Consumers of education

As consumers of education, our children aren't very well served, are they?

Yes, we see that children are beaten up at school, and the assault is shown on mobile phones with a jeering crowd encouraging the attacker.

We see that education is a spent powerless little serpent with decayed teeth still trying to 'inject' knowledge into our young. A useless hopeless and victim filled vacuum that sucks in a load of skittish rot about qualifications and GCSEs and support and robustness. Buzz words to fill your head with fog. Fog to blind you to the truth. That as consumers of education our children are not served well by purveyors of the almighty boring National Cur-sickulum. That home educated children having often been outraged by the dreadful blight that is state schooling are visited again by the purveyors of the state system and assessed and monitored and planned to death. No way, Jose.

I say that it will be the way it was. My way. Or the highway. And you'll be doing the highland fling down the highway soon, Mr. and Mrs. LA.

Oh, and when you're on the dole, old soul, don't forget the hours you spent harassing, vilifying and bleeding away the time of the home educators who have put in the equivalent of Mount Olympus of their lives beating back your power-hungry-grabbing-muck-sucking-stupidity. Who have sunk all the richness of their massive, gigantic hearts nursing the last blue gasps of the last remaining true education in this country? Home educators - that's who. Hours and days and weeks of deep feeling, wise words, patient argument, logical inductions...

Listen to me, LAs. At THIS MINUTE, you have the power to intervene if children are abused. ANY children. ANY CHILD. You have it. You really have. Go read the laws. Go get someone to explain them if you don't understand. Ask home educators. Any child. Of any age, colour, creed, educational status, or moon sign. You have the power to intervene if, in your honest opinion, an education is not being provided by people who have decided to exercise their legal right to extend an education to their children in the home-based manner. You may be wrong about your assessment. But then we'll find that out in court.

Dear God, educate yourselves. EDUCATE YOURSELVES about your powers.

SO, because of the whining of brain-dead officials who haven't got an ounce of sense, the government dictates that home educators have to be monitored to do what we know is best for our children by an all-benign, all-loving Big brother government. Our fearless Balls going before us, banner in hand, shouting "I want equality for every child who matters. I want all children to be as dumb as each other. As bullied as each other. As degraded as each other. As coerced into holding their bladders and ignoring the signals from their rectums as each other. I want no parent unpunished. I want no poverty-stricken person who has problems not of their own making or of their own making having the audacity to raise children".

"We can raise your children much better than you can. We'll tell them what we want them to... er, what they should know. What's best for them to know. We have their best interests at heart. Every Child Matters".

And so the angel of death of the Labour Party goes rattling on his way. He'll be kissing the corpse of Britain for his bid at the top job when the Election frenzy grips.

Every Child Matters, oh, dear, yes. If it were true, then we wouldn't have to say it, would we? I mean, you don't go around reassuring other societal members that Every Breath Keeps You Alive. IT JUST DOES.

If you need to say something over and over ad nauseum, maybe there's something wrong with the something you are saying.

Every cog in the machine matters. Every kid has the right to have an opinion as long as it's the right opinion. Every child should be consulted, then ignored. Say anything, mean nothing and be as mean as you can to people you don't understand because your greed would never, ever let you put your children first.

Every Child matters. Well, my children's freedom matters to me. My grandchildren's right to have the choice of a decent proper home education matters to me. And they aren't even born yet.

It matters. It MATTERS. IT MATTERS.

The blaming nation

Part of the problem with Badman reports and issues with anything is

a) problematising and
b) blaming

I'd like to take b) first. When I was emigrated to Canada - I say it that way because I had no choice - one of the first things I did was ask my Dad if he would buy me a bike. I had given my bike from home to a friend who could make good use of it. After our move to Canada, we were living in a fairly rural area; a few dirt tracks and some houses, near my Dad's cousin.

I got my bike. I went out on it. Confession: my biking skills were not that great. We had lived in a terrible place for the care and exercising of bikes. Lots of killer cars and a wobbly me who hadn't biked for long. Anyway, it was the summer so I forged up and down on my new shiny bike.

Then I hit a stone and went over, down on one knee. That hurt, but the humiliation hurt more than the bloody long graze.

What happened then?

Did I sit there and condemn the bike? No. I was not a good cyclist, but that wasn't the bike's fault.

