the suggested law on page 584. The
suggested law can be downloaded in Swedish from the Swedish Government
homepage: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/11355/a/128290 The law is now out
for review and The Swedish Association for Home Education -
http://www.rohus.nu/?English_information – will give its suggestions to the
Government.

The review closes on September 25.

The final law will be presented to Parliament during the spring of 2010 and
will take effect in 2011.

That the Swedish Government is making homeschooling illegal is Sweden
showing off its worst totalitarian socialist roots. We will need
international support to show that Sweden, as a member of the international
democratic community, cannot take such a position. As Sweden is often seen
as the great social utopia of the world, it is important for Swedish
homeschoolers to win this battle.

Best regards Jonas Himmelstrand

Member and pedagogical advisor of the Rohus board

Like I said, depends on the mindset of the liberal, being as broad a definition as it is

In the more autonomous area, they sit exams if and when they want to. In fact, one of the suggestions of the Badman review was to force LA’s to allow HE parents uncharged access to exams. For some reason, this hasn’t found it’s way on to the consultation on proposed changes to LA practice or law… along with recommendations for compulsory HE training for LA officers.

The application process for university is much like that for mature students if the applicant doesn’t have formal qualifications, i.e. the applicant has to demonstrate either through a portfolio of work or practical demonstration to the admissions office that they are capable of the work expected of them at the level they are entering university.

I’ve heard many success stories of HE children going on to university: from the leccturers side, the UK experience of teaching HE children at university seems to be broadly positive, though I’ve seen a report from the US that one professor found homeschooled kids to be either top or bottom of his class, with little in between.

I think most HE are at the younger end of home education. I would be curious to know if they go to university without A Levels how they would prove that they meet the standards to be there.

Oh well, there goes a degree, post graduate training and 30 years experience down the pan. (to say nothing of a thorough and expert review of all the papers relating to the case) But hey! There you go.”

Aww get the violins out – so you’re qualified and experienced, so what ? Does that make you infallible or give you a unique insight into the truth ? Believe it or not there are lots of qualified and experinecd poeople and there have been upteen expert reviews of child protection, and guess what, it still screws up