Did I pulverise the stone into a million pieces for causing my fall? No, it wasn't the fault of the stone; it was just doing what stones will do and have done for centuries.

I didn't blame anyone or anything.

It was an accident.

They happen. They happen a lot. They happen to everyone.

So why do we blame the LA personnel for educational problems? Why do we run to the legal system to squeeze out money after someone has done something to us? It's because we blame other people. There is a strong tradition of blaming people or groups in this society.

Often seen headlines: "Politicians slammed for failure to..." or "The government was criticised for..."

I don't think the blame game is healthy and, often, it doesn't help at all. Blaming parents for educating their children when the alternative is an inadequate education - even in an inadequate place to be (have you seen some school buildings?) - at the hands of a state-sponsored system is not a sensible response. If your youngster were suffering from asbestos poisoning in a room, wouldn't you take him out of the room? It's the same principle. After all, unless you are completely turned around mentally, you do actually want the best for your offspring.

a) Problematising.

Problematising is making something a problem when it hasn't been a problem and it isn't a problem. Home education is not a problem. Schooling is. Home education is natural and unproblematic, has been happening since the dawning of recorded time and before that or we wouldn't have survived as a species. Schooling isn't natural and unproblematic and hasn't been around since the dawn of time. Problematising happens when a group of people - like politicians - haven't got enough to do and cannot do much about what they are supposed to do something about so they create a problem, and then they create another problem when they problematise what wasn't a problem in the first place. A politician creates problems because he wants to have solutions that he can measure to say to people "Look how well I'm doing my job. The problem (that I created) has been solved so I'm clever and creative at solving problems.' That's a vote winner. Or has been.

And you know what they say "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Definitely you'll be part of the problem if you generated the problem in the first place.

Home education? No problem!

Bully for You

The saying has come down to us from history: "Bully for you" meaning essentially well done. Sometimes it has a little edge of sarcasm to it.

Arthur: "I got 98% on the Maths test this week."

Jim: "Well, bully for you, I got four right. Smart ass."

Tim Field who studied bullying for many years and was himself bullied at work which resulted in illness reckoned that fifty percent of the population have been bullied.

Bullying, as opposed to assault or harassment, is characterised by "an accumulation of many small incidents over a long period of time." Many different bullies colonise many different niches, one being the corridors of power, and considering the possibilities and opportunities for bullying in the highest positions in the land it is small wonder that these people congregate there.

"Often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication."

Home educators have been criticised in many areas during the past few years. They have fought off officious and sanctimonious attacks from the pulpits of preachers condemning what they know not of. Local authorities have whined that home educators may abuse their children. Yes, they might, but so might local authority employees. We have been misrepresented as twisted statistics testify in Home Education Review by Graham Badman as seeing the social services more. This may be easily explained by the fact that many children with Special Educational Needs are over-represented in the home educated group of children: they are the ones who probably suffer most from the inflexible and impersonal confines of school. Other home educating children have been reported to social workers because of misunderstandings about home education and because of some malicious impulse from neighbours or other busy -bodies.

"In society, being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong - however trivial - action is taken against you."

Children can die on school trips but no one calls for closer surveillance of schools - the deaths are explained as accidents. Let a man or woman slap the home educator label on him or herself and he or she is immediately branded a child abuser. So much so, that the very authorities who are given the task of checking out genuine cases of abuse and turn their backs and walk away, are in a furore of righteous vigour about the rights of children to be 'safe.' Just a little two-faced when various authorities have been found less than able to deal with genuine abuse cases. Then a few inconsequential people are sacked, their careers are ruined of course, but someone has to be the sacrificial lamb. Meanwhile the ones who are left in post clamour for more powers to assess the condition of more children who are perfectly safe in their family units.


"Finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented." I imagine that autonomous learners who spoke with Graham Badman could testify that whatever they said was challenged, belittled or ignored. Badman has certainly chosen not to avail himself of a google search which would bring up many research reviews for autonomous learning; however, bullies tend not to want to examine the truth or anything which contrasts with their world view.

"Having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away." Mr. Badman would have us submit detailed plans of future educational direction, possible in some cases, but impossible in autonomously educating children's cases. Our authority as parents would be severely compromised should we accept the devolution of our position to mere 'stakeholders' in our children's lives. Our authority as human beings would be blighted were we required to explain every move to hostile local authority agents. We are captains of our educating ships and do not expect to file shipping plans with the remote authority on shore.

Now to focus attention on a bully.

He or she is also ... "aggressive, devious, manipulative, spiteful, vengeful, doesn't listen, can't sustain mature adult conversation, lacks a conscience, shows no remorse, is drawn to power, emotionally cold and flat, humourless, joyless, ungrateful, dysfunctional, disruptive, divisive, rigid and inflexible, selfish, insincere, insecure, immature and deeply inadequate, especially in interpersonal skills."

I don't know Mr. Badman personally, nor have I ever met him even briefly, but I can attest that he is devious. He wanted his words left unreported when Education Otherwise members had a meeting with him. He doesn't listen: many articulate and deeply committed parents of autonomous children sought to detail the joy and pleasure of child-led learning to him but he was either not listening or was uncomprehending. He was given a CBE in January 2008 for services to education and local government by the Department of Children Schools and Families (DCSF), was Specialist Adviser to the Education and Employment Parliamentary Select Committee (1997) and is chummily referred to as 'Graham' in a letter from Ed. Balls, the Secretary of State for the DCSF, one can fairly assume then that he is drawn to power.

Bullies select their targets from amongst people who are excelling and succeeding in their endeavours. They resent others who "show independence of thought or deed." They target those who are experts "and the person to whom others come for advice, either personal or professional (ie you get more attention than the bully)." Patently, home educators are experts on home education and the bullying technique of appointing representatives of a review panel who were ignorant of, or largely uneducated in, the vast areas of complicated strands in which home education exists was apparent. No one should be an expert on home education but Mr. Badman, not those who practice it and not those who participate in it.

Unfortunately, as proponents of a generally superior system of education, we have drawn attention to ourselves and have become targets. "Our performance unwittingly highlights, draws attention to, exposes or invites unfavourable comparison with the bully's lack of performance (the harder you work to address the bully's claims of underperformance, the more insecure and unstable the bully becomes)." The multifarious failings of the state school system threaten and undermine a person who has spent forty years being an apologist for the regular school system.
It would have been surprising, after all, if Graham Badman had produced an impartial and unbiased report.

Since we dedicated home educators have "honesty and integrity (which bullies despise)," I hope that Winston Churchill is correct when he writes: "The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."

All quotations or paraphrased quotations are taken from the website, Bullyonline, started and caringly nurtured by the incomparable Tim Field who died of cancer on January 15th, 2006. It has no connection with another website Bullyingonline, now renamed Bullying UK.

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm

To Tim Field, a man who spoke out for all the workers under other men's boots. Rest in peace.

In any report

In any report, you should have enough courtesy to quote your statistics.

In any report, you should have the decency not to lie.

In any report, you should mind what you say because you could rip families apart and tear children to pieces.

In any report, you should know better than to quote people who have no decency or honour, and who lie without compunction and who are openly liars.

In any report, you should be able to divorce yourself from the prospect of making money from other people's misery, or get someone else to write the report.

In any report, you should have the civility to be honourable and fair.

In any report, you should check your facts and check your facts again, weeding out any suspicious 'facts' that you cannot support.

In any report, you should mind what you say because what you say could smash children's safe havens where they escaped to from bullies and shouting teachers and the slog of eternal tests and quizzes and homework when you'd been at school all day and wanted a rest and a play because you were a kid after all, and the weariness of being taught and being frightened by not achieving and not attaining, and being found wanting, and being called names and being branded an 'outsider' and being called gay and being hit by bigger kids and being laughed at in the shower while they pointed at your penis and having chewing gum stuck in your newly-washed hair in the science lab and searching for your carefully constructed story that you poured all your creativity into which disappeared off a pile of work and hearing whispers about you that you couldn't quite hear but felt were about you, and being asked if you had nits by six different people on the first day of school in a new school when you didn't but they didn't like you because you wrote good stories and the teacher approved of you because of your writing, and being herded through huge corridors and knocked from one side to the other because big people barged past you or called you 'cute' and thought you looked like a doll, and someone stole your favourite pens out of your very own pencil case and you never knew people who nicked things before, and you found your coat on the floor of the cloakroom with a ripped sleeve and boot and shoe prints all over it and it was your only winter coat, and your mum couldn't afford to buy you another one, and girls who wanted to be your friend and asked to borrow your gel pens never returned them and weren't your friends after they borrowed them and wouldn't speak to you and giggled with each other if you tried to talk to them, and the girl who was your friend lasted a week and moved on to another friend and another friend and another friend until she'd been through everybody.

You could hurt people doing that.

My children are not sausages - they have rights!

My children are not sausages. They do not need to be grilled.

All children have rights.

All children have a right to be safe...
from barely literate uncomprehending over-stretched ticky box faceless cold bureaucrats who dare to judge anyone else on anything. You failed my child when she left school in tears, dreading the next day of school, terrified of some other children, wanting to be dead rather than schooled. I will keep her safe from you.

Judge not lest ye be judged.

My children have a right to be protected...
from social workers unable to distinguish abuse from real family life. We are not perfect parents. We don't smack our children (which you have failed to ban) and we don't lie to our children (like you do in your Bad Home Education Review) and we don't listen to them just to ignore what they say. We will respect our young people for they deserve respect, and that is a right they have a right to.

"Adoption targets were brought in seven years ago, when Tony Blair was trying to persuade social workers to find adoptive homes for more children.The then Prime Minister set targets to raise the number of children being adopted by 50 per cent to 5,400 every year.He promised millions of pounds to councils that managed to achieve the targets. Some have already received more than £2million for successful adoptions.Campaigners say the number of babies under a month old being taken into care and then adopted has risen from 500 in 1997 to 1,300 a year. Last year a BBC investigation discovered more than 100 claims of miscarriages of justice by parents whose children were taken by social workers for adoption.The Radio Four Face the Facts programme quoted social workers who admitted they are under pressure to take children because of Whitehall targets to increase adoption.Last night Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who has been campaigning against inappropriate adoption of babies, said: "Councils are in a big rush to take babies at a very early stage because it is makes it easier to break the attachment that naturally forms between baby and mother over time."This case illustrates again how the system is not working in the interests of the children or the families, it's working in the interests of the bureaucracy. "What's unique about this case is not the unlawful removal of a child, but that some lawyers have sufficient backbone to make the right application to the court to have the child returned to its mother."Mr Hemming added: "There are financial rewards - a fund of about £35million - for getting children adopted. Admittedly, it has been proposed that adoption targets are scrapped on April 1, but clearly there are still problems."Layton Bevan, co-founder of Families and Social Services Information Team, a support group for families frustrated by social services' actions, said: "It's obscene the way some social services can take children away from parents without the proper paperwork."We are aware of this happening in hundreds of cases a year through the sheer incompetence and organisational failure of social services departments."If they need to meet adoption targets they will do it by taking children from vulnerable families."Worryingly, the social services involved seem to have no accountability and ride roughshod over the law and the parents and children involved."

http://www.fassit.co.uk/judge_orders_social_workers.htm

Children have a right to an education...
now that the masters have closed the mills and the mines where they used to get their 'education' where do they go?

"Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest."

http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

Children have a right to live, learn and exist in peace in a society...
which doesn't see them as human capital, human resources, or economic units forced to run and run ever faster to fabricate wealth for someone who is already obscenely wealthy, and who doesn't even know their names.

"In the UK, 1 per cent of the population owns appoximately 21 per cent of the UK's marketable wealth, and 50 per cent of the population owns only 7 per cent of wealth."

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/facts/index35.aspx

Children have the right not to be seen as objects...
to be weighed, measured, grilled, interviewed, assessed, experimented upon or otherwise abused by a society that should treat them and their parents with honour.

"Children's independent mobility and access are routinely undermined by the structures and constraining values of contemporary urban environments. Although they are major users of their local areas, children are conspicuous by their absence in discussions about transport, planning and environmental health and there have been few attempts in the UK to modify the urban environment so that children's needs are met. Instead, behaviour modification approaches have predominated, in which children are seen as objects to be fitted into the adult constructed world. In place of such victim blaming approaches a new public health analysis would emphasize environmental and social influences on children's quality of life. Manipulation of the urban environment rather than the child offers the best prospects for creating cities that are healthier—for children and consequently for other vulnerable users. In this process the views of children themselves need to be heard, so that policy makers make realistic decisions about how urban environments are designed and managed."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH5-3VW1SCY-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=91d2f292e4a39dc46c6bc6a060913daf


Children have a right not to be forced into prison...
because their parent is unaware of the creeping evil of the Every Child Matters rhetoric which makes strangers, who don't provide food, roof, bed, clothes... everything for them, judges over the minutiae of their lives.

"The Government's aim is for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need to:
be healthy
stay safe
enjoy and achieve
make a positive contribution
achieve economic well-being."

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/about/aims/aims/

Children have a right to their own ambitions and dreams...
and the right to achieve them or not as is their destiny and their desire.

"Kate needs all the help she can get when she encounters the Lanky Man. He's mean and heartless, and he wants to steal children's dreams."

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&filter_author=115&cPath=388&filter=author&level_1=388sort=20a

Children have a right to be treated as sentient, able people and not patronised by officials who wilfully and totally disregard everything they say.

The Home Education Review

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/_download/?id=6080

We are the sun, not the wind

There's an Aesop's fable - maybe you know it? - where the sun and the wind make claims to be the stronger. They spy a man walking along a country road, and decide to test who is the strongest of them. The test will be which of them makes the man remove his coat. The wind blows himself up a storm, but the man merely pulls his coat tighter and tighter around him. The sun, however, shines and shines, and the man gets hotter and hotter until he takes off his coat.

We are the sun. We are the life-giving sun.

My children are my abiding and absolute love in my life. There is nothing I wouldn't do for my children to ensure their happiness and their health, as far as I am able. I love them. I adore them.

They are amazing people. I never see them as less than two individual miracles. They arose from love and in love, and in love and respect they dwell in my house.

I demand respect for them. I wish them to travel through life being respected and having their words matter to others, not tossed aside as just bleatings or whinings or complaints.

My children are all to me. My children are my gift to the future. I acknowlege the earth and know I am one with her as she procreates in springtime. My power is infinite because my power is of creation. I created life. I have given the gift of life.

What do men of little minds give? What does Graham Badman give? What do he and his greedy panel of 'experts' know of my children? Nothing. They know nothing. They conceive only death and decay. They are static takers of the world's goods. They understand nothing. They are not of earth though they will be earth.

They have no power except the inconstant worldly power of false promises and unreal words. They seek to restrain angels, and mock the deep earth from whence we all are nourished with their unreality and their foolish clacking chatter.

They will pass away.

We will abide.

I am a mother. I have infinite power.

I am a mother. You threaten the freedom of my little ones. I am a mother. Hear me roar.

NASWE to share views with Home Ed. Review chairman

Well, well, well. We approach a wicked day.

On May 7th, NASWE members are to share their views with Mr. Graham Badman about the home education review.

http://www.naswe.org.uk/events/

Why?

I suppose because educational social workers are concerned with children who are electively home educated. They want to give their views, the social workers do, and we can bet their views are that home educators should be weighed and measured and monitored and curtailed and then, for preference, have their kids sent back to school because school is so wonderful.

They have a vested interest. Their job is getting children into school and keeping them there.

I'm not a social worker so I'm not invited to a meeting with Mr. Badman. If he reads my views, I'll be surprised. I'd be more surprised if, having read them, he took any notice.

But I'm just one of those unruly, unimportant home educators, and my children are missing something by not being in school.

Maybe I'll sneak into the conference and heckle. No, can't do that. I would be arrested.

I'll just ask openly - why are social workers' views being solicited? I understand Mr. Badman was one at one time or, if I'm incorrect here, perhaps he could grant me a conference to which all us pesky irritating home educators would be invited.

I know it's much less important than government diktats and job demands.

It's only our lives, after all. It's only our most precious children's lives after all.

Democracy in action. Fairness. Quangos.

The usual government path of 'reviewing' something then telling everyone that you, the government, were right after all. The NFER trick of asking who you like and who agrees with you what they think.

The cult of the expert. Three years of college or university and they know what is best for you.

It's only our lives. It's only our children: our most precious children and their lives.

Step outside the herd. Stop wanting what you're approved of for wanting - the big house, the car, the extension on the big house, lots of money, holidays, things... And you must be suspect. You don't conform. You are other. Not one of us. You are alien. You might direct your life, and be a success on your own terms.

It's our lives. Our most precious children and their lives.

I'm a mother - hear me roar.